Recent contorversy - Womens's Ordination and Paedophilia

I'm writing this more to try and add some clarity to recent press coverage than out of any desire to be controversial. The Vatican recently published new norms for handling certain offences contrary to Canon Law. The most serious of these are referred to in Latin as Delicta Graviora (grave offences or grave crimes) and judgement on these is usually reserved to the church's highest court in Rome.
The document was lengthy and covered a number of issues, many of which are old offences being treated in a new way but some of which are entirely new offences (e.g. downloading child pornography, recording a confession). Some relate to moral crimes such as paedophilia and other to sacramental abuses such as a non-ordained person pretending to be a priest and either simulating the mass or simulating sacramental confession. It is also important to understand that the document is entirely unintelligible without also having a copy of Canon Law handy as most offences are not referred to by name but by reference to the paragraph in Canon Law (e.g. Canon 1377 covers the excommunication of a priest who administers sacramental absolution to a partner in adultery -canon 1377 covers the excommunication but the offence is defined in canon 977 which merely references a sin against the sixth commandment of the Decalogue- reading canon law is nothing if not obtuse.)
The reservation of the most serious offences to Rome may seem to be an unnecessary further centralisation of control but, as we have seen with child abuse, people are quick to blame the Pope for every shortcoming of the church. By centralising the handling of these offence there is less chance of a local bishop attempting to cover up offences in an individual diocese.
It is also useful to reflect that in civil law some offences are tried by magistrates, some by local judges and some in the central criminal court so the reservation of certain offences to a particular court is not unusual.
So finally we come to the meat of the matter; the document issued by the Vatican was quite lengthy containing 31 Articles, some of which had several sub-paragraphs. Two, however, grabbed the attention of the world's press -one relating to paedophilia and the other to the ordination of women. Paedophilia was treated in the section dealing with moral crimes committed within the church and the one on ordination in the section on sacramental abuses. The news headlines proclaimed "Catholic church says Women Priests are equal crime to Paedophilia". Sadly the same sentiments occupied a number of liberal Catholic blogs that should know better. The matter wasn't helped by the naivety of the Vatican in handling the press.
It is important to understand that the Latin word Delictum translates to English as either crime or offence so we might well see paedophilia as a crime both in church law and secular criminal law but the ordination of a woman is an offence within the Catholic church but neither an offence nor a crime in secular law. By using the word crime to treat the church's rules on the ordination of women the press (and ignorant bloggers) creates a sense of equivalence between female ordination and paedophilia that the church, writing in Latin, never actually implied.
So we start of with what is in essence a canon law technical document largely unintelligible without a knowledge of canon law and we end up with a poorly informed attack on the church by a press eager to attack the church on any account -sadly aided and abetted by members of the liberal catholic establishment eternally eager to be offended by anything said by Rome.
It might be useful to finish with a few words about the treatment of Women's Ordination in the new document. In Canon Law ordination is only valid for a man and licit (in the Latin Church) if the man is celibate. If an ordination is invalid then the ordained person cannot say mass or hear confession so to carry out an invalid ordination is gravely wrong since it leads to potential abuse of two sacraments central to the life of the church. The new norms establish that any bishop who ordains a woman is automatically excommunicated from the church as is the person ordained. The offence has been made specific because, at the time the law was originally codified there was no specific prospect of such an event occurring whereas now there have been simulated ordinations carried out on a number of occasions and the law needs to be clear.