Link?

Well, you can find lots if you just search for "Vatican Women" in google, but...
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/07/15/vatican-extends-statute-limitations-years-abusing-minors-mentally-disabled-318835916/
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/outrage-vatican-declares-ordination-women-grave-crime/story?id=11183098&page=2

They released the updated rules listing both offenses as "grave crimes", then backed away and said one was more grave than the other. I wish I could find the actual released document, but I can't seem to.

Here is the actual document:
http://www.vatican.va/resources/resources_norme_en.html

Frankly, this really does not imply for me that the ecclesiastical authorities do not believe that ordaining a woman is any less heinous than raping a child. In fact, I feel like this implies that a woman preaching sermons is *worse*.

--------
Clerical abuse is "an egregious violation of moral law," Scicluna said. "An attempted ordination of a woman is also grave, but on another level: It is a wound, it is an attempt against the Catholic faith on the sacrament of (holy) orders. So they are grave, but on different levels."
---------------

"Another level"?.... that seems like it would be a *higher*, not a *lower* level.


Of course, this is the same church that used to claim that public schools that allowed women were 'defiled' by thier presence, and still believes that the advent of feminism was one of the greatest tragedies of the twentieth century. So I mean... are we really surprised?

Remember, these old geezers wouldn't know what to do with a naked woman if one came in and did the grind on their lap. Fucking bunch of punters.

Though this thread's purpose seems to mostly be for the purpose of (once again) mudslinging against the Catholic Church, I will note briefly that what "different levels" means is that child abuse is a violation of moral law, while the ordination of women is a violation of canon/ecclesial law. Since both are severe violations of their respective sets of laws, both were labeled as "grave" (grave being a theological word that is normally applied to sin as in grave or venial sin, just as we have misdemeanor and felony offenses, even though a lot of things of various degrees can fall into either category).

@nola - Do you deny that the Roman Catholic Churches views on women are archaic and sexist?

*Church's

What nola2172 said. No point in discussing this any further, so I'll refrain from it.

Draugnar - To which views are you referring? Also, if you would like to state that, please discuss why you disagree with the theological explanation the church gives for its position, not why you disagree with its position.

The mudslinging has a purpose. Theoretically, criticizing the Catholic Church makes its numerous ills and problems harder to ignore, and potentially, if both Catholic adherents and the members of the Papacy feel pressured to reform or lose thier moral authority, well, maybe someday the church will be responsible for less things that we all (I hope) see as undesirable.

I don't think this is a vain hope, because the Church is certainly as less corrupt institution than it was in the thirteenth century.

Obviously of course I also have a little bit of antagonistic tendencies, but meh, can you blame me?

Also, if anyone was interested, here is the actual update the church released:
http://www.vatican.va/resources/resources_rel-modifiche_en.html

I am referring to the view that women should not be clergy, specifically. There is no basis for this in the Bible, and, point in fact, Deborah was a Biblical female judge proving that this *wasn't* what God intended.

Draugnar - This article actually gives a pretty good explanation for the Church's position on the matter:
http://catholicism.about.com/od/beliefsteachings/f/Women_Priests.htm

Here is the quite longer and official declaration issued on the matter in 1976:
http://www.ewtn.com/library/curia/cdfinsig.htm

Though I would highly recommend reading the articles (in particular the first one as it is a lot easier to read and shorter), the essential output is that the Catholic Church believes that it would not be able to validly ordain women to the priesthood or the episcopate even if it wanted to do so.

so, I guess the answer to my questions...which is why I created this thread are:
Yes, people do support the Catholic Church in this move. Nola and JesusPetry(I believe?), both stepped forward to say they support and understand the move.

No. Nola believes there is no way it will be undone, and couldn't be even if they wanted. Though, maybe there is some hopeful words from FriendlySword.

Sexism refers to a belief that one particular group of humans are inherently inferior because of thier sex, and that they ought to be treated as such. Is this a fair definition?

If so, I think that we can be fairly certain that the Catholic Church strongly adheres to a sexist conception of reality.

It isn't so surprising of course. The early Christians were far more progressive than most of thier contemporaries, but growing in the context of Mediterranean societies that considered free men to be everything and all othjers to be little better than property (children, women, slaves) it is not so surprising that all major Christians internalized some sort of conception about the inferiority of women.

Though the bible never explicitly states "Women are worse than men. Full stop" it goes on huge ramblings about the uncleanliness of women, about the irrationality of women, and about how women often have problems guiding themselves. Women, it is often stated, must subject themselves to the dominion of man in order to succeed. Classic patriarchial assumptions.

