Ordination of women will join three top ‘crimes’ – sources

This article delineates prospective developments outlining Vatican plans to criminalize the ordination of women priests as equal in status to the three worst crimes identified in Canon Law, including the sexual abuse of minors.

As an outsider the move seems more than perfectly misguided. 

Perhaps Catholic readers can help a sympathetic observer grasp what in Catholicism gives rise to decisions that seem to border on actual evil.  A response from readers here is deeply sought.

http://www.ansa.it/web/notizie/rubriche/english/2010/07/08/visualizza_new.html_1851169767.html

(ANSA) – Vatican, July 8 – The Vatican is set to crack down
harder on the ordination of women priests, making it one of the
most serious crimes under its canon law, unofficial Catholic
sources said Thursday.

According to the sources, a new version of the 2001 document
Delicta Graviora (“major crimes”) will add the ordination of
women to the three gravest offences punishable by the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, heir to the
Inquisition.

Those three are “attacks against the Eucharist”, “attacks
against the sanctity of Confession” and sexual abuse of minors.

Ordaining women has been punishable by automatic
excommunication since 2008 but inclusion among the Delicta
Graviora would be seen as an extra deterrent, religious experts
said.
The updated list is due for publication next week and will
also include heresy and apostasy as formal crimes for the first
time, the sources said.

“More restrictive procedures” on paedophilia will also
feature in the update, they said.

The Vatican has staunchly opposed women priests under the
late pope John Paul II and the current pontiff, Benedict XVI,
while many Anglicans have ‘returned to Rome’ after the Anglican
Communion OK’d the ordination of women in 2008.

Despite the Vatican ban, a number of organisations of
Catholic women have named ‘women priests’ in recent years, with
the United States and northern European countries like Germany
and Switzerland leading the way.

These associations argue that Vatican dogma about Jesus not
wanting women to be priests or deacons is wrong.

They also say women played a much more prominent role in the
early Church than is acknowledged by Rome.

This view has been supported by several religious
historians, including some Catholic ones.