Madam, – May I firstly applaud the Church of Ireland and the Anglican Church as a whole for the true progress it has made in regard to the ordination of women to its priesthood. As outlined by Rev Dr Michael Kennedy, (July 17th), this issue has not only been well discussed but is being progressively carried through. No issue will ever be without its dissenters, however, this church has had the courage to deal with it regardless.
By contrast, the Vatican’s latest response to this issue has been very provocative and offensive.
In its most recent utterances on Delicta Graviora it manages to conjoin (inter-alia) clerical child abuse with the issues of ecumenism and ordination of women .
It has tried to qualify its statement by explaining that there are two types of Delicta Graviora – those concerning the celebration of the sacraments and those concerning morals.
One is therefore at a complete loss to understand a mindset that would ever refer to the two distinct issues in one statement.
Are the powers that be within the Vatican so truly detached from the realities of our temporal world as not to understand the offence these connections would cause, or perhaps this was a very cynical move, both in its timing and content, to denigrate the the Anglican Church? Regardless, once again the sexual abuse victims have been slighted by this church which appears to place the heinous acts carried out by its clergy against them on par with its own prejudices against women and ecumenism.
Interestingly, the Vatican’s statement omitted to mention how grave the sin of covering up is when referring to clerical abuse.
So are we now at a stage where we are observing Nero fiddling while Rome burns? – Yours, etc,
Madam, – The publication of Normae de Gravioribus Delictis by the Vatican has rightly caused consternation in the implied equivalence of women’s ordination, concelebrating the Eucharist with Protestants, and the crime of paedophilia.
One might be inclined to accept that no such equivalence and the resulting hurt were intended by this bizarre juxtaposition, were it not for another little reported section of the document which seems to have slipped in under the radar and demonstrates that this was no aberration.
Article 3 of the document lists “the more grave delicts against the sanctity of the most Holy Sacrifice and Sacrament of the Eucharist” and under this heading and thus in the same category are listed: “the taking or retaining for a sacrilegious purpose or the throwing away of the consecrated species” and “the concelebration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice with ministers of ecclesial communities”. (The term “ecclesial communities” is that given to the Protestant churches by Pope Benedict when head of the CDF he declared that Protestant churches were not churches in the proper sense but rather merely “ecclesial communities”.)
In plain English this section is saying that concelebrating the Eucharist with Protestants is equivalent to chucking the consecrated host in the bin. I am all for straight talk and honesty and believe wholeheartedly in not glossing over differences in the pursuit of ecumenism. The principle of speaking the truth in love is vital if we are to deepen the bonds of affection between brothers and sisters in Christ. But there is no love in this document.
I believe that this Vatican statement is totally unrepresentative of the position of the vast majority of Roman Catholics. It is increasingly hard for those of us who believe ecumenism to be a Gospel imperative for all Christians to understand why it is necessary to be so gratuitously offensive as in recent Vatican statements.
Yes, it is a canon law document, but when law leaves no space for love one has to question the law. And equally it could be argued it is an internal document, but if the Roman Catholic Church continues to insist that it is the only completely true expression of the Universal Church of Christ then surely it is of universal implication. These are difficult days for all our churches and this is a time when we should be working together to build community and a sense of the concern of God for all Creation. It is hard to see these developments as anything but a monumental own goal. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – I commend the Vatican for reaffirming the attempted ordination of women as a “grave crime”.
At first sight it may seem that the demands of radical feminism in favour of a total equality between man and woman are extremely noble and, at any rate, perfectly reasonable. However, this kind of emancipation of women signifies that sexuality is no longer rooted in anthropology; it means that sex is viewed as a simple role, interchangeable at one’s pleasure. Logically this means that the whole being and the whole activity of the human person are reduced to pure functionality.
Women, who are creative in the truest sense of the word by giving life, do not “produce”, however, in that technical sense valued by a society that worships at the foot of efficiency. Ultimately, the emancipation proffered by radical feminists results only in women conforming themselves to a culture of production that seeks nothing but profit and power.
The Catholic Church holds that it is not admissible to ordain women to the priesthood, for very fundamental reasons. These reasons include: the example recorded in the Sacred Scriptures of Christ choosing his Apostles only from among men; the constant practice of the church, which has imitated Christ in choosing only men; and her living teaching authority which has consistently held that the exclusion of women from the priesthood is in accordance with God’s plan for his church.
In calling only men as his Apostles, Christ acted in a completely free and sovereign manner. In doing so, he exercised the same freedom with which, in all his behaviour, he emphasised the dignity and the vocation of women, without conforming to the prevailing customs and to the traditions sanctioned by the legislation of the time.
There are countless other ways that women might serve the church which are no less faithful to the Gospel. In fact, Pope John Paul II stated in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis that “The greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven are not the ministers but the saints.” – Yours, etc,