As the bible oft repeats,
"Let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands... For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church" (Ephesus. 5:24)
"I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence." (Timothy 2:9)

Regarding uncleanliness
"If a woman have conceived seed, and born a man child: then she shall be unclean seven days; But if she bear a maid child, then she shall be unclean two weeks" (Leviticus 12:5)
"How then can man be justified with God? or , how can he be clean [that is] born of a woman?" (Job 25:4)

This implies, even if it does not say explicitly, that at least in terms of agency, women are inferior to men. That women are assumed to be physically inferior is a given. Personally, I think that agency is the most important quality of humans, so this is pretty major.

Thomas Aquinas, too, believed in the subjagation and inferiority of women, despite believing that they too deserved some of the rights of men.
"The male sex is more noble than the female, and for this reason he [Jesus] took human nature in the male sex" (Summa Theologiae III:31:4 ad 1).

More recently, the early eucuminical councils decided to bar women from being part of any Church authority structure. The example of Jesus Christ was forgotten or ignored. Given the rampant sexism in both society at the time and many religious texts, it is totally unsurprising.

Currently, the Church defends it's practice of barring women from preaching by cllaiming that it is impossible to alter church teachings. It's really to bad that the argument is undermined by centuries of altering the catechism, changing and adapting to meet a changing world.

Nowadays, the church also stringently opposes abortion, but not only that, it considers contraception a sin as well, equal in gravity to abortion. Not only is equating the two ludicrous, but it is important to note that an essential element of subjecting women to the dominion of a man is to get her pregnant against her will. To escape that necessity threatens the dependency of women as a lesser class of human.

Finally, Pope after Pope has denounced feminism, it has denounced women raising children with no husband, it has denounced all manner of actions desinged to give women indepedepence from men. The reasons given are same one's given by any other partriarchy. Stability, the rationality of man, the rights of the child, the inferiority of women in a physical sense....

The Catholic Church is a sexist organization.

Read the first one in full. I don't accept the illogic of it because it doesn't take into account historical context at the time of Christ's life. Men rules the world, then, and women were subjogate and property. A man could divorce a woman without cause and leave her penniless. Seeing as Christ came to the Jews, he had to come to them as one of them. He taught them as one of their rabbis would teach. As such, he gathered about him men as his servants and sent them into the world, but never once, in all his teachings, did he forbid a woman to go out into the world and act in his name.

I guess the other differenc eI have is that, to me, a "priest" (I have a minister or a pastor, not a priest) is just a person called by Christ to be a voice for Him. They aren't some sort of bizarre Christ incarnate or embodiment of Him. They are his servants, no holier than any other person. For you see, Christ was no repector of individuals or offices. That is why when his disciples went to bar the children from him, he rebuked them and gathered the children around him. Christ is there for everyone and he will put a calling on your heart no matter what your age, race, or gender.

So, the only real reason that can't be refuted Biblically is "tradition". And you know what, traditions are stupid ways fo controlling people and attemtping to control circumstances.

My view is that I feel sorry for the deceived Bishops and the Popes themselves when they come before God and He asks them why they denied His callings just because the person in whom those callings were planted was a woman in her Earth. In Heaven there will be no marrying save the marriage of Christ to His bride, which is all of his follwers: man and woman alike. Heaven is Gender neutral and the reason Christ is the Bridegroom is so we can understand our relationship to him better, in particular his willingness and sacrifice for us just as, at the time, a husband who truly loved his wife would do for her.

so their traditions will cost them pain when they stand before the Father and it will only be through the advocate they (and we all) have in Christ that they will be accepted in to God's Kingdom.

Friendly Sword - A few comments:
1. I noticed that you left out the next part of Ephesians (the next lines in fact, 25-28):
"Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So (also) husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself." Considering that husbands are held to the standard of Christ himself in their conduct toward their wives, I would say they have the far more difficult portion of that deal.

2. In what capacity were women part of the "authority structure" when Christ was around (since you seem to imply that this was a change the Church made somewhere)?

3. What doctrines has the church changed over the past 2000 years? I am not aware of any, though you seem to think they were altered. I would agree that a few were clarified/codified as time went on, but I am not aware of anything that actually changed from one thing to another.

4. How does disallowing contraceptives result in a woman becoming "preganant against her will"? Unless she is raped, there are pretty simple ways to not become pregnant without using contraceptives (like not having sex, for instance). In addition, you did not really address the theological argument here at all, which you can find in more detail in either Humanae Vitae or in a whole host of other material.

