Good editorial in The National Catholic Reporter on a very bad event: that is, Pope Benedict's decision to fire a bishop in Australia who was guilty of the terrible offense of pondering (in a newspaper column) whether the church should consider ordaining women and married men to the priesthood. As the editorial points out, we can't manage to fire bishops for covering up sexual abuse and enabling abusers, but we sure can go after the ones who think creatively about the church's crisis in priestly vocations.
No surprise. This is the same Vatican that claimed, only a year ago, that an attempt to ordain a woman as a priest is as morally repugnant as a priest sexually abusing a child. They are both considered major offenses against the faith. Seriously. And the Vatican was happy (not embarrassed) to share that point of view with the world. Never mind that one is a crime in every modern society, and the other is a debatable issue at worst and a good solution to the vocations crisis at best.
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