CAROL has been in a relationship 25 years with a priest. The Catholic Church knows nothing of it. Nor is it its business, retorts Carol roundly.

"I don't lie, I just don't tell anyone. But it's not second best. There are a lot of women in the same situation. We enjoy what we have when we have it, says Carol (not her real name.)

Carol has never talked public about her relationship but the coverage of the case of Bishop Roderick Wright has incensed her, and finally prompted her to break 25 years of silence.

"I know at least half-a-dozen women who have been in a similar situation. Some of the priests behave very irresponsibly, and they are then backed up by the church which puts all the blame n the Scarlet Woman. I know one priest who was having affairs with four women at the same time. The church covers up for these men. It's because of the kind of education they get in seminaries. There are no women around and they don't learn how to relate to women decently."

Carol believes the issue is not sex but about the men's dishonourable behaviour, and how the church lets them off the hook.

"These are not scarlet women, they often go to priests for help when they are very vulnerable. These men are abusing them and failing to respect the individual. It's outrageous.

"I know two or three monsignors in my area who are in relationships. They are bloody good at covering it up. Yet they were the first to criticise a priest who left the priesthood because of a relationship with a friend of mine. It's all so hypocritical.

"My case is completely different. We were both adults and it was only 15-20 years ago that we began our sexual relationship after a long friendship. He works abroad so we see each other sporadically. I don't want him to leave the priesthood, he's good at his job and I'm never going to be a cap-in-hand sort of wife. Besides I've seen other relationships with priests who've left the priesthood which later break up."

The couple spend holidays together when he is in the country - recently they managed six weeks while he was on sabbatical. His family know, and without saying anything, have implicitly accepted the relationship. Some of her friends know.

"If the Church knew about our relationship they would drop dead, he's a very traditional sort of Catholic and his feelings for me came as a complete surprise to him. We didn't want to rock the boat - we couldn't see the point.

But I would like to speak out because I recognise the rights of women in the Church and I think the all-male hierarchy is very anti-women, but I can't, I would destroy something very special with my friend, and it would put him in an impossible position."

In the wake of the revelations his week about Bishop Wright's resignation and 15-year-old son, a string of women have come forward to describe their relationships with priests. Few are as happy as that of Carol. The experience of betrayal and false promises so movingly recounted by Joanna Whibley is not a one-off.

"There's an enormous difference between those women in an adult, equal relationship and those in an abusive power relationship,"said Ms Lala Winkley of the Catholic Women's Network, who knows of at least 10 women in relationships with priests. "These men behave quite despicably. They go over the line in comforting women and the women then get doubly hurt. The priest makes promises about leaving the priesthood, and the women live in hope year after year. They are usually dumped in the end.

It is the alleged connivance of the hierarchy in this emotional abuse and irresponsibility towards the women and children which infuriates Seven Eleven, a support group for women having relationships with Catholic priests. When affairs are discovered by the hierarchy, priests are often moved to another parish, forcibly separating the couple, and in the new parish he goes on to develop a new relationship.

"There are hundreds of women who are in relationships with priests," says Anne Edwards (her name has been changed) who is herself in an "on-off relationship" with a priest, and who set up Seven Eleven in 1993.

"I have spoken to many women, and some have horrendous stories to tell. I only know of one woman who was well supported by her diocese when the relationship became known. In the vast majority of cases the reaction has been negative and cruel - some women have been ridiculed when they went to their bishops for help."

Many of the relationships of which Ms Edwards gets to hear are "abusive", where the priest is taking advantage of his role as a counsellor and of the vulnerability of the women, who are often seeking help because of a personal crisis.

Many priests are completely ill-equipped to deal with women. They might be 40 or 50 but emotionally, they're adolescents. I know of women who were touched or kissed by priests when they went to them for help. If doctors or social workers abused their position in this way, there would be recourse to some kind of body and tribunal, but there's no channel at all to make these kind of complaints in the Catholic Church."

Despite Cardinal Basil Home's insistence on Thursday that the church had a responsibility towards the women and children involved in these illicit relationships, the arrangements for pastoral or financial support vary enormously from diocese to diocese. A woman in Birmingham who had a child by a priest, claims he has given £15 a week out of his own income but the diocese has given gives nothing. Ms Edwards says that many priests are unable or unwilling to provide money a priest's salary can be as low as £2,500 and rarely exceeds £5,000.

In other cases, particularly with religious orders, considerable efforts are sometimes made. One nun involved with a priest was given free housing and an income to ensure that she didn't reveal her relationship while her partner was sent abroad.

What is more straightforward is how the church deals with the priest involved in the affair. Canon law is clear that a priest who refuses to give up the relationship must be suspended by Many women feel that ultimately the church is primarily motivated by the desire to hush up scandal.

More problematic to the church are the priests who decide they want to give up the priesthood and fulfil their responsibilities to the woman and, possibly, children. One of the first things Pope John Paul II did on becoming pontiff was to tighten the procedures for those wanting to be laicised.

Now you have virtually to prove you should never have been ordained in the first place. It can take as long as six years. The result is that men are left in limbo, and the church refuses to recognise their subsequent marriages.

"The problem is that if clergy do want to leave, they find the door shut in their faces - they can't," says Mr Michael Walsh, a former priest and Catholic commentator. "It was much easier when I was a priest. Now laicisation is very slow and sometimes you can't get it at all. The effect has been to drive it all underground," he says.

It seems that it is not breaking the celibacy vow which angers Catholics, but the irresponsibility of a man who can father and then ignore a child for 15 years and the false promises which have clearly caused Joanna Whibley so much suffering.

The historic change which is being curiously assisted by the scandal of individual cases such as that of Bishop Wright is an enormous shift of power within the church from the ordained priesthood to the laity. For 1,500 years priests have been a caste set completely apart from the laity; celibacy was the most obvious sign of their superiority.

Mr John Challenor of Catholics for a Changing Church believes the consequences could be revolutionary. "All these issues of clerical misdemeanours will help destroy the credibility of the structures. The hierarchy is disintegrating like an old house and all the rats are running out."