Your school must have been more progressive than mine, then. The argument was still ongoing in the 70s and 80s, so if you went through school during that era it could have gone either way.
A Catholic school, progressive? LOL.
Nuns were the original empowered women, you know. That was one thing the church offered for hundreds of years: if you don't want to be what society tells you have to be, you could always join the church and be a priest/monk/nun instead.
But yeah, I get what you're saying. I don't have any explanation for you, other than he/she was what I was taught in the 80s in Oklahoma public schools.