I’m sure this will be getting plenty of play around the blogosphere over the next few days — that sound you hear in the distance is William Donohue, barking out another angry press release — but here’s a first look at what Maureen Dowd has to say about nuns, the church, the pope and anything else Catholic that pops into her brain:

In 2004, the cardinal who would become Pope Benedict XVI wrote a Vatican document urging women to be submissive partners, resisting any adversarial roles with men and cultivating “feminine values” like “listening, welcoming, humility, faithfulness, praise and waiting.” 

Nuns need to be even more sepia-toned for the über-conservative pope, who was christened “God’s Rottweiler” for his enforcement of orthodoxy. Once a conscripted member of the Hitler Youth, Benedict pardoned a schismatic bishop who claimed that there was no Nazi gas chamber. He also argued on a trip to Africa that distributing condoms could make the AIDS crisis worse.

Well, you get the idea.  There’s much more at the link.