{"id":25,"date":"2010-07-21T08:29:56","date_gmt":"2010-07-21T08:29:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/catholicsmediaandculture\/2010\/07\/does-the-catholic-church-equate-ordaining-women-as-priests-with-child-sex-abuse.html"},"modified":"2010-07-21T08:29:56","modified_gmt":"2010-07-21T08:29:56","slug":"does-the-catholic-church-equate-ordaining-women-as-priests-with-child-sex-abuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/2010\/07\/does-the-catholic-church-equate-ordaining-women-as-priests-with-child-sex-abuse.html","title":{"rendered":"Does the Catholic Church equate ordaining women as priests with child sex abuse?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes it seems like the Catholic Church is competing with BP to see which organization can get the most <u>b<\/u>ad <u>p<\/u>ress (which I think is what BP stands for).<\/p>\n<p>If there were such a competition, the Church certainly would have scored a point when it <a href=\"http:\/\/ncronline.org\/news\/vatican\/vatican-revises-church-law-sex-abuse\">recently issued a document<\/a> that at once strengthened its rules regarding child sex abuse cases and reiterated its stance against the ordination of women priests as a &#8220;grave crime.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Monsignor Charles Scicluna of the Vatican&#8217;s doctrinal department <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalpost.com\/m\/blog.html?b=life.nationalpost.com\/2010\/07\/16\/women-priests-and-sex-abuse-not-equal-crimes-vatican&amp;s=Home\">denies<\/a> that there was intention by Church officials to equate ordaining female priests with sexually molesting children, explaining that the former is a &#8220;crime against a sacrament&#8221; while the latter is a &#8220;crime against morality.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Okay, I don&#8217;t really get the Church&#8217;s opposition to women priests but I accept that the Church leadership has a right to set its own rules.&nbsp; I don&#8217;t agree with every law the federal government enacts either but I recognize its authority in its sphere. <br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>But, aside from all that, here&#8217;s some free PR advice, going forward. If the Church doesn&#8217;t want to seen as equating the two subjects, don&#8217;t deal with them in the same document.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>In fact, when in any way dealing with the child sex abuse scandals, take special care to make no mention of issues having to do with women priests or gay marriage or birth control or really anything else. Stay focused. Keep a strict firewall between the subjects. To do otherwise will only lead to articles and <a href=\"http:\/\/thedogsinthestreet.net\/2010\/07\/15\/vatican-compare-child-abuse-with-ordination-of-women-as-equal-sins\/\">commentary<\/a> that will strengthen the public perception of a Church leadership that just doesn&#8217;t get it.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes it seems like the Catholic Church is competing with BP to see which organization can get the most bad press (which I think is what BP stands for). If there were such a competition, the Church certainly would have scored a point when it recently issued a document that at once strengthened its rules&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":225,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic-church","category-current-events","category-media"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Does the Catholic Church equate ordaining women as priests with child sex abuse? - Catholics Media and Culture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/2010\/07\/does-the-catholic-church-equate-ordaining-women-as-priests-with-child-sex-abuse.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Does the Catholic Church equate ordaining women as priests with child sex abuse? - Catholics Media and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Sometimes it seems like the Catholic Church is competing with BP to see which organization can get the most bad press (which I think is what BP stands for). If there were such a competition, the Church certainly would have scored a point when it recently issued a document that at once strengthened its rules&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/2010\/07\/does-the-catholic-church-equate-ordaining-women-as-priests-with-child-sex-abuse.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Catholics Media and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-07-21T08:29:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"John W. Kennedy\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Does the Catholic Church equate ordaining women as priests with child sex abuse? - Catholics Media and Culture","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/2010\/07\/does-the-catholic-church-equate-ordaining-women-as-priests-with-child-sex-abuse.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Does the Catholic Church equate ordaining women as priests with child sex abuse? - Catholics Media and Culture","og_description":"Sometimes it seems like the Catholic Church is competing with BP to see which organization can get the most bad press (which I think is what BP stands for). If there were such a competition, the Church certainly would have scored a point when it recently issued a document that at once strengthened its rules&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/2010\/07\/does-the-catholic-church-equate-ordaining-women-as-priests-with-child-sex-abuse.html","og_site_name":"Catholics Media and Culture","article_published_time":"2010-07-21T08:29:56+00:00","author":"John W. 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Kennedy","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/d80\/d801bc09698c0995d9ae402b4b55ab61x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/d80\/d801bc09698c0995d9ae402b4b55ab61x96.jpg","caption":"John W. Kennedy"},"description":"John W. Kennedy is the founder and Dir. of Development of The Creative Universe Entertainment\u2122, a media consultation and development company focusing on the creation, development and support of high-quality mainstream entertainment that upholds positive timeless values, including trust in God. Current projects include \"Bryant Park\" (an uplifting romantic-comedy) and \"Photo Finish\" (an award-winning sci-fi TV pilot). He has written over 100 children's novels based on episodes of the Cartoon Network series \"Ben 10\", \"Ben 10: Alien Force\", \"Ben 10: Ultimate Alien\", \"Ben 10: Omniverse\" and \"Generator Rex\" among others. He also writes Beliefnet\u2019s \"Faith, Media &amp; Culture\" blog. Previously, he has produced successful news and talk programming for CNN, Fox News, Pax TV and SiriusXM. Specialties: Script Writing, Movie\/TV Novelizations &amp; Adaptations, TV Content Creation and Development, Creative Consultation, Producing and Booking News and Talk shows. He can be reached for writing, producing and consulting services at 516-640-1182.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/author\/jkennedy"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/225"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}