Automatic excommunication for women priests and those who ordain them

(May 30, 2008) The Vatican on Thursday issued a decree against the ordination of women priests, automatically excommunicating them and those who ordain them. The decree was written by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and published in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, giving it immediate effect. A Vatican spokesman said the decree made the Church's existing ban on women priests more explicit by clarifying that excommunication would follow all such ordinations. Excommunication forbids those affected from receiving the sacraments or sharing in acts of public worship. Attempts to ordain women priests are highly unusual in the Catholic Church, but the archbishop of St. Louis, in the United States earlier this year declared three women excommunicated after an ordination ceremony in his diocese. The Vatican decree says that women priests and the bishops who ordain them would be excommunicated "latae sententiae,” a Church expression in Latin denoting automatic excommunication.