5. Finally, lots of people (the Pope included) have denounced modern feminism for a lot of reasons, some of which include the fact that one of the net results is in fact the degradation of women and the family. In addition, since when are single parent households something desirable (whether single father or single mother)?

3. How about the selling of indulgences? One big one and a serious point of contention for Martin Luther. I don't believe they do this any more. There are others like the publication of Bibles in native tongues other than Greek, Hebrew, or Latin for instance, mass in many Catholic churches in America are held in the language of the people instead of Latin, cooperation and acceptance that the Catholic Church may not be the catholic and apostolic church: protestant faiths are accepted as being part of the body of Christ. All these are changes from what was once held as sacrosanct by the Roman Catholic Church.

Draugnar - First of all, the composition (i.e. what got in and what was out) of the Bible itself is Tradition that was then codified by the Catholic Church and is now accepted even by those churches that reject the Catholic Church. So are things like the Trinity (also accepted by most Protestants) and a number of other things (like the 100% humanity and 100% divinity of Christ, documented at the Council of Nicea as a response to the Arians). Therefore, you must be quite careful if you want to say Tradition is "bad" but then accept other things as a result of Tradition.

On a different note, the fact is that the Catholic Church does believe in the priesthood as it describes it, so whether or not you agree with them, they are not going to change that belief. Given that this belief is a constant, then the other ones follow.

5. - Name any major figures not fo the Catholic or extreme Religious Right who denounce modern feminism as contributing to the "degradation of women and the family." Falwell and Robertson and their ilk do not count. They do *not* represent Christ in any way shape or form and are in it for the money, power, and/or ego trip. There are only three televangelists I respect: Billy Graham, Robert Schuller, and Joel Olsteen.

Draugnar, I believe none of the things you've referred to were a dogma.

Actually, the Catholic Church has a number of books and texts nto accepted as Canon by the protestant faiths. They are called the Apocrypha and are as follows:

1 Esdras
2 Esdras
Tobit
Judith
Additions to Esther
Wisdom of Solomon
Ecclesiasticus (Sirach)
Baruch with the Letter of Jeremiah
Song of the Three Young Men and Prayer of Azariah
Story of Susanna
Bel and the Dragon
Prayer of Manasseh
1 Maccabees
2 Maccabees

Draugnar - First of all, I stated explicitly that the doctrine of the Church has not changed. The doctrine of the church is distinct from the particular practices or even general rules (like the meat on Fridays during Lent thing) at any given point in time.

That being said, to address your specific points:

The ability of the Church to determine the method of granting indulgences has not changed. The specific means by which indulgences are granted is up to the Church and can change whenever it so desires. The publication of the Bible in different languages has nothing at all to do with doctrine (just the ability to accurately translate it) and the mass has been changed numerous times throughout history; the exact litrugical structure of the mass is not doctrine. Finally, as far as Protestants being considered part of the Body of Christ, while that was a relatively recent declaration, I am not aware of any doctrinal position that it specifically contradicts.

Draugnar - Yes, the Protestants rejected some of the Old Testament books. Why was that, and on what basis do they accept the remaining ones (and not a bunch of other stuff from the first couple centuries of Christianity)?

Draugnar - To paraphrase your question on feminism, you want me to find someone who is neither Catholic nor conservative (so basically, a liberal) that disagrees with the feminist movement? Not sure what value that would provide, but I am sure I could dig up something, though I rather lack the time to do so (since I don't know the names of the various players in this particular debate).

"3. What doctrines has the church changed over the past 2000 years? I am not aware of any, though you seem to think they were altered. I would agree that a few were clarified/codified as time went on, but I am not aware of anything that actually changed from one thing to another."

Up to a point, Priests were allowed to marry a woman and have children with her, as any other person would. You can Google when and why the change happened.

I just read the BBC report on this. Although both are 'grave crimes' the Vatican spokesman does say that child abuse is worse than female ordination [so they are not completely bonkers]. I see no chance of a change in position because a) they believe it and b) they never change position due to public pressure.

Whatever you think of the position vs. women priests it is nothing like systematic coverup of illegal acts against children. The Catholic hierarchy should hang their heads in shame on that one.

" "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So (also) husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself." Considering that husbands are held to the standard of Christ himself in their conduct toward their wives, I would say they have the far more difficult portion of that deal. "

Saying that because of the high standart husbands should have in the conduct towards their wives, that paragraph is not sexist, is like saying that because of the money white people invested in keeping their blacks fed, healthy, and warm, then there really wasn't any slavery.