Accession to the diaconate of the Catholic Church | Women will still have to wait

For the first time, a synod brought together women in Rome. Usually reserved for bishops, this major consultation of the Catholic Church included women and was to consider an increased role for them. The Pope decided otherwise.

The diaconate is a ministry that was revalued by the Second Vatican Council, which modernized the Church in the 1960s. For the moment, it is only accessible to men, married or not. A deacon who is single or becomes a widower cannot marry.

“We’ve been talking about women having access to the diaconate for years,” says Marie-Andrée Roy, sociologist of religions at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM).

M^me Roy spent the entire month of October in Rome to follow the synod, a process which brought together 269 bishops, 55 priests and religious, and 41 lay people from around the world, including 14.4% women, after a “process synodal” which lasted three years. She notably organized activities there for the Quebec group L’autre parole, a “Feminist and Christian Collective”.

But at the end of the synod, someone close to Pope Francis threw a cold shower on the question of deaconesses. Cardinal Victor Fernandez, who heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, reported that the pope believes this issue is not “mature.”

According to M^me Roy, this cardinal is reputed to have written some of the pope’s encyclicals, documents in which he sets out his ideas. And he heads a post-synodal working group on the question of deaconesses, which will produce a report next June.

One of the two Canadian bishops who went to Rome for the synod, Alain Faubert, of Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, notes that among the 155 proposals open to vote during this October Roman meeting, the one on deaconesses received lowest approval rating, 73%.

Faced with this about-face, the Conference for the Ordination of Women, an American NGO, called on Catholic women around the world to “go on strike” for the next Easter, notes M^me Roy.

Catechists

Is the female diaconate inevitable and only delayed? M^gr Faubert refuses to comment.

“What is certain is that we will work on it, we will discuss it,” he said. He notes that the synod took advantage of a decision by Pope Francis in 2021 to give more importance to “catechists” by giving them ministry status. “They do catechism, but can have a lot more responsibilities, and they are men and women. »

M^me Roy points out that in Africa and South America, female catechists do virtually all the work, including baptisms, weddings and funerals, in remote parishes that rarely receive a visit from a priest.

“During the synod, Cardinal Leonardo Steiner said that in his diocese in the Amazon, women catechists have been doing deacon work for decades because there are not enough priests,” said M.^me Roy.

Clericalism

Isn’t the Pope’s refusal to immediately allow deaconesses dismaying when the demand of several women’s groups, notably L’autre parole, is that the priesthood include women?

“The first demand of women is to have access to all ministries, including the priesthood and the episcopate,” said Ms.^me Roy. The second demand is a radical modification of the current clerical system where the priest is in persona Christia figure of Christ. The priesthood is an ontological change [qui change la nature de la personne]. The priest thinks he is completely different. It’s not like that in the Protestant Churches, where the pastors are at the service of the teaching of Christ, but do not think of themselves as a little Christ. »

Isn’t this second claim similar to Pope Francis’ criticism of “clericalism”?

No, answers M^me Roy, because he does not call into question the ontological change introduced by the priesthood. “But it is quite interesting to see what Francis wrote to the 21 new cardinals he will create in December. He asked those called “princes of the Church” to think of themselves as deacons, the lowest level of ordination. That’s already it. »

This synod is “an incredible form of democratization for some, but for others, it is the minimum”, summarizes M^me Roy.