Attacking the Church

Catholics angry as church puts female ordination on par with sex abuse

Uh-oh. The liberal press is having a field day gain. One just has to read the headlines to get
an idea where the rest of the article spins. Just who are those 'Catholics' mentioned in the article who are
angry?

Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, called the document "one of the most insulting and misogynistic pronouncements that the Vatican has made for a very long time.

Vivienne Hayes, the chief executive of the Women's Resource Centre, said the decision to raise women's ordination to the level of a serious crime was "appalling".

Ceri Goddard, chief executive of the Fawcett Society, said: "We are sure that the vast majority of the general public will share in our abject horror at the Vatican's decision to categorise the ordination of women as an 'offence' in the same category as paedophilia – deemed to be one of the 'gravest offences a priest can commit'.

Barbara Doris of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (Snap) said it was tackling the issue the wrong way round. "Defrocking a predator, by definition, is too late," she said. "Severe harm has already been done.".

Oh you mean those 'Catholics'. I see.

Now let's see what the Vatican Document really says.

Modifications made in the Normae de gravioribus delictis

Norms

Delicta Graviora

"VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Vatican has revised its procedures for handling priestly sex abuse cases, streamlining disciplinary measures, extending the statute of limitations and defining child pornography as an act of sexual abuse of a minor.

Vatican officials said the changes allow the church to deal with such abuse more rapidly and effectively, often through dismissal of the offending cleric from the priesthood.

As expected, the Vatican also updated its list of the "more grave crimes" against church law, called "delicta graviora," including for the first time the "attempted sacred ordination of a woman." In such an act, it said, the cleric and the woman involved are automatically excommunicated, and the cleric can also be dismissed from the priesthood.

Vatican officials emphasized that simply because women's ordination was treated in the same document as priestly sex abuse did not mean the two acts were somehow equivalent in the eyes of the church.

"There are two types of 'delicta graviora': those concerning the celebration of the sacraments, and those concerning morals. The two types are essentially different and their gravity is on different levels," said Msgr. Charles Scicluna, an official of the Vatican's doctrinal congregation.

Sexual abuse of a minor by a priest was added to the classification of "delicta graviora" in 2001, and at that time the Vatican established norms to govern the handling of such cases, which were reserved to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The norms affect how church law treats sex abuse cases; civil law deals with the crime separately.

The latest revisions, approved by Pope Benedict XVI May 21 and released July 15, for the most part codify practices that have been implemented through special permissions granted over the last nine years and make them part of universal law.

The Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, said publication of the revisions "makes a great contribution to the clarity and certainty of law in this field, a field in which the church is today strongly committed to proceeding with rigor and transparency."

The norms on sexual abuse of minors by priests now stipulate:

-- The church law's statute of limitations on accusations of sexual abuse has been extended, from 10 years after the alleged victim's 18th birthday to 20 years. For several years, Vatican officials have been routinely granting exceptions to the 10-year statute of limitations. Exceptions to the 20-year limit will be possible, too, but the Vatican rejected a suggestion to do away with the statute of limitations altogether, sources said...

etc, etc...

So there. At any rate, attempted ordination of women is already covered in canon law. Canons #1024, 1381-84. It merits latae sententiae - automatic excommunication. 'Attempted ordination' is a proper word, because any action of women ordination is just that: an attempt.

Fr Z, again, is right on the button:

...Another thing you will perhaps will see in the press, secular and Catholic, are criticisms of the list of crimes. They may complain that, for example, trying to ordain a woman is not nearly as horrible as abusing a minor and it shouldn’t simply be lumped in with other sins, as if they all did they same damage. In a sense, they are right, especially from the perspective of the victim of abuse. But they are wrong from another perspective. Critics might assert that pouring the Precious Blood down the sink or selling a Host or pretending to ordain a woman is a "victimless" crime, bad to be sure but really not that bad. They are wrong. There are still victims: the whole Church suffers because all the crimes involved attack who and what the Church is.

The crimes do belong together when seen in the correct perspective. All of the crimes here involve sacred things...

...and...

It is patently false that the Church didn’t see the abuse of children as a crime.

It must also be remembered that the Church regards abuse of children as a grave sin, and a heinous crime for that matter. As such, it places the unrepentant offender in a state of mortal sin, having automatically severed his communion with the Body of Christ. So is attempted ordination of women. In this sense Fr Z is right: they all involve attacking the Church. Sadly, attacking the Church seems to be a trendy pastime, in oh so many ways.
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