Will the Church Ever Ordain Women?
The bureaucracy of the Catholic Church has had mor than a few hard knocks in the last few years. It’s reputation has been damaged, and rightfully so. The widespread cover-ups of sexual abuse of kids by priests are appalling. Whether pedophilia was a generally accepted practice among the ordained clergy has still not been determined. However it is certain that a culture of allowing law breaking priests be shuffled off to new parishes without ever facing punishment was, and most likey is still active.
It seems that getting the Church to ordain you was somewhat like being a made man in the mob. You could break the most serious of laws and cops would look the other way. If you really were an offensive lowlife and committed crimes so outrageous that raging gangs of local citizens wanted to string you up by the neck, you would be carefully whisked out of the way to some far away other sovereign state and out of harm’s way. Once these ordained gangsters would be free to start up new rein of terror all over again. Cases literally like this have been amply documented plenty times in many separate lands and legal jurisdictions. Regrettably the statute of limitations appears to have run out on most of these crimes. At least that means that the patterns of abuse appear to have ended a few years back.
But all of these crimes and covering up of crimes has sullied the public image of priests among the laity. Not only have Catholics in developed countries been exiting the church in droves, nevertheless no men in these countries want to the Church to ordain them. The decrease of priests has the Church shuffling around clergy from the third world into congregations and parishes in first world countries. Yet this is not enough to satisfy the shortage in ordinations.
The plain fix would be for the Church to ordain women. For decades the mobilization to admit female priests has been gathering impetus. There have been assorted breakaway cardinals disciplined by the Church for their unconventional ordinations. Some have even been excumunicated for their actions. The Pontiff has no interest in gratifying this group of reformists. In spite of many years of lobbying, thoughtfully worded arguments, and straightforward demonstrations of the fallacy of the papal opinion, it seems like each susequent Pope digs his heels in farther in resistance to the ordination of women.
Different from other social reform movements women’s rights adherents in the Catholic Church simply don’t have the clout to force change. The vaunted right to freedom of religion as claimed in the Constitution of the United States has always left a far-reaching understanding of what is right-minded, and correct religious creed and practice. All in all this is good thing but it has also on occasion lead to a hands off approach to sanctioning crazy, dangerous, and immoral religions and religiously justified activities.
From polygamy with below legal age girls, to refusing of accepted medical care for children of deluded parents that assume or suppose God will correct their child’s illness, religious protections often go too far. Through the medium of this lack of moral supervision, and sometimes acumen in the realm of spiritual belief it may well be a many more decades before the Vatican eventually gets around to recognizing the requirement to ordain women into the clergy.
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