Major Vatican Reform Effort Ends In "Patriarchal Stalling" On Ordination of Women
But the final "Synod On Synodality" report calls for a greater role for women in the Catholic Church.
Updated with Pope Francis’ Mass of the Synod on Sunday, further details from the final synod report.
By Gary Gately
A major, three-year Catholic Church reform effort ended with recommendations to grant women greater roles, but left unanswered whether they will ultimately be ordained as deacons, to the chagrin of growing numbers of women in the 1.4 billion-member Church.
The 355 voting delegates to Pope Francis’ “Synod On Synodality” — prelates, priests and, for the first time, nuns and lay men and women — presented their final report Saturday evening after meeting behind closed doors at the Vatican for the past month.
The delegates to the synod, who also met at the Vatican last October, said in the 51-page report: “There is no reason or impediment that should prevent women from carrying out leadership roles in the church: What comes from the Holy Spirit cannot be stopped.”
The report added: “The question of women’s access to diaconal ministry remains open. This discernment needs to continue.”
That rang hollow to supporters of ordaining women.
“They keep saying, ‘Well, the door’s been opened, we need further study,’” Miriam Duignan, a leader of Women’s Ordination Worldwide, which calls for ordaining women as deacons and priests, told The Catholic Observer. “To me, it’s a revolving door women go in, and they say, ‘Yes, we see you, we want to talk about you and we’ll give you a little crumb of hope, a little sliver of light, but then you have to get out again.’”
But Duignan said advocates for ordaining women have made their voices heard as never before, including among 45 reform groups who staged vigils outside the Vatican throughout the synod.
She said intense pressure from Catholics throughout the world, among millions who have offered their views during synod listening sessions, had forced the synod delegates to for the first time at least include the recommendation on expanding women’s roles in the final report. It called for, among other things, women taking on more leadership roles in formation of priests in seminaries.
"It feels like we have definitely crossed that tipping point in that momentum for equality, and so many people are talking about it,” Duignan said.
She noted that when Cardinal Victor Fernández, head of the Vatican’s powerful Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, told synod delegates last week that Francis believed ordaining women “is not mature” now, many synod participants became outraged.
“There was really a feeling of going back in time like a school teacher telling the children to stop talking,” Duignan said. “It was so backwards, and that really led to a lot of outrage, and I think that was very helpful in the movement to ordain women.”
Duignan, whose organization supports ordaining women as deacons and priests, noted that research has documented that women served as both in the early centuries of the Church.
The Women’s Ordination Conference (WOC), which also advocates for ordaining women as deacons and priests, said in a statement just after the report’s release: “Endless ‘study’ on the subject of women is a patriarchal stalling tactic by ordained men to maintain the status quo. Ordained men decide the parameters and pace of synodality, and when the time is ‘ripe’ for women’s ministries. And they do so at an incalculable cost.”
The WOC statement added: “The Church has lost generations of women who endured the pain and humiliation of having to prove the validity of their calling. How long must women wait? Or more consequentially: Will women wait?”
Advocates for ordaining women have long argued that it’s not only a matter of equality for more than half of the Catholic Church’s members, but also would help ease major gaps in ministry as the Church confronts widespread shortages of priests in the U.S. and numerous other countries. Deacons may not celebrate Mass but can perform many other clerical duties, including baptisms, weddings and funerals, and preach the Gospel. Some of them run parishes without priests.
Women also overwhelmingly outnumber men in the Church’s workforce, including in hospitals and schools across the globe.
The final report also recommended:
More training for those working with minors and vulnerable adults to prevent sexual abuse. “The abuse crisis, in its various and tragic manifestations, has brought untold and often ongoing suffering to victims and survivors, and to their communities,” the report said. It called for listening with “particular attention and sensitivity” and responding to victims of sexual abuse as well as abuse of power.
More transparency and accountability at every level of Church governance.
More opportunities for lay Catholic men and women to participate in new forms of service and ministry, as well as decision-making.
Pope Francis adopted the final report Saturday night, in a departure from the tradition of issuing an official “apostolic exhortation” to formally approve it.
