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	It's Offensive to Equate Child Abuse with Women's Ordination By Marilou Johanek Toledo Blade July 22, 2010 http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100722/COLUMNIST13/307229983 Once the anger dissipated, sadness set in. As a Catholic woman, I cling to the hope that my daughter or her daughter will belong to a different church from mine - one in which Catholics benefit from the inclusion of women at every ministry and administration level. Recently, the Vatican poured salt into old gender-inequity wounds when it stated that ordaining women as priests was an offense as grave as pedophilia. In announcing revisions to its internal laws that are expected to improve procedures for investigating allegations of abuse by priests, church officials made an unexpected move: They added female ordination to their list of egregious violations of moral law. Other crimes associated with ordaining women, which also would gain increased severity in punishment, include heresy, apostasy, and schism. Some have suggested that the Vatican had an ulterior motive in linking priestly pedophilia with attempts to ordain women. The church hierarchy is keen on denying any connection between pedophilia within the priesthood and the requirement of priestly celibacy. Entertaining proposals to end that requirement, or to allow women to become priests, could appear to acknowledge that the problem of pedophilia might be effectively addressed with a broader pool of priesthood candidates. Taking a vow of celibacy does not make anyone a pedophile. But it does prevent emotionally healthy individuals from becoming priests just because they are women or want to marry. The church would rather limp along with a severe priest shortage, begging congregations to pray for vocations, than to recognize the bounty it has in those who want to serve as priests but can't. And now, vain old men have demeaned the status of Catholic women even further by linking pedophile priests with admitting women to the priesthood. It's incredible, outrageous, and par for the course. The conservative hierarchy of the church, which could never consider women as equals - much less fellow priests or bishops - has simply reinforced the perception that Rome's primary interest is to maintain exclusionary control. Committed Catholic women everywhere wince. They know women have long run the day-to-day operations of the church without a fraction of the credit deserved. Women teach, organize, plan, console, cook, and clean. They are relied on for everything in the church except important decision-making that affects the institution. That power is reserved for men only, "a fact which cannot be changed despite changing times," said an archbishop representing the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. That's bunk, apparently based on the hardly compelling argument that the original apostles were reportedly all male. The early followers of Jesus also had no access to indoor plumbing, as one critic noted, yet presumably, some changes occurring over millennia, such as modern amenities, are not rejected by the Vatican. But church leaders are selective. The latest document is less about introducing bold revisions in canon law to protect the faithful than it is about protecting exclusive male dominion, from the top down, over more than 1 billion Catholics. So it's not surprising that while the church revised its in-house processes to speed up investigations of alleged sexual abuse by priests, it refused to hold bishops accountable for sex-abuser priests on their watch. Bishops are also not required to report such abuse to civil authorities - although they can if local law compels it. Self-preservation of the powers that be is the overriding concern of Vatican measures that critics say don't go nearly far enough to stop child-molesting priests. The church maintained strict command, while appearing to be concerned with priests gone wrong. Vatican leaders could praise the position women have played in the church. Instead, I am sickened that my church has chosen to couple a slightly tweaked investigative procedure toward wayward clerics with a blast at those who want women priests. For more than two decades, polls have shown large majorities of American Catholics favor ordaining women as priests. But apparently the church would rather watch its diocesan deaneries run dry with ill or retiring priests than respond to the fervent desire of Catholic women and men to serve in capacities denied them because of gender or marital status. An unholy, myopic institution that callously and continuously diminishes its own may lose them for good. Contact: mjohanek@theblade.com
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