Vatican equates ordaining women with raping children

[Einzige]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/world ... kNwPeHvRMQ

The Vatican issued revisions to its internal laws on Thursday making it easier to discipline sex-abuser priests, but caused confusion by also stating that ordaining women as priests was as grave an offense as pedophilia.
Related

Times Topic: Roman Catholic Church Sex Abuse Cases
The decision to link the issues appears to reflect the determination of embattled Vatican leaders to resist any suggestion that pedophilia within the priesthood can be addressed by ending the celibacy requirement or by allowing women to become priests.

The overall document codified existing procedures that allow the Vatican to try priests accused of child sexual abuse using faster juridical procedures rather than full ecclesiastical trials. The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the changes showed the church’s commitment to tackling child sexual abuse with “rigor and transparency.”

Those measures fell short of the hopes of many advocates for victims of priestly abuse, who dismissed them as “tweaking” rather than a bold overhaul. The new rules do not, for example, hold bishops accountable for abuse by priests on their watch, nor do they require them to report sexual abuse to civil authorities — though less formal “guidelines” issued earlier this year encourage reporting if local law compels it.

But what astonished many Catholics was the inclusion of the attempt to ordain women in a list of the “more grave delicts,” or offenses, which included pedophilia, as well as heresy, apostasy and schism. The issue, some critics said, was less the ordination of women, which is not discussed seriously inside the church hierarchy, but the Vatican’s suggestion that pedophilia is a comparable crime in a document billed a response to the sexual abuse crisis.

“It is very irritating that they put the increased severity in punishment for abuse and women’s ordination at the same level,” said Christian Weisner, the spokesman for “We Are Church,” a liberal Catholic reform movement founded in 1996 in response to a high-profile sexual abuse case in Austria. “It tells us that the church still understands itself as an environment dominated by men.”

Absurd. Where do they get off spouting such nonsense?

[FSTargetDrone]

Why so surprised? The Church has a dim view of women in general.

[ShadowDragon8685]

What the fuck?

Did Darth Pope finally concede that something had to be done about the kiddie-porking, but in order to balance the scales and meet his douchebag quota, he had to take a diarrhea all over women or something?



There's times I think excessive religiosity should be considered a mental disease or defect. I know, I know, that's not very PC to say, but this is just batshit. It's like with the right wing, you can't lampoon them because it's impossible to determine what's satire and what's real without checking the source.

[General Zod]

You know, considering that Paul, one of the Catholic Church's most revered figures, was a raving misogynist, this should come as no surprise to anyone.

[Flagg]

If the church equates ordaining women with raping children does that mean they're for it?

[ShadowDragon8685]

If the church equates ordaining women with raping children does that mean they're for it?

Not quite. See, they were never for child rape...

They were simply staunchly against any kinds of consequences or exposure whatsoever towards those that did it.

[Simon_Jester]

So... does that mean they're against punishing anyone who ordains women without the Vatican's support? Way to institute a back-handed reform!

[ShadowDragon8685]

So... does that mean they're against punishing anyone who ordains women without the Vatican's support? Way to institute a back-handed reform!

That would be the logical conclusion, but given the way they treat the children who've been raped they'll just offload all their vileness onto the poor priestess.

Plus, their boss man has the Sweet Hat of Cognitive Dissonance +5 and the Bitchin' Raiment of Hypocritical Decision Making, so they'd have no problem coming down like the Wrath of God (you see what I did thar?) on the dumbfuck stupid enough to try and ordain a woman without the Vatican's support.

[FSTargetDrone]

It speaks to the strength of personal faith/conviction that any woman who sees herself as equal to a man would want anything to do with the Church. How many women are in any kind of real positions of power? The only woman held to any regard by the Church seems to be Mary, the mother of their god. Yes, a few saints and that charlatan Mother Teresa, but still.

I'll never forget how the Catholic grade school I attended had all of the nuns (about 10 or so at any one time) crammed into an old, drafty and non-air-conditioned building on the school grounds. The nuns did all of their own shopping, cooking and cleaning. Meanwhile, the priests (3 or 4 at the most during my 8 years there) lived in a larger, more comfortable rectory building with a cook and housekeeper (who lived offsite). The nuns shared several cars, while each priest had his own. I saw it all over the years, having spent a fair amount of time in each of those buildings.

Remember, oath of poverty is taken by priests and nuns alike.

Today, there is not a single nun teaching at my old grade school. I hope it stays that way.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Why so surprised? The Church has a dim view of women in general.