"There are already highly concrete indications in the document that can be a guide for the mission of the churches in the different continents and contexts," Francis said. "For that reason, I do not intend to publish an apostolic exhortation. What we have approved is enough.”
The 87-year-old Jesuit pontiff reaffirmed his decision to establish 10 “study groups” last spring to focus on hot-button issues, including women’s ministry, allowing priests to marry and expanding the Church’s outreach to LGBTQ Catholics. Francis has said he believes the topics deserve more study and did not want them to detract from the main goal of the synod: creating a Church that is more welcoming, inclusive and responsive to today’s Catholics.
"Time is needed, to arrive at choices that involve the whole Church,’” Francis said.
All 155 paragraphs in the report received the necessary two-thirds votes, but the one on women’s roles tallied the most negative votes, 97 of the 355. Women comprised just 54 of the 355 voting delegates.
Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, the synod’s general rapporteur, stressed that Francis has not ruled out ordaining women.
“The Holy Father has not said women will be ordained deacons; he has not said women will not be ordained deacons,” Hollerich told reporters Saturday. “This is not a decision for. It's not a decision against.”
Russ Petrus, executive director of FutureChurch — which advocates for ordaining women — told The Catholic Observer: “I lay the synod’s inability to accomplish any appreciable movement on the question of women’s ordination to the diaconate at the feet of Pope Francis and the clerics in the Roman Curia…. The clerics in the Curia want synodality on their terms —synodality as long as they can still hoard and protect their power and authority, which is, of course, not synodality at all.”
But Petrus said he’s hopeful nonetheless, given that women’s ordination has been raised repeatedly at synod sessions last year and this year and in the synod’s global listening sessions.
“This is obviously something that the Holy Spirit is revealing through the people of God,” Petrus said. "I also feel a strong sense of resolve in many people who simply will not let the clerics have the last word, and I’m honored to stand with them.”
Francis DeBernardo, the executive director of New Ways Ministry, an advocacy group for LGBTQ Catholics, lamented that the final synod report excluded specific mention of LGBTQ issues, though it referred to those who “experience the pain of feeling excluded or judged because of their marital situation, identity or sexuality.”
DeBernardo said some delegates raised the issues but added: “The responses to them from other delegates remains a mystery. Clearly, they were hampered by Pope Francis and synod leaders’ preemptive decision to remove LGBTQ inclusion and other issues deemed too controversial from the assembly’s agenda. In short, the Synod General Assembly failed to be synodal.”
Francis has, however, made outreach to LGBTQ Catholics a hallmark of his papacy and in December approved priests blessing same-sex couples.
DeBernardo called the synod “a landmark moment in Church history for LGBTQ Catholics” and added: “For the first time at a global level, the concerns and desires of queer people and allies were not only voiced, but intently listened to by Vatican leaders. The synodal process made clear that LGBTQ inclusion is a key concern for the faithful. During more than two years of consultations on every continent and at every level, Catholics let their leaders know that the time has come for discrimination and exclusion to end….
“Catholic LGBTQ+ advocates,” DeBernardo said, “must not let dashed hopes about greater reform through the synod impede them from becoming more involved in ecclesial governance.”
At a Mass for the synod at St. Peter’s Basilica Sunday, Francis gave thanks for “the journey we have made together” during the synod and said the Catholic Church must not be “a static church, but a missionary Church that walks with her Lord through the streets of the world.”
“We do not need a sedentary and defeatist Church, but a Church that hears the cry of the world and gets its hands dirty in serving,” he said.
Francis has convened several synods during his 11-year papacy, for his consideration in guiding the Church, including ones on the family, youth and the Church in the pan-Amazon region. But this synod differed in that it covered a much broader array of issues.
The pope personally selected 120 of the delegates to the latest synod, while leaders of the Roman Curia, bishops’ conferences and Eastern Catholic Churches selected the remainder. (Seventy-five nonvoting synod members also participated.)
It’s not really the answe that matters so much, but that the question on ordaining women keeps getting asked.