The rebel nuns are gathered in St. Louis to figure out a way to reason with their male bosses. That being the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Rome. The Vatican. The Pope, for God’s sake.

The Catholic hierarchy doesn’t appear ready to negotiate. They want the nuns to stop talking about social issues like war and poverty and child hunger. And get with the guys who are going after birth control and abortion.

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which represents 80 percent of the nuns who work for the Catholic Church, came under attack this spring by the Conference of Catholic Bishops, the new best friend of the religious right and anti choice and anti-women politicians.

The big boys of the church denounced the nuns for talking too much about things like same sex marriage, supporting health care reform and advocating more women in church leadership roles.  They called them radical feminists which sometimes will get timid women to clam up, but name-calling didn’t muzzle the nuns.

The nuns felt they were being progressive. The church said they preferred conservative.

The nuns said the church itself had long encouraged religious women to become educated thinkers. Back in the 1960s the nuns began expanding their traditional roles, getting advance degrees and entering the professions. They even started dressing different.

Well, all American women can relate to that.

It seems we have a match. A patriarchal church and a patriarchal country are both trying their last desperate best to control women who’ve gone too far. Some do it through birth control. Some through thought control.

It’s like Jane Fonda told Salon, the online magazine, about the Republican war on women. “They’re defending the patriarchy, which is a wounded beast. And wounded beasts are always dangerous.”

Not only have the nuns refused to cool it, they openly defied their critics. They held news conferences and went on record as being at odds with their church. Instead of waiting for big money to take out big TV ads they piled into a big bus and took themselves and their message across the country.

If some of the guys in charge would look around, they might see that these uppity nuns are really good for business. According to a Pew study, American Catholics think a lot more of the work of nuns than the Pope.

Even if you’re not Catholic you know the real good that nuns do. They’re the ones downtown at the Catholic Worker handing out bread and peaches to hungry people.

Sister Pat Farrell, the outgoing president of the nuns association and an Iowa Franciscan nun, has said that the sisters’ works “are very much pro-life. We would question, however, any policy that is more pro-fetus than actually pro-life. If the rights of the unborn trump all of the rights of all of those who are already born, that is a distortion, too.”

The nuns were reminded that the Vatican regards questioning as defiance and defiance is not healthy for the church. And doesn’t that just sound like some religious right politicians who are weeping over health plans that have to offer birth control as the death of religious freedom? All these guys seem to have the same problem. They want to run a church and a country like they did in the good old days. But modern women just keep getting in the way.

Well, too bad.

The wickedly funny Caitlin Moran, a British columnist and feminist, who wrote a book called How to Be a Woman said feminism taught women how to speak up. She says, “Without feminism you wouldn’t be allowed to have a debate. You’d be too busy giving birth on the kitchen floor biting down on a wooden spoon so as to not disturb the men’s card game.”

It’s not exactly nun humor but any thinking sister gets it.

I’d like to speak for the grandma camp, the people some fear will be doomed if the president and health reformers have their way. Which grandmas are they trying to scare? Are the fear-mongers so out of the loop they don’t know anything about today’s grandmothers? Grandmas have come a long way since the old Saturday Evening Post Norman Rockwell image, although despite their sweet smiles and homey aprons, I doubt even they would have let anyone push them around.

The modern day grandmas I know, including myself, do not scare easily. President Obama understands the value of grandmas. In dispelling this notion about death panels he spoke of his own grandmother who helped raise him. Does anyone really think that he became president so he could pull the plug on grandmas?

Remember too, that he’s got a grandmother at home right now, his mother-in-law, Marian Robinson, who put her career on hold to help run the household so Barack and Michelle can do their jobs. You think this man is going to mess with grandmas?

The grandmothers I know are much more into living than dying. They tango dance, move to Mexico to teach English, go sea kayaking and run marathons, not to mention their own businesses. And, like grandmas always have, they find time to help raise their kids’ kids.

They have lived their lives as independent take-charge women, but they are also realists and know they won’t live forever. They’re not squeamish about discussing end-of-life decisions. They don’t worry about someone pulling the plug. Rather, they worry about someone some day putting in the plug when there’s no earthly reason to keep them going.

As for advance health directives or living wills, which some have twisted into a death panel, many grandmas are already doing it for themselves.

We realized long before the cruel circus that gathered around Terry Schiavo back in the George W. years that you don’t want religion, politics or family grandstanding their beliefs if you become a long-gone human in a vegetative body. You want your desires written down.

Our family doctor talked to my husband and me about filling out a durable power of attorney for health care the same time she urged us to get a colonoscopy. She didn’t insist on either but suggested that after age 50, both are unwise to ignore.

I am grateful for the part in my directive that says I intend to control my own medical care and if I can’t, it will be up to those who love me most and who understand my wishes. It states that I prefer to die at home and please spare me any futile medical treatment.

Some people would choose a different way. But for me having an end of life understanding feels empowering, like signing the organ donation form so that if I get hit by a bus and there’s anything left the hospital can give my cornea or kidneys to someone who can use them.

I was relieved when the president finally talked back to the ghouls and said their death panel scare tactic was “simply dishonest.” If that’s the best argument they have they’re pitching to the wrong crowd. You can’t pull the pashmina over our eyes.

Grandmas are too tough to be victimized and too busy to be targets. Do you think we spend every morning at the gym and popping fish oil to let someone off us at their convenience? Besides, trying to scare a population of aging boomers, on the cusp of Medicare, who will remain the loudest and most powerful generation for years to come, is not only insulting but politically stupid.

And one more bit of grandmotherly advice. If you look ugly and tell lies and keep interrupting with your tantrums you’re going to end up on YouTube and your face will freeze like that.