subject: What Will It Take For The Catholic Church To Ordain Women? [print this page] What Will It Take For The Catholic Church To Ordain Women?
The institution of Catholicism has taken quite a few hard knocks in the last couple of years. It's reputation has been soiled, and rightfully so. The widespread cover-ups of sexual abuse of children by priests are appalling. Whether pedophilia was a generally acceptable activity among the ordained clergy has still not been determined. However it is clear that a culture of letting law breaking priests be shuffled off to new parishes without ever facing punishment was, and probably is still in place.
Evidently getting the Church to ordain you was somewhat like being a made man in the mafia. You could violate the most serious of laws and police would look the other way. If you in point of fact were a vulgar degenerate and committed crimes so atrocious that angry mobs of local folk wanted to string you up by the scruff of the neck, you would be secretly carted far away to some far away other land and out of harm's way. Once these ordained gangsters would be able to begin up new rein of terror once again. Cases specifically akin to this have been amply documented plenty times in plenty different lands and legal jurisdictions. Sadly the statute of limitations seems to have expired on nearly all of these crimes. At least that means that the worst criminal activities appear to have ended several years back.
Although all of this criminal activity and cover ups has befouled the general picture of priests among the laity. Not only have Catholics in developed countries been exiting the church in droves, yet no men in the above-mentioned countries want to the Church to ordain them. The lack of clergy has the Church redisitributing clergy from the developing world into congregations and parishes in first world countries. Yet this is not ample to fill the shortage in ordinations.
The clear answer would be for the Church to ordain women. For many years the mobilization to admit women clerics has been increasing in energy. There have been various breakaway cardinals chastised by the Vatican for their unorthodox ordinations. Some have even faced excommunication for their actions. The Vatican has no interest in gratifying this bunch of reformers. Regardless of many years of lobbying, carefully worded arguments, and clear demonstrations of the fallacy of the papal point of view, it seems like every succeeding Pope digs his heels in deeper in opposition to the ordination of women.
Unlike other social reform movements women's rights supporters in the Catholic Church just don't have the influence to force change. The celebrated right to freedom of religious belief as put forth in the Constitution of the United States has without exception left a broad understanding of what is legitimate, and correct religious creed and practice. As a whole this is good thing still it has also on occasion lead to a hands off approach to sanctioning crazy, dangerous, and immoral religions and religiously justified activities.
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