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	Norms on Women’s Ordination Reflect Sacrament’s Importance By Nancy Frazier O’Brien Catholic San Francisco July 28, 2010 http://www.catholic-sf.org/news_select.php?newsid=1&id=57429 The Vatican’s decision to declare the attempted ordination of women a major church crime reflects “the seriousness with which it holds offenses against the sacrament of holy orders” and is not a sign of disrespect toward women, Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl of Washington said July 15. The archbishop, who chairs the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Doctrine, spoke at a news briefing in the headquarters of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops hours after the Vatican issued new norms for handling priestly sex abuse cases and updated its list of the “more grave crimes” against church law, including for the first time the “attempted sacred ordination of a woman.” In such an act, the Vatican said, the cleric and the woman involved are automatically excommunicated, and the cleric can also be dismissed from the priesthood. Noting that women hold a variety of church leadership positions in parishes and dioceses, Archbishop Wuerl said, “The church’s gratitude toward women cannot be stated strongly enough.” “Women offer unique insight, creative abilities and unstinting generosity at the very heart of the Catholic Church,” he said. But, the archbishop said, “the Catholic Church through its long and constant teaching holds that ordination has been, from the beginning, reserved to men, a fact which cannot be changed despite changing times.” The Vatican action drew a sharp response from Erin Saiz Hanna, executive director of the Women’s Ordination Conference, founded in 1975 to promote the ordination of women as Catholic priests, deacons and bishops. “The idea that a woman seeking to spread the message of God somehow ‘defiles’ the Eucharist reveals an antiquated, backwards church that still views women as ‘unclean’ and unholy,” she said in a news release. Archbishop Wuerl said at the briefing that the norms should be seen as “a list of those areas that the church considers of great significance,” adding that “it is not surprising that most are sacramental.” In addition to declaring women’s ordination a more grave crime against Church law, the norms also condemn the attempted or simulated celebration of the Eucharist, any attempt to hear confession when one is unable to give valid sacramental absolution, and the recording of a confession or its “malicious diffusion” through any means of social communications. Archbishop Wuerl said the latter prohibition did not necessarily mean the Vatican had seen an uptick in violations of the confessional seal related to social media, but indicated an awareness that the seal of confession “can now be violated in ways we never envisioned before.” Roman Catholic WomenPriests, an organization that is not recognized by the church but claims that more than 100 women worldwide have been ordained priests or bishops in the past eight years, said in a statement: “We demand an end to misogyny in the Catholic Church.” In 2008, the doctrinal congregation formally decreed that a woman who attempts to be ordained a Catholic priest and the person attempting to ordain her are automatically excommunicated. In 1994, Pope John Paul II said the church’s ban on women priests is definitive and not open to debate among Catholics. Download a PDF of the revised norms, and a Vatican overview of the history of church policy on abuse cases, from the U.S. bishops’ website, at www.usccb.org/mr/Norms-English.pdf. Vatican details history of abuse policy VATICAN CITY (CNS) – A new report on the Vatican’s handling of sex abuse explains, for the first time, the evolution of Church law and papal decisions on the issue over nearly a century. The background report, prepared by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and released earlier this month, says that a comprehensive legal approach to clerical sex abuse has been a relatively recent development. The report seeks to counter allegations that the Vatican has for decades orchestrated an effort to cover up priestly abuse. The 1917 Code of Canon Law reserved the handling of several canonical crimes to the Holy Office (now the doctrinal congregation), the report explains. This included the crime of “solicitation,” when a priest used confession to solicit sex. A 1922 Holy Office instruction,”Crimen sollicitationis” (The Crime of Solicitation), gave detailed guidance to local dioceses and tribunals on dealing with this crime. The document, stressing the need for confidentiality, said these procedures could also be used for other crimes, including sexual abuse of children by priests. “Crimen sollicitationis” has been seen by critics as a kind of “smoking gun” evidence that the Vatican had knowledge of abuse cases in the universal church and the authority to deal with them, yet was more interested in keeping a lid of secrecy. But the Vatican’s historical overview says it is “gravely anachronistic” to view the 1922 document as comprehensive legislation on the sexual conduct of priests. The instruction was never meant to represent the whole of Church policy on clergy sexual improprieties, according to the report. Moreover, the report says, the 1922 instruction was never really published but was given to bishops as needed. A 1962 reprint authorized by Pope John XXIII was intended to be given to priests gathering for the Second Vatican Council. In fact, only a few copies were handed out, and most were never distributed. The period between 1965 and 1983, the Vatican report says, was marked by a changing approach with preference given to a “pastoral attitude” toward misconduct. “The bishop was expected to ‘heal’ rather than ‘punish.’ An over-optimistic idea of the benefits of psychological therapy guided many decisions,” the report says.
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