We are afterall talking about the church that views a poor woman who cannot even afford to give birth to a child having an abortion as more evil than a priest raping 200 deaf children.

Is anyone really shocked?

[Siege]

I'm not entirely sure why anyone is surprised, or why this particular issue is singled out from the revised Normae de Gravioribus Delictis. That particular document contains a whole bunch of silliness, none of which is new, and all of which only makes sense as long as you accept that the teachings of the Church are divinely inspired etc.

Does it say that there's a sanction on "attempts to confer sacred ordination on a woman"? Yes it does, in Art. 5. But just a bit earlier, in Art. 3 (which deals with "more grave delicts against the sanctity of the most Holy Sacrifice and Sacrament of the Eucharist"), it's written that the "taking or retaining for a sacrilegious purpose or the throwing away of the consecrated [Eucharist]" is also serious business that nets the doer of the dastardly deed a latae sententiae excommunication.

Now, by my reckoning, if writing about various delicts under different headers but in a single document is to "equate" all of them, you'd think that equating paedophilia with the throwing away of a cracker would be a far more severe indictment of the Church. Of course, chances are people would just sorta laugh at the latter, whereas they can apparently still muster outrage when the Church enforces the "no women priests" doctrine it's held since what amounts to the dawn of time, and which was reinforced time and again by pope after pope.

EDIT: For those who are interested, Catholic Culture has published a translation of the text which can be read here; the original Latin version published by the Vatican can be found here (and if nothing else, the fact that the RC Church still writes all its laws and important documents in Latin should tell you something about their mindset).

[Molyneux]

Note that the Catholic Church STILL does not say word one about actually reporting child molesters TO THE POLICE.
I've said it before, and it makes more sense to me all the time: If you are a Catholic and not mad as hell, you're simply not paying attention.

[Simon_Jester]

Now, by my reckoning, if writing about various delicts under different headers but in a single document is to "equate" all of them, you'd think that equating paedophilia with the throwing away of a cracker would be a far more severe indictment of the Church. Of course, chances are people would just sorta laugh at the latter, whereas they can apparently still muster outrage when the Church enforces the "no women priests" doctrine it's held since what amounts to the dawn of time, and which was reinforced time and again by pope after pope.

The reason I see for the outrage is that making a ceremonial obsession out of crackers is harmless, whereas pedophilia and systematic discrimination against women are not.

[FSTargetDrone]

The reason I see for the outrage is that making a ceremonial obsession out of crackers is harmless, whereas pedophilia and systematic discrimination against women are not.

Not to tangent-fy this, but the thing is, it is most definitely not ceremonial obsession. Well, it may be obsessive, but in any case, the Church actually believes and teaches that at the moment the wine and bread (cracker--HA! ) is consecrated by the priest, those objects actually become the physical blood and body of Christ. Not symbolically. Not a physical proxy of some sort. An act of "transubstantiation" occurs and this means that everyone who eats the bread and drinks the wine is actually consuming real and physical blood and flesh. That's what they believe. Of course, this immediately leads to the obvious question of whether or not the people consuming this stuff are engaging in cannibalism, but I have never seen a satisfactory answer to that.

So when you have a religious organization that believes in and teaches that sort of magical nonsense, everything else seems rather tame.

[Themightytom]

This is particularly outrageous because there's no way the following couldn't have occurred to them.

If, rather than specifically target ordination of women, they instead characterized "Unauthorized ordination" I doubt anyone would have cared. They could have basically been saying "look we don't want every Tom Dick and Mary ordaining themselves in their garage. ordination is a sacrament delivered by a priest only. An equivalent would be choir director performing a wedding in the church.

Instead they were maliciously specific. one of my coworkers is a nun who is particularly rebellious. She is constantly in the Bishops face over issues like ordaining women, child molestation, permitting the use of condoms, intolerance towards gays (She's gay) etc. She has told me in the past there is an underground movement to "pre-ordain" women priests so that if the holy Father were to ever see the necessity of change, there would be a population standing by. This is seen as an internal necessity given the scarcity of priests especially in the US. She said there were dozens in our state alone, suggesting that either her numbers are accurate and the article's are not, or that there is the perception of a larger movement.

Both are a threat to papal authority. We had some old school nuns coming around last year in full Nunwear(TM) and when I say "old school" I mean, my coworker is mid fifties, these ladies were pushing eighty plus. The church basically had an internal audit off its own nuns to make sure they were compliant with church doctrine, because for the most part, they are not. Anyone on the ground can see clearly the leadership needs to make changes for practical purposes, one of which is stop with the men only priests. its killing recruitment and cuts your potential pool by half. The church has been trying to skate by in recent years by targeting fathers with grown children and deceased wives as potential priests. that preserves tradition as well as provides new cannon fodderpriests. Its also a little harder to nail a guy as a pedophile when his adult son is in the front row.

