Sunday, 27 July
10.10pm

In part two of our special on the Roman Catholic Church in Australia, Geraldine Doogue examines the experience of women in the church. Women outnumber men in the Catholic Church, but rarely are their voices heard. Forty years after the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, the church still denies women positions of authority, leadership and power. In this episode we meet four women grappling with what it means to be Catholic in the 21st century.

The south-east Queensland town of Jandowae has been without a resident priest for 10 years. Today Catholic nun Sister Mary Cleary leads the parish in every way bar one - she can't say mass. She's now questioning the limitations placed upon her ministry. In Sydney we meet Maree Kennedy, a committed Catholic who has fallen out with her parish priest over the patriarchal language of the mass.

Noelene Bangel also fell out with the Church, over authority and priestly power. Natalie L'Hillier, a young chaplain at Lourdes Hill College in Brisbane, is trying to bring a female understanding of Catholicism to her students. While all remain loyal to the Church, these women are challenging it in very different ways.