The Catholic News Service reported this morning in soon to be released documents, updating norms dealing with priestly sex abuse will also come heightened penalties for the "attempted ordination of women." Such acts, it said, would be on the list of the most serious crimes against church law, or "delicta graviora," CNS quoted Vatican sources as saying.
Under the new revisions, the "attempted ordination of women" will be listed as a serious violation of the sacrament of holy orders. As such, it will be handled under the procedures set up for investigating "delicta graviora" under the control of the doctrinal congregation.
In 2008, the doctrinal congregation formally decreed that a woman who attempts to be ordained a Catholic priest and the person attempting to ordain her are automatically excommunicated. In 1994, Pope John Paul said the church's ban on women priests is definitive and not open to debate among Catholics.
