As you know, I belonged to the initial Pontifical Commission for the Study of the Diaconate of Women. We were named in August 2016 and first met in November of that year.

I traveled to Rome several days in advance of the scheduled meeting, so I could recover from jet lag.

As soon as I arrived in Rome, I attended the celebrations honouring the three US bishops—they call bishops "monsignors" in Rome—the three US bishops named cardinals then: Blasé Cupich, Kevin Farrell, and Joseph Tobin.

Arriving in Rome

I resided outside the Vatican at the generalate of the LaSalle Christian Brothers for a few days, and on Thanksgiving Day, 2016, I arrived at the Vatican City gate called Porta Sant'Uffizio, in the Palazzo Sant'Uffizio.

That is the Vatican City gate near the building known in English as The Holy Office, where the business of the Congregation, now Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith takes place.

I presented my passport to the Swiss Guard and was permitted through the gate. I walked past Saint Peter's Basilica on the right and the German cemetery on the left, to the guard booth of the Pontifical Gendarmerie, the Vatican military police.

Again, I presented my passport.

The officer looked at the list of expected guests. He looked at me. He looked again at the list. He looked at me. I asked if there was a problem. No madam, he answered.

But you are listed here as "Monsignor Zagano."

He would not let me take a picture of the list.

I proceeded to Domus Sanctae Marthae, the small guest house where Pope Francis lives, and, as a guest of the Holy Father, was saluted as I entered the building.

The desk clerk greeted me, took my passport, and looked at her list which included "Monsignor Zagano."

She looked at me, looked at her list, looked at me, and we both had a good laugh. She let me get a copy of the list.

That was a Thursday, and my first meal at Domus Sanctae Marthae was Thanksgiving dinner with other guests, including an American Nobel Laureate. This, I thought would be some ride.

My Commission met for the next two days, and again in March 2017, September 2017, and June 2018, for a total of eight days over nearly two years. Of course, there were many, many Zoom meetings and emails during those years.

I suppose you would like to know what we gave to the pope.

So, would I.

I'll get to that.

Women - managers not ministers

The question before us this evening concerns the future of women in the Catholic Church.

Please believe me, the future of women in the Catholic Church is the future of the Catholic Church because the future of the Church depends on women.

Women comprise the largest segment of church-going people in the world, Catholic or not.

In the Catholic Church, women staff the Parish Outreach. Women teach Catechism, Women bring their children to church. Women bring their husbands to Mass, at least on Christmas and Easter.

But women at every level of Church life are restricted to management and cannot perform ministry as it is formally understood.

Let me define the terms.

By "management," I mean all the non-ordained and therefore non-ministerial tasks and duties in Church organisations, from parish centers, to diocesan offices, to episcopal conferences, to the papal Curia.

That includes the parish secretary, the diocesan chancellor, the bishops' conference spokesperson, and every employee of every Vatican dicastery. These, except for the jobs (called "offices") that have legal authority over clerics—over deacons, priests, and bishops—these management positions are jobs that any layperson can have.

I am not saying the people in these jobs (or offices) are not "ministering," for they truly perform "ministry" as the term has been enlarged over the past forty years or so.

Yes, the head of the parish religious education program, the organizer of the diocesan CYO, the employees of the USCCB, and the people in the papal Curia are all "ministering" in a sense. But they are not performing sacramental ministry in the classroom, on the playing field, or behind their desks.

So, by "ministry" I mean sacramental ministry, as performed by ordained deacons, priests, and bishops. You know the differences. Deacons may solemnly baptize and witness marriages.

In addition to these sacraments, priests may anoint the sick (give "last rites"), hear confessions and offer absolution, and celebrate the Eucharist.

Performing confirmations is generally restricted to bishops, who sometimes delegate their authority to confirm to priest-pastors.

All these are "clerics," and as such can legally preach at Masses and serve as single judges in canonical proceedings.

So, "Management" is open to women. "Ministry" is not.

It might be helpful to use the distinctions known in military and business organisations: "management" would be "admin", and "ministry" would be "ops."

That is, "management" handles administrative matters, and "ministry" would be the core operations of the organisation.

The analogy may not be perfect, but the important word here is "admin" or "administration." That is what, in his own words, Pope Francis believes women are capable of.

In November 2022, when the pope met in Domus Sanctae Marta with the editors and writers of America Magazine, the journal's executive editor, Kerry Weber, asked him the following question:

Holy Father, as you know, women have contributed and can contribute much to the life of the church. You have appointed many women at the Vatican, which is great.

