How many of you have been secretly delighted that your union with the opposite sex produced a male child and not a girl? Girls are good enough, but they are not boys. My niece is on cloud 9 because the ultrasound revealed she is carrying a boy.

"Things just are what they are. It's just that...girls are not as good as boys for some reason that no one can discover. Or if they have discovered it, they don't want to say it because when you say it out loud it sounds so silly. I mean, the answer is that girls are not as good as boys because they're girls. See what I mean? Silly."

This essay by Joan Chittister, OSB, only gets better as you continue reading. The penultimate paragraph is a scorcher, so be sure to use your asbestos mouse. "It's not only what sexism says about women that's wrong. It's what sexism says about God that is the problem."