Beyond Belief: (Times) Vatican Rules Equate Pedophilia and Ordaining Women

Our new category is "Beyond Belief" which will be reserved for especially heinous violations by organized religions of the canons of reason and requisites of fairness.

After an Orthodox Jewish rabbi declared the ordination of women as rabbis a capital offense in April, we thought we had reached the low point in religious discourse and reasoning for this year. But no. The Catholic Church is not sloughing off in the race to the misogyny of the middle ages.

Here then is our first post in the new category, a report in the Times that the Vatican Rules Equate Pedophilia and Ordaining Women. The Times links to the actual publication at the Vatican of new internal rules:

Art. 5

The more grave delict of the attempted sacred ordination of a woman is also reserved to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith:

1° With due regard for can. 1378 of the Code of Canon Law, both the one who attempts to confer sacred ordination on a woman, and she who attempts to receive sacred ordination, incurs a latae sententiae excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See.

2° If the one attempting to confer sacred ordination, or the woman who attempts to receive sacred ordination, is a member of the Christian faithful subject to the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, with due regard for can. 1443 of that Code, he or she is to be punished by major excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See.

3° If the guilty party is a cleric he may be punished by dismissal or deposition[31].

Art. 6

§ 1. The more grave delicts against morals which are reserved to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith are:

1° the delict against the sixth commandment of the Decalogue committed by a cleric with a minor below the age of eighteen years; in this case, a person who habitually lacks the use of reason is to be considered equivalent to a minor.

2° the acquisition, possession, or distribution by a cleric of pornographic images of minors under the age of fourteen, for purposes of sexual gratification, by whatever means or using whatever technology;

§ 2. A cleric who commits the delicts mentioned above in § 1 is to be punished according to the gravity of his crime, not excluding dismissal or deposition. ...more...