The Vatican's failure to anticipate media reaction to a recent document left supporters high and dry, writes Fr Chris Hayden

I would pretty much have expected to be used to it by now, given all we've seen and heard in the past couple of years, but I still get that sinking feeling when I see banner headlines highlighting the alleged stupidity, bad-will and downright malevolence of the Catholic Church. Things were no different recently, when I was riveted to the spot by a headline proclaiming that the Vatican had just insulted all women. As if the headline itself left room for doubt, the word ''all'' was underlined.

If there's one thing all Catholics have learned in recent years, it's that our Church is not above criticism. Furthermore, honest, measured criticism is an indication of maturity rather than apostasy.

There has, as we've seen, been plenty of material on which to hone the skill of constructive criticism. There is no need to fear genuine criticism: it can have a prophetic edge that calls us to repentance and that moulds the Church in the image of its Founder.

But not all criticism is honest, or measured, or prophetic, or constructive. Some of it is basically truthful while lacking balance; some pretends to be balanced while ignoring truth; and some throws both truth and balance to the wind and is nothing more than the venting of spleen.

Cold anger

Even the most intensely bitter criticism can remind us of how greatly some people have suffered due to sinfulness within the Church, but there is a kind of calm bile, a cold anger, that betrays a deep-seated, ideological resentment against the Church. This, it seems to me, is precisely what we have seen recently, with the fracas over the Vatican's alleged equating of the ordination of women with the sexual abuse of minors by clergy.

(Pictured: Fr Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, presents the Vatican's revised procedures for handling cases of sexual abuse by priests during a press conference in July 2010)

Editorial decision

At the heart of the controversy has been an editorial decision - or series of decisions.

From the fact that that clerical sexual abuse of minors and the ordination of women were considered in the same brief legal document, it was decided to present the view that the Catholic Church regards these two matters in the same way, as equally serious moral failings.

There was no logical progression at work here, but an editorial decision. If one can speak at all of logic, then it has been the kind of logic that would enable one to lambaste the local newspaper for reporting child sexual abuse and a minor traffic offence on the same page.

Granted, the Vatican document at the heart of the media-contrived storm refers to the attempt to ordain women as a ''grave delict''. This is strong language, but it does not amount to equating the matter with child sexual abuse.

The temperature of the reaction to the Vatican's ''latest own-goal'' has led me to wonder if many of the commentators actually took the trouble to read the document. Had they done so, they would quickly enough have discovered what a turgid little piece of legalese it is; dull but necessary housekeeping for the Church's legal administration, rendered newsworthy only by an ideologically-motivated media establishment.

Incidentally, when I went online to check out the unfolding schmozzle, I did a Google search on the string ''recent Vatican child abuse ordination women''.

I reckoned that this much detail should shorten the field considerably, but it was still a pretty big field! I glanced through just the first couple of pages of headings, and they were full of such phrases as, ''Vatican compares child abuse with ordination of women as equal sins''; ''Women's ordination on a par with sex abuse''; ''Ordaining women is as bad as raping children''; ''Vatican says female priests 'as sinful' as child abuse''.

But where, pray tell, had the Vatican said these things? It had not said any of them, and they did not follow logically from anything the Vatican had said. I could not and can not avoid the impression of a deliberate tactic that is part of a broader strategy.

The faint whiff of plausibility generated by the fact that the two issues figured in the same document was pumped up into a false stench, and if repetition is indeed the strongest tool in the rhetorician's arsenal, the whole business has proven most successful indeed from an ideological point of view.

Here, let me carefully note that I have no time whatsoever for a smug blame-the-media attitude to ills afflicting the Church.

If it weren't for serious, courageous journalism, we might still be in the dark ages in certain respects.

Serious journalism

But the recent business has hardly been serious, courageous journalism, and one would like to think that serious, courageous journalists have been looking askance at the indulgences of some of their colleagues and editors.

From a communications point of view, there is certainly a case to be answered by the Church. It has long been noted - including by senior clerical commentators - that clerical child sexual abuse is a uniquely toxic phenomenon that taints every reality with which it comes into contact.

This is a well-established fact that needs to be taken account of by the Church, in its official communications.

A brief legal document, in which the section on the ''attempted sacred ordination of a woman'' is followed immediately by a section on clerical child sexual abuse might, with a hint of foresight, have been seen as courting trouble. When the penalty for the former ''delict'' is automatic excommunication, but excommunication is not mentioned as a possible penalty for the latter, then the arrival of trouble is assured.

There will be little to be gained by making the valid point that excommunication is a penalty with a specific, technical sense, since the damage has already been done.

What is required is the complete quarantining of the crime of clerical child sexual abuse. It is of such gravity and offence to all right-minded believers that it should not share a communications menu with any other items of business. Such quarantining might on occasion make for more cumbersome documents, but it might also bring a little succour to beleaguered believers. It might, furthermore, be a concrete instance of inculturation, whereby the message of the Gospel, while not being altered, is communicated in a way that is clued-in and sensitive to the contemporary mindset.

If the Church scored an own-goal, it was not by equating clerical child sexual abuse with the ordination of women - something it transparently did not do. Rather, the failure to anticipate reactions which the average believer could easily have predicted has awarded a penalty shot to the Church's ideological opponents and left supporters high and dry.