Latest Vatican document is final straw for women

Published: Sunday, July 25, 2010

ANALYSIS: The Vatican must no longer be granted immunity from equality legislation, in the name of liberty, equality, and even the Gospel, writes MARY CONDREN

THE VATICAN'S recent Normae de Gravioribus Delictis document prescribes automatic excommunication for anyone involved in the ordination of a woman. In according greater penalties to those who "attempted" women's ordination than to clerics who abused children, it has further shocked many loyal Irish Catholics, prompting them to inquire about the theological reasons why the Roman Catholic Church objects to women's ordination.

A Vatican document issued in 1976 set out some of these arguments clearly.

• That incarnation took place in the male sex and therefore women were excluded from the priesthood

Logically, this means that women should be excluded from baptism as well, since it is an ancient teaching of the church that "whatever has not become incarnate cannot be redeemed". If the church insists here that "God became man" means God became male, then it cannot simultaneously argue that in liturgical language "man" means both male and female.

• That no women were ordained in the New Testament

Jesus did not ordain anyone. Ordination as we know it today did not take place at all in the New Testament, and took another 300 years when Christianity and empire merged.

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