This is a sad week for Catholic women in Ireland.Once again the Vatican has decided that it has no place for them in the ranks of its priesthood. Not that there is any real proposal that such a place might be found.
Ever.
No, it's that the Church of England, on the contrary, has just agreed that the women priests within its ministry should be allowed become bishops, in the fullness of time.
Even those within Anglicanism who are opposed to women bishops on theological grounds recognise that, when women are ordained priests, there is absolutely no reason at all why they should not then be promoted.
But the Vatican, in its greater wisdom, has decried the vote in favour of women bishops taken last week at the General Synod in York.
It means, says the Vatican Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, a breaking away from the apostolic tradition, and that is going to make any hope of meaningful Christian fellowship a more distant prospect than it is even at present.
Those of us who had been holding our breaths in the hope of imminent Christian Unity can now breathe a long, resigned sigh.
Those of us who might have looked for some sign from the Catholic Church that women are just a little more than thorns in its side were not, of course, holding their breath at all.
For, while on one hand the Church of Rome acknowledges women's equal rights to just about everything, and has been willing down the centuries to make use of women in many ways, on the other hand it simply cannot abide the possibility that at some point they might function in a priestly office.
The first agreement within the Church of England to provide for the ordination of women came in 1975; it took 20 years for the first such ordination, and even in this current situation there won't be a mitred woman before 2014.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, who is committed to the ordination of women as bishops, described such amendments as the structural humiliation of women, a phrase which those in the Vatican who monitor the events of Anglican synods might try to interpret.
Interpretation is a strange thing, though. I don't know what the Holy Ghost was doing but he is clearly staying aloof from the Catholic element of this little problem, in which the one word most used and apparently most mis-understood is 'Christian'.
What does Christian Unity mean, if it means a welcome by the Catholic Church for the Anglican men who will not tolerate women bishops?
When the Church of England decided to approve the ordination of women way back then, the Church of Rome welcomed the 500 or so Anglican clergy -- many of them married with families -- who decided to move over to Catholicism, no doubt in the full fervour of a desire for men-only Christian unity.
That this was a resounding insult to Catholic womanhood was never acknowledged or repented, and that it was also, by the by, something of a challenge to the celibate Catholic clergy, was also ignored.
Now, as then, the Vatican elite wants to have its celibate, male cake, but it also wants to eat it by welcoming disillusioned or dislodged Anglicans. Not only that, but it wants to eat the Anglican cake as well, warning the synod of its disapproval and of its regret.
Anglican women, too, must feel puzzled and even distressed by the tone of the synod discussions. Not all Christian women may be in favour of female bishops, as it can be difficult to relinquish traditional roles and to welcome new variations on a time-honoured theme.
But time is not a reliable value-system, and there could be few ironies more obvious to modern women than a church which has replaced the glass ceiling with a celestial one.
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