Its like the pope resents being called to the carpet because his priests are dicking around, and has decided to invoke sin to quell dissent. i feel like I should start grabbing up copies of the catechism, they might be collector's items before long.

[Siege]

The reason I see for the outrage is that making a ceremonial obsession out of crackers is harmless, whereas pedophilia and systematic discrimination against women are not.

The thing is, exactly the same obsession leads to all of this. The RC Church holds that its doctrines - from the sacrament of the Eucharist to barring female ordination and everything else - are divinely inspired. Either you accept the whole religious package deal, or it's all a bunch of magical nonsense, as FSTargetDrone said. It's really no good to obsess over the so-manieth papal confirmation that no, women can't be priests, when the actual root of the problem is that the Church still gets away with claiming it is the ultimate authority on all kinds of ridiculous topics by virtue of the divine hotline -- I mean 'holy spirit'.

[Simon_Jester]

The thing is, exactly the same obsession leads to all of this. The RC Church holds that its doctrines - from the sacrament of the Eucharist to barring female ordination and everything else - are divinely inspired. Either you accept the whole religious package deal, or it's all a bunch of magical nonsense, as FSTargetDrone said. It's really no good to obsess over the so-manieth papal confirmation that no, women can't be priests, when the actual root of the problem is that the Church still gets away with claiming it is the ultimate authority on all kinds of ridiculous topics by virtue of the divine hotline -- I mean 'holy spirit'.

I can accept, from a theological standpoint, the idea that God orders you to do silly things, such as wear a ridiculous hat or refrain from eating cheeseburgers. Within the context of religious faith, there's a valid argument there: the silly activity is a sort of group bonding ritual, designed to reinforce your identity as a member of the religion and to make sure you take certain rituals seriously. It's silly, but I can coexist with silly.

I do not accept this argument when it is applied to active harm. If you claim that God is ordering you do to harmful and unjust things, or that you have a divine mandate to do as you please and then proceed to do harmful and unjust things... At that point, you've effectively waived your claim to divine authority and destroyed your own credentials in my eyes.

Now, attacking the Vatican's claim to divine inspiration seems like a perfectly reasonable place to start to me. But I'm not going to do it on the grounds that they fence the Eucharist with silly constraints, because that's harmless.

The reason I see for the outrage is that making a ceremonial obsession out of crackers is harmless, whereas pedophilia and systematic discrimination against women are not.

Not to tangent-fy this, but the thing is, it is most definitely not ceremonial obsession.

It's an obsession. It involves ceremony. Ceremonial obsession.

The cause for the obsession is of course that they actually believe in transubstantiation, and will cry "HERESY!" at anyone who compromises on the doctrine. But it's still what I'd call a ceremonial obsession: making a fetish* out of ritual purity.

The catch is that such a policy, applied to chunks of bread, is pretty much harmless. No one cares about a Catholic policy of punishing people for throwing away Eucharist bread so much, because it's just one more kind of mystical hocus-pocus in a world full of them. People do care about priests sodomizing children, and (to a lesser extent) about the rabid sexism shown by the Church's refusal to take women seriously. Because in those cases, real people are harmed (to varying degrees).

I have a high tolerance for harmless magical nonsense, and a low one for harmful magical nonsense.

*In the original sense...

[FSTargetDrone]

It's an obsession. It involves ceremony. Ceremonial obsession.

Yes, to us, to rational people. To them, it is as relevant and important as it is that women can never hold potions of leadership and power in the church. It is more important for them to keep only men in the priesthood than it is to potentially expand the numbers of priests by allowing women to join. It is more important to do whatever it takes to keep the men they do have remaining in the Church. Even when that involves some of those priests straying from the path of righteousness. Again and again, they shift known pedophiles around and around from church to church. They cannot afford to get rid of them unless it becomes untenable in a individual case.

The Church doesn't like outsiders investigating it. It doesn't want people coming in, looking around, and dealing with the rot that the Church clearly has no interest in doing itself. And it certainly doesn't want to see outsiders forcing it to ordain women. We could reasonably argue that the Church cares less for and about women than it does for children. Male children, especially, as they are potential priests. Nuns are nice to have, but priests are more important.