Contrary to Damian Thompson's PR concerns regarding the publication of the revised norms for the CDF in dealing with 'serious crimes' against faith, morals and the sacraments - which therefore includes explicit provisions against ordaining women as priests - the 'blowback' so far has been same-old-same-old from the usual suspects, i.e., Pavlov-dog responses they would have made even if you had simply poked them awake from a nap.
Here's a defense of the provisions against 'woman priests' from a priest who also starts out echoing Thompson's bashing of the Vatican's 'PR acumen', which, I must reiterate, is completely inappropriate in this case, because the Revised Norms are what they are, and fairly brief at that - it would have been completely senseless to report the greater part of it while holding back a less politically correct part (two sentences in the entire document) - at a different time!...
We all have our Pavlov-dog reflexes - I, with my snap reactions (which I believed to be informed) to anything I consider false, senseless or questionable in media reporting and commentary (a reflex honed in 20 years as a news editor); and some Catholic critics, including some of the most reputable, finding everything wrong with the Vatican's 'PR acumen' even when, by any logic, it is not in question, as with yesterday's events!
And why should any Catholic be defensive at all about the Church's objection to women priests? All of Christian tradition supports the Church position. I never read The Da Vinci Code so I don't know if even Dan Brown claims that Mary Magdalene had priestly status, because then, why aren't all the Chittistiers proclaiming her every second as their patron saint and incontrovertible icon! (Or maybe they are?]
The Vatican statement
is not anti-woman
by Fr. Robert Barron
July 15, 2010
Fr. Barron is a theology professor at the University of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein and author of Word on Fire.
How could the Vatican possibly construe the ordination of a woman as an offense as serious as the sexual abuse of a child? Isn’t this, at the very least, disproportionate, and doesn’t it prove that the c=Church continues to be clueless in regard to issues of concern to women?
Without defending for a moment the Vatican’s public relations acumen (which seems sorely lacking much of the time), I would like to offer perhaps a context for understanding this juxtaposition.
This morning, the Vatican issued new directives concerning the manner in which “grave crimes” in the life of the Church are addressed. The bulk of the statement has to do with the issue of sex abuse by priests.
[Not really! All the norms described apply in general to all 'grave delicts' (serious canonical crimes) against faith, morals and the sacraments. To say it had to do mostly with the crime of sexual abuse is to read it in, sorry to use the term again, an unthinking Pavlovian way.]
The Pope now has the ability to deal personally, directly, and rapidly with particularly egregious offenses
[against faith, morals and the sacraments, not just sex abuses] bypassing the somewhat cumbersome process of an ecclesiastical trial.
Furthermore, the Vatican clarified that the possession of any kind of child pornography by a priest will lead immediately to that priest’s dismissal from the clerical state.
Finally, the statute of limitation for clergy sex crimes has been extended from ten years to twenty—and even further if the case is sufficiently serious. With all of this, I’m quite sure, people of good will are in agreement.
[Even the good Fr. Barron overlooks - as did John Allen, to name an egregious example - Article 1, Par. 2, stating that the norms apply even to cardinals and other members of the Church hierarchy who are not necessarily diocesan bishops. Even in a news climate so ideologically charged that opposing sides tend to have tunnel vision, it is remarkable how the MSM failed to note this most significant provision about how the CDF can deal with the upper ranks of the hierarchy. One must assume this is a Benedict XVI provision because when he was at CDF, from all accounts, he obviously did not have that faculty to proceed with investigating the late Cardinal Groer of Vienna in 1995-1996. ]
But the statement addressed other matters that it characterized as “grave delicts” (Vaticanese for “serious crimes”), and these include the desecration of the Blessed Sacrament, the violation of the seal of confession and the attempted ordination of a woman. This last specification has set off a firestorm of protest.
The statement deals with a series of offenses against the integrity of the mystical body of Christ, that is to say, against that network of relationships that makes up the organism of the Church.
The sexual abuse of children by those who are ordained to guide and shepherd them is a massively serious violation of that integrity. But so, in the eyes of the Vatican, is the breaking of the seal of confession, which undermines the trust that must obtain between a sinner and his confessor, and so is an attack on the Blessed Sacrament, which amounts to an attack on Christ himself.
By the same token, the attempt by a bishop to ordain a woman to the priesthood (a move that has been ruled out of court by the Vatican) [Not that it ever was 'in court' throughut the Church's 2000 years of history!] would sever that bishop’s relationship with the Pope and hence with his brother bishops. It would place him outside the communion of the Church, and since he is the sign and instrument of his people’s unity, it would compromise their relationship with the universal Church as well.
If you have any doubt as to the division that can be caused in a Church through the unilateral action of a group of bishops, take a good, hard look at the Anglican Communion today.
[It was only a few days ago that the Anglican Synod virtually approved women bishops in the Church of England by 2014 at the latest - a slippery slope that has progressively alienated traditional Anglicans in the past several years to the point of potential mass conversions to Roman Catholicsm.]
Therefore, today’s statement isn’t anti-woman in any sense; it is an expression of concern over the number of ways that the Church’s organic unity can be unravelled.
[Even more basic, a concern to preserve the deposit of the faith as well as its sensum fidei.]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/07/2010 00:19]