Author to Leave Convent Over Book

A distinguished British Roman Catholic nun and theologian said Wednesday that she was leaving her religious order because of antagonism by the Vatican over a book she wrote on women’s place within the church.

Sister Lavinia Byrne, 52, a teacher at Cambridge Theological Federation and a regular contributor to religious broadcasts, will leave the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary after 35 years.

“I can’t go on functioning as I have been with one hand tied behind my back, as I have for the last two years,” she told BBC radio. “It is a step that I take very reluctantly.”

The problem is “how the church deals with the issue of dissent,” she said, adding, “I feel bullied.”

Her book “Woman at the Altar,” which set out arguments for women priests, was published in 1993--a year after the Church of England ordained women and when the issue was being openly debated in the Catholic Church.

“Subsequently . . . the Vatican decided to act against that book and in a North American monastic community they asked the publisher to warehouse it or burn it,” she said.