COLUMN ONE : Nuns Join Feminist Front Lines : The newest members of the Irish women’s movement challenge the Roman Catholic Church from within. They speak out on abortion, contraception and divorce.

The outrage of Sister Claire Murphy flickered to life 25 years ago in a remote Nigerian village where she found herself teaching school as a lonely missionary. The Biafran war had just begun when the young Irish nun received an unexpected package from the church.

“The Vatican had sent me a whole cupboard full” of birth control pills, Sister Claire recalled with a thin-lipped smile. “It was OK to protect the nuns against rape by the soldiers, but not the girls in our school.” She threw the pills out and kept quiet.

Now, at 62, Sister Claire is no longer keeping her own counsel. Instead, she is openly challenging the hypocrisies she sees within the Roman Catholic Church. She is one of a surprising number of the 1,200 nuns in this deeply Catholic nation who suddenly are daring to take controversial stands on emotional issues such as abortion, contraception, divorce, the ordination of women and the Scriptures themselves.

They are a small but integral part of Ireland’s new feminism--nuns who speak not of obedience but of empowerment--and to many Irish women, they form not so much a bridge to the patriarchal church but a tunnel through it.

Spirituality, not religion, is the light on the other side.

“Even to maintain God is male is cutting off half the population,” Sister Claire complained over tea and cookies with members of her feminist discussion group.

Given fresh impetus by the election 20 months ago of Mary Robinson, the country’s first female president, Ireland’s feminist movement is enjoying something of a renaissance after a decade marked by stagnation or, even worse, setback.

Feminists find themselves lobbying hard for rights that most women in the rest of Western Europe take for granted, such as divorce, access to birth control and the ability to travel abroad freely--a right that has come under legal challenge in some cases by those seeking to keep the many Irish women defying anti-abortion laws from going to England for the procedure.

“We’re dogged by contraception, divorce, abortion,” feminist writer Nell McCafferty said. “They take up all our energy that should be devoted to jobs, power, money.”

Women make up 52% of Ireland’s population of 3.5 million, but only 13 of the 166 deputies in the lower house of Parliament are women. Only 30% of married women work outside the home--the lowest percentage in the European Community.

In the 1970s, feminists scored one of their biggest victories in Ireland by successfully eliminating the “marriage bar,” which forced women in the civil service to give up their jobs once they married. Anti-discrimination laws also were passed. But the 1980s brought disappointment. A referendum that would have legalized divorce failed and anti-abortion legislation became even tighter, making it illegal even to provide information about abortion.

Now, political activists have set the gears in motion for the country’s first Women’s Party, and grass-roots groups are cropping up even in rural areas to offer women assertiveness training, job counseling and spirituality workshops.

The government’s Council for the Status of Women counts 96 women’s groups so far--more than three times the number just six years ago. According to council member Nuala Ryan, nuns are often the driving force behind such organizations.

“Feminist nuns are very exciting, very well educated,” said Freola O’Riagain, a Dublin feminist who counsels people about family law. “They actually see women’s problems. They’re on the ground in the community. The typical priest views women on the pedestal, like the mammy, or else as the temptress.”

The church seems to consider feminism, especially feminist nuns, a topic best avoided. Neither Ireland’s cardinal nor a dozen bishops contacted across the republic were available for comment on the issue.

Such silence rules in an atmosphere of passionate public debate over abortion, contraception and celibacy among priests.

A popular bishop, Eamonn Casey, recently resigned after admitting he had fathered an illegitimate son 17 years earlier. He allegedly supported the boy and his American mother with church funds.

The Casey scandal had come quick on the heels of an even more painful controversy for Catholic Ireland: The case of “X,” a 14-year-old girl impregnated by a rapist. The girl was granted permission for an abortion only after the Supreme Court ruled that her life was in danger because she was suicidal. The case drew the battle lines for feminism’s biggest challenge yet in Ireland--a referendum this autumn on abortion.

Roughly 96% of Ireland’s people are Catholic, and the country has stringent laws against abortion and contraception. At least 4,000 women a year admit to traveling to England to obtain abortions, facing possible prosecution back home; ostensibly, the Pill can be prescribed only to regulate a woman’s menstrual cycle.

A recent bill to make condoms available in vending machines was defeated. They cannot be displayed on open counters but can be purchased from a druggist, if the customer is 17 or older.

“Everything that has to do with major social upheaval in this country has to do with sexuality and woman,” said Clare O’Connor, a trade union activist in Dublin. “It’s a time of conflict for both men and women in Ireland.

“Feminist nuns are a tiny proportion of nuns,” O’Connor added, “but they’re part of the strength of the women’s movement here. . . . There is no history or experience here of being able to dissociate the state and laws of the state from the church. Twenty years ago, there was absolutely no question that what was right for the state was whatever the church said. Now at least people are questioning it.”

