Revised Vatican Law Labels Sex Abuse, Female Priests As Crimes, by Denise Balkissoon, Toronto Star, July 16, 2010

Revised Vatican Law Labels Sex Abuse, Female Priests As Crimes

By Denise Balkissoon
Toronto Star
July 16, 2010

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/836880--revised-vatican-law-labels-sex-abuse-female-priests-as-crimes

In May, 2007, Marie Bouclin, left, and two other women, Cheryl Bristol and Mary Ellen Robertson, right, were ordained as Catholic priests in a church in Toronto. (May 27, 2007)

Pedophilia is a sin, says the Pope, but so is any attempt to ordain female priests.

In the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church, both are equally “grave delicts,” according to revisions in internal Vatican laws published Thursday.

The document clarifies canon (or church) law regarding trials for priests accused of child sexual abuse, mandating quicker

juridical procedures rather than drawn-out ecclesiastical trials. It extends the statute of limitations for victims to lay charges, and also names as grave delicts the possession of child pornography, and the sexual abuse of mentally challenged adults.

But any goodwill Rome might have been hoping for with this new approach has been overshadowed in its latest rebuke to woman. The decree states that both women who attempt ordination and those who preside over the ceremony will be immediately excommunicated.

“Lumping us with the men who are the perpetrators of these crimes is absolutely mean-spirited and completely out of touch with reality,” said Sudbury’s Marie Bouclin. From 1959 to 1966, Bouclin was a nun in Ottawa. After leaving her order, she continued to work for the Catholic Church until the early 1990s, eventually becoming the personal secretary to a bishop.

But Bouclin became overwhelmed with the ways she believed her church was unfair to women. After she spoke up about it one too many times, she was let go from her position.

Now, she considers herself a Catholic priest.

The Catholic Church teaches that it cannot ordain women as priests because Christ chose only men as his apostles. Proponents of a female priesthood reject this, saying he was only acting according to the norms of his times.

In 2007, Bouclin was ordained in Toronto by South African Patricia Fresen, who was herself ordained by a male priest who remains anonymous. The author of the book Seeking Wholeness: Women Dealing with Abuse of Power in the Catholic Church, Bouclin said she was “called to minister to women who had been sexually abused either as children or vulnerable adults.”

She counsels women both inside and outside of Canada about abuse at the hands of the clergy. “I try to find ways to help them reconnect with their spiritual self,” she said. “Seeing that the priest isn’t God, the Pope isn’t God. God is compassion and wants them well and healing.”

Bouclin is a member of Roman Catholic Women Priests, a group which says it has ordained 100 women worldwide, five of them in Canada. The first, British Columbia’s Michele Birch-Conery, took her vows in 2005 on the St. Lawrence River with eight other women.

At the time, the Peterborough Diocese stripped Rev. Ed Cachia of his priesthood when he spoke out in favour of the ceremony.

On Friday, a number of nuns’ orders in Toronto declined to comment on the new decrees. Neil MacCarthy, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Toronto, said those who believe the Vatican is equating pedophilia with female ordination don’t understand the complexity of canon law. Thursday’s decree codified 14 new changes, he said. Some are moral, like those concerning abuse, and some are sacramental, like that concerning women priests.

“It does a disservice to everyone when you draw these parallels quickly without reflection,” said MacCarthy. “It does a disservice to the victims of abuse and to the women who are making great contributions to the church.”

With files from Star wire services