According to this morning's Seattle Times

The Vatican orthodoxy watchdog announced Wednesday a full-scale overhaul of the largest umbrella group for nuns in the United States, accusing the group of taking positions that undermine Roman Catholic teaching on the priesthood and homosexuality while promoting "certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith."

Would the Catholic Church ever consider chartering nuns to investigate and discipline priests and bishops for taking positions that also undermine Roman Catholic teachings on the priesthood and homosexuality while also promoting "certain misogynist and/or pedophilic themes incompatible with Catholic faith?"

No. They wouldn't because regardless of the merits the optics of giving an exclusive-to-women enterprise complete dominion over an exclusive-to-men one would seem arbitrary, capricious, unfair, punitive, and wrong. And probably sexist.

So why on this great blue marble does the Catholic Church think it's a good idea to give a skutload of men complete dominion over an order they themselves have restricted entirely to women?

Yes, yes, I'm aware that according to the Bishop's doctrines raping a woman or sodomizing a child is a repentable venal sin whereas saving a pregnant woman's life is an unrepentable mortal one. And so as a matter of degree one could accept the notion that reviewing the policies of nuns would be more in order than a similar review of policies for priests. (I'm not saying I'd rank them the same, just that on paper you could see differences in priority.)

And yes, I'm aware that since homosexuality in both sexes are considered wrong it could be completely coincidental that the Bishops chose first to review an order of nuns before a corresponding review of an order of priests. (I'm not saying I'd rank them the same, just that again on paper I could see how you might tackle one before tackling the other.)

What I don't get, however, is the batshit insane optics of appointing an all-male team to...

oversee the overhaul of [an organization of priests], which will include rewriting the group's statutes, reviewing all its plans and programs — including approving speakers — and ensuring the organization properly follows Catholic prayer and ritual.

How about, oh, maybe, if you think an overhaul is really needed, for the Church to appoint a team of priests and nuns to do the job?

I'm...

I'm trying to be fair here, and I'm obviously trying to limit the scope of my objections to a purely procedural level, but since it would stick in my craw if the Church appointed only nuns to crack down, hard, on American priests it similarly sticks in my craw that they're appointing only priests to crack down hard on nuns.