By Michael O'Malley
Plain Dealer
July 23, 2010
http://www.cleveland.com/religion/index.ssf/2010/07/vatican_sets_off_controversy_w.html
The Vatican has touched off a firestorm by including the ordination of women to the priesthood in a list of church law offenses as grave as pedophilia.
The pronouncement last week was part of a wider revision of church laws that streamlined the process to discipline priests accused of sexually abusing children. It also listed the ordination of women with offenses such as heresy and schism and re-emphasized that women who become ordained, along with priests or bishops who ordain them, will be excommunicated.
Forbidding women to be ordained is nothing new in the modern church, but reiterating that taboo in a list of revised laws that condemn pedophilia was viewed by some Catholics as an unnecessary slap at women.
Some observers see the matter as a public relations blunder by the Vatican, saying the two issues don't belong in the same document. But liberal Catholic reformers world-wide are blasting the Vatican.
"I don't want a church that says I'm defective because I'm a woman," said Evelyn Hunt of Cleveland Heights, an ex-nun who is a member and former board president of the national Women's Ordination Conference in Washington, D.C.
"It's really hard to be faithful to an authority stuck back in a time when women were regarded as unclean and unworthy. It shows the Vatican is terribly afraid of women. There's a lot of misogyny here," she said.
Besides addressing pedophilia and the ordination of women, the Vatican's new laws add possession of child pornography and sexual abuse of mentally disabled adults to its list of grave offenses against church law.
Hunt said placing women's ordinations among such heinous acts is stupefying.
| This is a 2008 view of St. Peter\'s Square at the Vatican, which has come under fire for listing the ordination of women with grave offenses of church law such as pedophilia. Photo by Plinio Lepri |
Former Ohio first lady Dagmar Celeste, who has been ordained and excommunicated, but still practices Catholicism, echoed Hunt's outrage. "Equating women's call to ordination with pedophilia is absurd and insulting to the intelligence of most Roman Catholics, lay and religious alike," she said in an email.
Hunt said women won't give up.
"We're going to continue to step out and gather supporters among the faithful to pave the way for a new Catholic church," she said.
A poll by the New York Times and CBS news released in May showed that 59 percent of American Catholics favored ordaining women; 33 percent were opposed.
Doris Donnelly, a theology professor at John Carroll University, a Catholic school in University Heights, said she understands why some Catholics are upset that the Vatican condemned the ordination of women and pedophilia in the same document.
But she doesn't believe the new revisions are equating the two.
| Dagmar Braun Celeste, ex-wife of former Ohio Gov. Richard Celeste, was excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church for refusing to renounce her secret ordination as a priest. Photo by Stephen Cutri |
"It's clarifying that ordination of women is a serious thing," she said. "And it's saying pedophilia is a serious thing. It's just a PR disaster to put the two together."
Donnelly said the 12-page document addresses a host of grave offenses and penalties. But placing women's ordinations and pedophilia in back-to-back sections each titled "grave delict," or offense, triggered the flak, she said.
"It's not quite as bad as the spin makes it out to be," said Donnelly. "It's not only a two-issue document."
The Vatican's new laws also make it quicker and easier to discipline priests accused of sexually abusing children and the revisions double the statute of limitations for abuse cases to 20 years from a victim's 18th birthday.
Both Donnelly and critics praised those moves, but said the church is not going far enough on exposing and holding those accountable for the pedophilia crisis.
"Sadly missing are a clear statement about the need to sanction bishops who knowingly transferred pedophile priests and a mandate to report allegations of clergy sex abuse to civil authorities," FutureChurch, a national liberal reform group based in Lakewood said in a statement issued this week.
FutureChurch director Sister Christine Schenk said she cannot understand why the Vatican would issue the promising revisions of pedophilia laws while dealing a slap to women.
"This should have been a positive story out of Rome, saying, 'yes, we are making progress,'" said Schenk. "But instead it becomes a story about the inequality of women in the Catholic church.
"You don't link priest sex abuse with women who want to serve God. That's like linking manure with fresh fruit and vegetables."
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