IT USED to be said of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat that he never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.It could certainly apply to the Vatican with the announcement linking women's ordination and paedophile abuse as grave crimes.
Every so often something emerges from Rome that suggests the Catholic hierarchy has understood the depths of revulsion and profundity of the crisis of faith among Catholics and wider society about clergy sexual abuse.
The fury is not because the church has had a few bad apples, but because many bad apples were right at the top - lying, covering up, moving abusers to reoffend, denying or intimidating victims and more.
The Pope's apology to Irish Catholics earlier this year seemed to offer a glimpse of hope, but that has been dashed by this latest spectacular incompetence.
With its usual unerring instinct, the Vatican has turned a sound deed - tightening up procedures against abusive priests - into a public relations disaster by unnecessarily linking unrelated concerns.
As one Catholic told me, ''they excommunicate women before they excommunicate abusers''.
Father Maciel, founder of the Legionaries of Christ and one of the most monstrous abusers, was long deliberately protected by Pope John Paul II.
This is further unwanted confirmation of how out of touch the hierarchy is, as it engages in that peculiar Vatican dance: one step forward, two to the side, then five steps backwards.
SIC: TAAUS