Did Vatican Take a Step Backward with New Canon Laws?

The Vatican issued new canon laws recently, but while they did extend the in-house statute of limitations on investigation sex abuse crimes, they fell well short of rectifying the Catholic church's troubles with sex abuse.

The document "makes no mention of the need for bishops to report abuse to police and does not include any 'one-strike and you're out' policy as demanded by victims' groups," reports The Irish Times.

The document also said that ordaining women is now included among the "delicta gravoria," or "more grave crimes," against church law -- the same language it uses to describe child rape.

The Catholic News Service says that the Vatican stressed that announcing the new stricture on ordaining women at the same time as the updated rules on sex abuse "did not mean the two acts were somehow equivalent in the eyes of the church."

Still, under the new laws, any attempted ordination of a woman leads to automatic excommunication for the woman and the priest involved. No such mandate is made for a priest who rapes a child.

SIC: AOLNews