Just when you thought the Vatican assault on U.S. nuns could get no more ridiculous comes news of the Holy See's censure of a 2006 book written by Margaret Farley, Yale Divinity School professor emeritus and member of the Sisters of Mercy, for daring to note her own personal opinions on marriage, homosexuality and the morality of certain sexual acts.

Sr. Farley writes: "Masturbation… usually does not raise any moral questions at all. … It is surely the case that many women… have found great good in self-pleasuring – perhaps especially in the discovery of their own possibilities for pleasure

his statement does not conform to Catholic teaching: "Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of the faithful have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action…"