Sister Sheila Curran is one of those asking the questions.

As the youngest member of a feminist group of nuns known as Sisters for Justice, the 31-year-old member of the Sisters of Mercy order marches in demonstrations, lobbies for social change and serves as an advocate for oppressed peoples.

Some politicians, she has found, “are still very patronizing. They wish nuns would just stay in their convents and say their prayers.”

Each Ash Wednesday, the 25 Sisters for Justice stage a silent vigil outside the U.S. Embassy to protest Washington’s policies in Latin America. When former President Ronald Reagan visited in 1984, the nuns made headlines by carrying mock coffins in front of his entourage.

None of the feminist nuns reported ever receiving any formal reprimand from the church, but many have had unpleasant confrontations with priests or other nuns more bound to tradition.

One young nun recalled substituting for the layman who failed to show up to read from the Scriptures during one early Mass. Suddenly, the priest celebrating the Mass stalked up and literally shouldered her aside, in front of her entire class of praying schoolgirls. The nun walked out of the church.

“There’s a very narrow view of the world as seen from a balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square,” Sister Sheila said.

Feminist nuns, she said, “show people there are other people within the church who care and are trying to work for change. I suppose you can be like a beacon, and the light can attract, and the warmth can attract.”

For some lifelong Catholics like Ann Nolan, feminism is the only thing still keeping her in the church. “I want to remain in if only to make noise,” the Dublin mother of three said. “I’m hanging on to the edge. I don’t feel a part of the church. The language upsets me. I don’t feel they’re talking to me.”

She joined the Christian Feminist Movement--a network of groups--to help lobby for changes in the church, like altar girls and female Eucharistic ministers. The feminists also reword prayers and liturgical forms to eliminate sexism. They’ve been successful in some parishes, brushed aside in others.

They also question such articles of Catholic faith as the virgin birth. “I can’t even imagine taking my religion as a package deal,” Nolan said. “It’s an insult to my intelligence.”

Sister Sheila is also openly skeptical. She challenges the popular image of Mary “as a white statue wrapped in blue cloth, the passive virgin queen. If I woke up in the morning and they said there was no Immaculate Conception, I don’t think my Catholicism would die a sudden death.”

The feminist nuns tend to view the ordination of women as a moot point, arguing that the structure of the church must change, not just the gender of those wearing the white collar.

Sister Claire has no desire to be ordained, but she is irate over the day-to-day discrimination that nuns suffer in the church. Nuns are not paid for their work in the secular world, she points out, though priests may collect a stipend. One religious radio show informed her that only priests, not nuns, were offered honorariums for being interviewed.

Such an attitude of male superiority inevitably spills over from the church into society, she said. “I know of women who have been told in confession to return money they’ve taken from their husbands’ pockets to pay the grocer,” she said.

Although they feel torn between religion and feminism on the issue of abortion, the nuns are particularly outspoken about contraception and divorce, which remains illegal.

“Even though I’ve taught adolescents all my life,” said Sister Claire, “I get so mad at women going around asking permission (from priests) to use contraceptives. Why put it on him? Follow your conscience.”

Sister Sheila took it further, when asked what she would have done had the 14-year-old rape victim known as “X” sought her advice. First, the nun said, she would have told the girl that she might not be the best counselor, given her religious station and personal opposition to abortion.

“But I would help get her access to information,” Sister Sheila said. The statement may seem innocent enough, but in Ireland, it is a vow to break the law, since it is illegal to even provide anyone with information about obtaining an abortion.

The law is so strictly enforced that one British newspaper carrying an advertisement for a women’s clinic whose services included abortion recently was pulled from the shelves of Irish newsstands. The book “Our Bodies, Ourselves” is available only under the counter at bookstores because it contains forbidden information about abortion counseling services.

“I believe people will do what they want to do ultimately,” Sister Sheila said. “All of these issues aren’t black and white, and there aren’t black and white answers. You have to be as straight as you can.”

Irene Irish, a feminist schoolteacher in Wexford, left the church out of anger and frustration because she “can’t bear the rigid structures.”

“Who are these celibates to tell me what to do with my body?” she demanded. “In Ireland, there are lots of priests and nuns willing to talk this way, ironically, but ordinary Catholics view you with deep suspicion.

“I have met nuns (who are) not going to Mass anymore,” she said. “They’re very subversive.”

Irish formed a feminist spirituality group five years ago, and the women read “a lot of theology, but from a feminist perspective.”

“A lot of women who were political five or 10 years ago are now spiritual,” she said. “It’s the new buzzword.”