As to enablers, let me point out the unpalatable reality that prior to the 1980’s, transferring a pedophiliac and giving them psychiatric treatment was considered acceptable, both inside and outside the Church. The current attitude towards pedophiliacs is of recent enough vintage that we need to be careful of charging some as enablers when they were following what was considered the best advice back then.

Were (and are) there enablers? Most certainly! But not all who dealt with pedophiles were enablers simply because they transferred someone and got them into counseling. Nor were they enablers because they did not make a public announcement. Again, look at the advice from back when, and you will see that it was considered appropriate to not make it public so that the child would not carry a “stigma” with them. This is not to excuse the true enablers, but to argue that some bishops are being tarred for doing what was thought to be right back then by both secular and ecclesiastical authorities.

Finally, look at cases like the 18 year old high school senior from Georgia who was permanently classified as a sex offender and given a 10 year prison sentence for having sex with his 15 year old high school girlfriend. It took a public outcry and a ruling from the Georgia Supreme Court to get him out of jail 2 years later.

We have overreacted in this country to our favorite sin category (sex). Huw, you constantly point that out. But on the hetero side that overreaction is seen in our over the top set of laws regarding sexual “predators”, in which we have created a category of person who wears a red letter bigger than any other crime. As Huw points out, sex is the unforgivable category in this country.

But, Huw makes an excellent point that the ordination of women has been elevated to the point of being a harder to forgive sin than pedophilia. There is, indeed, something quite wrong with that.

I think it’s interesting that in the last 6 months to a year, really, this has gone from “well you know they are not real…” to Ecclesial Kryptonite.

And I’ve no question that a woman who gets ordained has broken tradition with the Roman Church. But most sinners or apostates can be reconciled by going to confession. This is reserved to the Pope, making it a rather HUGE sin. Deacon St Phoebe and Sts Mary Magdalen and Junia the Apostles will be stricken from the calendar soon, I’m sure.

But what disgusts me is that there is no equivalent penalty applied to priests who murder souls by raping people, nor to any bishop who has participated in the coverup/transfer of pedophiles.

Pedophile priests and their enablers face less punishment than those who attempt to ordain a woman. The false priorities disgust me.

Lee

Let’s see. There is a major breach of the rules. The penalties are applied. How evil! All Florida and Michigan delegates should have absolutely no penalty applied to them either, even though to not apply any penalty would probably blow the Democratic party apart and lead to total mistrust. When you shake the cage of the powerful by refusing to submit to party rules on voting then they “get scared and try to bully you into submission.”

Why, Huw, you sound exactly like Hillary Clinton.