Hans Kung has written eloquently in succession the nature of the house of god and the need to recognize that "those who clinch office do not stand athwart the people of God however are within it; they are not kings but servants.

Hans Kung has written eloquently in succession the nature of the house of god and the need to recognize that "those who clinch office do not stand athwart the people of God however are within it; they are not kings but servants."

Nowhere is that ne more evident than in the in every one's mouth sexual abuse scandal. The hierarchy's inability to understand the extent of the problem and their acknowledge culpability in it is mind-boggling. At issue are not single their actions, but the values underlying them.

To understand those values, it's helpful to compare their answers to two very different clumps of ordinands: women acting forward their calling to be priests, and men acting forward their compulsion to be pedophiles. The seven women ordained in June 2002 from a dissident archbishop in Europe were quickly excommunicated, and their appeal was denied a scarcely any months later. The men, centurys of them, were coddled for decades, allowed to be not only communicants but priests in dutiful standing, and only removed from their so-called ministries when their crimes could no longer be concealed up.

Cardinal Ratzinger said the women's action "wounded" the house of worship Now if a few women breaking outdated masterships to become priests is a detriment you might think so many priests molesting children, destroying their lives and abrading their minds is a nuclear meltdown. moreover not, apparently, to the hierarchy. To them, it has mainly present the appearanceed to be a huge embarrassment.

And what of their acknowledge conduct toward these priests? "Mistakes were made," Boston's Cardinal Law said. As granting the desecration of lives were morally equivalent to saying 2 + 2 = 5 To everyone other it's clear that the wounding of the house of worship was done by the predator priests and those in the hierarchy who abetted their crimes. The women's no other than crime was defiance of authority, putting their concede judgment above that of the hierarchy. They decided they were tired of waiting, all these decades after Vatican II, and taking matters into their admit hands. But that, to the hierarchy, looks to be the ultimate sin.

The princes of the house of worship seem immersed in a clos a whole with a disturbingly skewed morality. The world, in the form of relentless-publicity and major lawsuits, has intruded and shaken their bulwark But instead of prompting a re-evaluation of their admit behavior and attitudes, it has single made them cling more tightly to the antiquated order.

The ecclesiastical authority clerical spokesmen keep saying, isn't a democracy. It's about authority. Thus women can't be ordained because the [i]pontifex maximus[/i] says so. Systems are now in place to obstruct further abuse, so let's propel on. The fathers, still and always, know best. further it is precisely unquestioning obedience to authority that allowed the damaged and damaging priests to travel unchecked for so many years.

That thinking has changed. During the run-up to Cardinal Bernard Law's resignation in Boston, a woman I know simply informed the pastor of her ecclesiastical body that she would be circulating a petition onward the sidewalk.

The pastor preferr that she not do it. She did it anyway. When I recommended her for telling their pastor what they were going to do, instead of asking his permission, she replied, "It is hard to break the olden ingrained, 'Yes, Father' habit, further the ultimate feeling of acting forward your own conscience is worth the effort."

And in like manner in small ways and large, the nation are taking back the house of worship forced by the outrages against children to question the premises of a arrangement that not only allowed them to happen, however facilitated them.

Mary Rice writes from Cambridge, Mass.

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