Women's Ordination

Published: July 16, 2010 The Vatican has labelled the ordination of women among the "most serious crimes" and a "crime against the faith". In an update to disciplinary rules released by the Vatican this week, cases of "attempted ordination of women" will now be handled by the Vatican's doctrinal watchdog, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), a Vatican statement said on Thursday. The new rules put attempts at the ordination of women among the "most serious crimes", along with pedophilia, said an AFP report in the Sydney Morning Herald. But Vatican officials emphasized that simply because women's ordination was treated in the same document as priestly sex abuse did not mean the two acts were somehow equivalent in the eyes of the church, said a report by the Catholic News Service. "There are two types of 'delicta graviora': those concerning the celebration of the sacraments, and those concerning morals. The two types are essentially different and their gravity is on different levels," said Msgr Charles Scicluna, an official of the Vatican's doctrinal congregation. The AFP report cites US-based Women's Ordination Conference, an advocacy group, dismissed the decision as "medieval at best" and a "scare tactic". The Vatican is using this attempt to extinguish the widespread call for women's equality in the church."