The Experts on Child Abuse(Vatican):Ordaining Women "Grave Crime," Much Like Sex Abuse
Vatican: Ordaining Women "Grave Crime," Much Like Sex Abuse
Just as the Church of England is getting ready to consider allowing women to become priests, the Catholic church is staying loyal to its Dark Ages roots and reaffirming its position that woman should never be allowed to be ordained.
How firm are they on this issue? The Vatican claims it would be just as bad as allowing sexual abuse in the church.
Via Yahoo News:
How firm are they on this issue? The Vatican claims it would be just as bad as allowing sexual abuse in the church.
Via Yahoo News:
The Vatican issued a revised set of church guidelines Thursday to respond to the clerical sex abuse scandal, targeting priests who molest the mentally disabled as well as children, defining child pornography as a canonical crime but making few substantive changes to existing practice.
The new rules make no mention of the need for bishops to report clerical sex abuse to police, provide no sanctions for bishops who cover up for abusers and do not include any "one-strike and you're out" policy for pedophile priest as demanded by some victims.
As a result, they failed to satisfy victims' advocates, who said the revised guidelines amounted to little more than "administrative housekeeping" of existing practice when what was needed were bold new rules threatening bishops who fail to report abuse.
The Vatican's sex crimes prosecutor acknowledged it was "only a document," and didn't solve the problem of clerical abuse. He defended the lack of any mention of the need to report abuse to police, saying all Christians were required to obey civil laws that would already demand sex crimes be reported.
"If civil law requires you report, you must obey civil law," Monsignor Charles Scicluna told reporters. But "it's not for canonical legislation to get itself involved with civil law."
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The rules also list the attempted ordination of a woman as a "grave crime" to be handled according to the same set of procedures as sex abuse — despite arguments that grouping the two in the same document would imply equating them.
It's hard to decide which is more offensive -- the fact that the church, despite the ongoing sexual abuse scandal, sees no reason to increase their own internal vigilance regarding the issue, or the fact that they see the idea of allowing women into their ranks as equal partners to be more threatening to the church thanpotential ongoing child abuse.
With this missive it is clear that the Catholic Church would rather have pedophiles in their ranks than women.
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