"This is not just about the Vatican versus the nuns," says Sister Maureen Fiedler. "This really is about the future of how we interpret the message of the Second Vatican Council."

How close are US Catholic ties to the Vatican going to be in the future? “That’s a question that is definitely up for grabs in this particularly dispute.”

"What are legitimate changes...and what are changes that are really more driven by the secular culture and its values?"

What does it mean to be in the modern world? “Renewal and adaptation—that’s where all of the controversy comes.”

“One of the great gifts of Vatican II was that it sent us back to study what the Gospels were saying.”

"What is a woman religious? If we can come to some clarity as to what a woman religious is in the life of a church, then we can understand the relationships of women religious to the church."

"We empower national Masai to do the ministry. I didn’t start any of these churches. I’m not the leader of any of these churches. But we’ve trained these people so that they could move out and do it," says Gary Woods, a missionary who has been preaching in Africa for 25 years.

“She had to have been the least naïve nun that I can think of,” says Kathryn Wat, curator of an exhibition of prints by graphic artist Sister Corita Kent (1918-1986) at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

“What you are seeing is not quite a civil war, but kind of a civil skirmish within the US church about what it means to be Catholic.”

It is a painful rite of passage for girls in many African and Middle Eastern countries. But in Senegal there has been a remarkably successful campaign to change people's attitudes towards female circumcision in an effort to eliminate the practice altogether.