When Sister Donna Markham, OP, assumes leadership of Catholic Charities USA later this year, three of the Catholic Church’s largest social service groups in the United States — Catholic Charities, Catholic Relief Services, and the Catholic Health Association — will be led by women, a paradox, some say, in a Church that restricts women from the priesthood, and thus from ascending to the highest levels of institutional power.

“’When it comes to the Catholic Church and women, it is really interesting because you have the very visible and hard line: women cannot be priests. Therefore women, by virtue of being women, cannot occupy the positions of power,’ said Kathleen Sprows Cummings, director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame.”

By Michael O’Loughlin, Cruxnow.com — Click here to read the rest of this story.