Will The Vatican Ever Ordain Women?

The institution of Catholicism has taken mor than a few hard knocks in the last couple of years. It's reputation has been tainted, and rightfully so. The widespread cover-ups of sexual abuse of kids by clergy are appalling. Whether pedophilia was a widely accepted activity in the ordained clergy has still not been determined. But it is certain that a culture of allowing law breaking priests be shuffled off to new parishes without ever suffering punishment was, and probably is still active.

It seems that getting the Church to ordain you was sort of similar to joining in the mob. You could violate the most serious of laws and cops would look the other way. If you actually were an offensive miscreant and committed crimes so unspeakable that raging mobs of local citizens wanted to string you up by the neck, you would be safely whisked off to some far off other community and out of harm's way. Once these ordained criminals would be permitted to open up fresh rein of terror all over again. Cases just like this have been well seen numerous times in numerous distinct countries and legal jurisdictions. Unfortunately the statute of limitations appears to have run out on most of these crimes. At least it seems that the patterns of abuse seem to have stopped a few years ago.

Still all of these crimes and covering up of crimes has besmirched the public portrait of men of the cloth among the laity. Not only have Catholics in first world countries been leaving the church in droves, nevertheless no men in these countries want to the Vatican to ordain them. The decrease of clerics has the Church shuffling around clerics from the third world within congregations and parishes in first world countries. Nonetheless this is not enough to take up the deficiency in ordinations.

The evident fix would be for the Church to ordain women. For decades the movement to authorize female priests has been gathering strength. There have been numerous splinter group cardinals disciplined by the Catholic church for their unconventional ordinations. Several have even been excumunicated for their actions. The Pope has no interest in appeasing this band of reformers. Despite decades of lobbying, circumspectly worded arguments, and conspicuous demonstrations of the error of the papal viewpoint, it seems each susequent Head of catholic church digs his heels in more in resistance to the ordination of women.

Different from other social reform movements women's rights adherents in the Catholic Church plainly do not have the weight to force change. The vaunted right to freedom of religion as declared in the US Constitution has always left an extensive understanding of what is right-minded, and proper religious doctrine and practice. Usually this is good thing however it has also on occasion lead to a hands off approach to sanctioning crazy, dangerous, and immoral religions and religiously justified activities.

By: Mario Greenstreet

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From polygamy with adolescent girls, to disapproval of conventional medical attention for children of deluded parents that expect God will improve their child's illness, religious protections often go too far. Through the medium of this lack of ethical oversight, and sometimes acumen in the realm of metaphysical belief it may well be a man,many years until the Vatican eventually gets around to appreciating the requirement to ordain women into the preisthood.