Nevertheless, many women feel pain because they cannot be ordained priests. What would you say to a woman who is already serving in the life of the church, but who still feels called to be a priest?

Francis' long and thoughtful answer expanded the notion of "ministry" somewhat.

However, he retained the great divide between the ordained and non-ordained, between those people who are central and those people who are not central to the essential operations of the church, to the ordained tasks and duties of performing sacraments, and (because of their ordained status) of preaching and judging.

That is, Pope Francis clearly distinguished the people who can be ordained—men—from those who cannot be ordained—women.

His comments were based on a theoretical construct presented by the long-dead Swiss priest-theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988), a former Jesuit of whom several prominent theologians are critical.

The Petrine Church and the Marian principle

One theologian central to Vatican doctrine since his appointment to the first iteration of the International Theological Commission (ITC) in 1969, Joseph Ratzinger—the future Benedict XVI- said "[von Balthasar] is right in what he teaches of the faith."

Some of what von Balthasar "taught" is what Francis presented to America Magazine: "the Petrine church" and "the Marian principle.' So, the pope said, "The church is a woman. The church is a spouse."

Specifically, in response to the question about ordaining women, Francis distinguished the "ministerial dimension, [which] is that of the Petrine church" from "the Marian principle, which is the principle of femininity (femineidad) in the church, of the woman in the church, where the church sees a mirror of herself because she [the church] is a woman and a spouse."

The pope continued, describing the church as female, and then said, "There is a third way: the administrative way….it is something of normal administration. And, in this aspect, I believe we have to give more space to women."

Francis went on to extol the "functioning" of women in management, summing up his comments by saying, "So there are three principles, two theological and one administrative."

To sum up his belief, the "Petrine principle" covers ministry and the "Marian principle" presents the church as "spouse" and these two so-called "theological principles" are complemented by the "administrative principle" to which women are suited.

Francis concluded by asking, "Why can a woman not enter ordained ministry? It is because the Petrine principle has no place for that."

The Executive Editor of America Magazine, Kerry Weber (a woman) did not ask a follow-up question.

We can return to the question of women in ministry, but let us examine women in management more closely, the idea that women exemplify the "administrative principle" that Francis presented that late November day in 2022.

Management

The Church has advanced somewhat in its inclusion of women in management, in administrative positions in local dioceses.

For example, in the United States today, 54 women serve as diocesan chancellor, an important, non-ministerial position. (c.f. The Official Catholic Directory, Athens, GA: NRP Direct, 2023. There are 28.73% Latin Rite and 11.11% Eastern Rite female chancellors. In Latin Rite dioceses, 23, or 12.71% of chancellors are deacons, none in Eastern Rite dioceses.)

The chancellor is the senior administrative officer, the highest-placed office manager of a diocese, but the chancellor—in his or her role—is not performing "ministry" as it is formally defined, and the chancellor has no jurisdictional authority.

In Rome, especially in the Roman Curia, the question of women in managerial or administrative positions gets complicated.

We know women have been appointed to positions in the Curia, but these appointments are not to offices with jurisdiction. It is important to remember that only persons with jurisdiction can make decisions.

The easiest way to understand the situation is to look at the Instrumentum Laboris—the working document-for the coming session of the Synod of Bishops this October (2024):

In a synodal Church, the responsibility of the bishop, the College of bishops and the Roman Pontiff to make decisions is inalienable since it is rooted in the hierarchical structure of the Church established by Christ." (IL #70)

Listen carefully: "the responsibility…to make decisions is inalienable since it is rooted in the hierarchical structure of the Church."

And who makes up the hierarchy? The hierarchy is the ordained men of the Church.

The paragraph asserting the "inalienable" right of the clergy to make decisions underscores the "you discern, we decide" fact of ecclesiastical discipline, of church law.

Its roots are in Canons 129 and 274 of the Code of Canon Law. (Can. 129 §1. Those who have received sacred orders are qualified, according to the norm of the prescripts of the law, for the power of governance, which exists in the Church by divine institution and is also called the power of jurisdiction. §2. Lay members of the Christian faithful can cooperate in the exercise of this same power according to the norm of law. Can. 274 §1. Only clerics can obtain offices for whose exercise the power of orders or the power of ecclesiastical governance is required.)

Canon 129 states that ordained persons are qualified for the powers of governance and jurisdiction, and that lay persons can "cooperate" in this power.

Canon 274 states that only clerics can obtain offices requiring the power of orders or governance (or jurisdiction.)

