An Italian priest has a plan for getting more exposure for nuns in the church. He’s going to organize an online beauty pageant….and run them around in bikinis maybe?

The pageant “Miss Sister 2008″ is designed to give more visibility within the Catholic Church to the sisters and to fight the stereotype that all nuns are old and frumpy. They aren’t?

The priest said, “Nuns are a bit excluded, they are a bit marginalized in ecclesiastical life.”

Well, duh? Isn’t that what nuns do/are?

The priest is a theologian and schoolteacher and stretcher of Biblical values, if you ask me.

“We are not going to parade nuns in bathing suits,” the priest said. “But being ugly is not a requirement for becoming a nun. External beauty is gift from God, and we mustn’t hide it.”

The priest said it was the nuns he prays with regularly (anything else?) that suggested the idea. I don’t believe this part. I can’t imagine any woman coming up with the idea of “How about parading us about to see if we can get more people interested in what we are doing?”

So, is there a Bible verse we can lean on?

How about -

Genesis 29:17 (New International Version)

Leah had weak eyes, but Rachel was lovely in form, and beautiful.

Somebody noticed Rachel, eh?

Oh, but then there is -

1 Samuel 16:7 (New International Version)

But the LORD said to Samuel, “The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”

What’s a theologian to do?