"To have a situation in which we recognize the full equality of women changes everything,” says Union Theological Seminary president Serene Jones.

“There is a whole historical world of women who have risen as leaders in religious communities because they were called to do it, not because someone said they could,” according to the first woman president of Union Theological Seminary.

Activist groups should bring about a greater awareness of worker rights issues and add a moral voice to global economic matters, says David Schilling of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility.

“I think you could compare it to a hostile takeover,” says reporter, author, and Vatican observer David Gibson. Might the Leadership Conference of Women Religious simply disband and reorganize on its own?

"As a parish nurse one of the greatest things we do is be present and just listen," says Diane Tieman of Queen of the Rosary Roman Catholic Church in suburban Chicago.

"We live by the work of our hands and also have some left for helping out those who are maybe less fortunate," says the abbess of St. Mary's, Ireland's only Cistercian monastery for women.

“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.

"Rick Santorum is a very particular kind of Catholic...A lot of Catholics don’t see themselves in him, and a lot of people actually don’t even know that he’s Catholic. Most people assume he’s an evangelical," says Religion News Service editor in chief Kevin Eckstrom.

In the Orthodox Christian tradition fasting is not about deprivation, says Catherine Mandell, author of "When You Fast: Recipes for Lenten Seasons."

"It’s as though you take all of your nightmares about plague or destruction or war or torture or natural catastrophe, and you just wrap it into a huge single nightmare, and you get the Book of Revelation," says this historian and Princeton professor of religion.