But this same paragraph in the coming Synod meeting's Instrumentum Laboris later goes on to give ample room to the actual process of synodal discernment and it even throws a lifeline to the non-ordained of the Church.

The paragraph ends by suggesting the Code of Canon Law restricting the non-ordained to a "consultative vote only" (tantum consultivum) should be, in its words, "corrected."

It remains to be seen what correction could be made. As the synodal processes in Australia and Germany, for example, have proven, requests for change meet great resistance, and at least in the case of Germany rebuke, from Rome.

Having said all this, we must acknowledge the fact that there are more women in more responsible managerial roles in the Roman Curia than during prior pontificates.

The Roman Curia comprises the staff offices for Pope Francis, each managing a specific part of the Church's organisational needs, for example, the choosing of bishops, matters involving other clergy and religious, oversight of finances, and the operations of Vatican City State, from managing the library and museums to overseeing the pope's representatives (called papal nuncios) abroad, etc.

In the Roman Curia, there are sixteen curial offices called dicasteries.

There are also the Secretariate of State, three Institutions of Justice (Apostolic Penitentiary, the Supreme Tribunal, the Tribunal of the Roman Rota), four Institutions of Finance (Council for the Economy, Secretariat for the Economy, the Office of the Auditor General, and the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (A.P.S.A.)).

Of these, only A.P.S.A. has a woman undersecretary, Sister Silvana Piro, F.M.G.B

Curial offices with women as senior officers include:

• the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (Secretary Sister Simona Brambilla, M.C.; Under Secretary Sister Carmen Ros Nortes, N.S.C.),
• the Dicastery for the Laity, the Family, and Life (Under Secretaries Dr. Linda Ghisoni and Dr. Gabriella Gambino),
• the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development (Secretary, Sister Alessandra Smerilli, FMA). These women hold paid professional appointments.

Other dicasteries of the Roman Curia have women who are termed "members," and who, alongside clerics (usually cardinals and bishops), largely act as trustees for the dicasteries' work and who meet in Rome from time to time.

All dicasteries have female staff who assist with day-to-day operations, as clerks, secretaries, and translators, but clerics retain the overall organisational power in the Vatican.

While women are also members of Councils and Commissions, for the most part, these are not full-time professional appointments. For example, one of Pope Francis' initial endeavors was to regularise Vatican finances, and so within one year of his election, he established the Council for the Economy, as mentioned earlier.

The title of Pope Francis's Apostolic Letter establishing the Council for the Economy as a dicastery of the Roman Curia is Fidelis Dispensator et Prudens, (faithful and wise manager).

The fifteen-member Council for the Economy has consistently maintained a clerical majority and is coordinated by a cardinal. However, its website describes seven members as "experts of various nationalities, with financial expertise and recognised professionalism," and six of those seven are women, each a financial professional.

Its deputy coordinator, Dr Charlotte Kreuter-Kirchhof, is a law professor who is also an advisor to the "Women in Church and Society" sub-commission of the Pastoral Commission of the German Bishops' Conference.

As you move down the Vatican's wire diagram to the groups with a consultative role, more women are present in "titled" roles.

The Secretary for the Pontifical Commission for Latin America is Argentinian Dr Emilce Cuda, and the Adjunct Secretary for the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors is American Dr Teresa Kettelkamp.

The Secretary of the Pontifical Biblical Commission is Spaniard Dr Nuria Calduch-Benages, a well-known biblical scholar and professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

Dr Calduch-Benages is the unpaid Secretary of the Pontifical Biblical Commission. I do not know if Dr Cuda or Dr Kettlekamp is paid.

You see, not every Vatican appointment comes with a salary.

The voluntary nature of participation in certain positions in the Vatican increases as the commissions and institutes that are ad hoc, or adjunct, to one or another dicastery proliferate.

While participation is unpaid, travel expenses are covered, including (if needed) a few nights' lodging in Domus Sanctae Marthae. However, budgetary and language restrictions within the Vatican cause a significant default to choosing participants and members already residing in Rome and its environs.

And it is important to recall that women -whether secular or religious women - have no guarantee of ecclesiastical salaries outside their voluntary Vatican work.

So even if chosen, it is sometimes difficult for a woman to accept a consultative Vatican appointment.

So, yes, there are many women involved in Vatican operations. Those central to actual management functions of the Curia are salaried Italian women, including many religious sisters, and others fluent in Italian.

Those in more consultative roles are from a larger pool of qualified individuals. Those in even more peripheral positions, such as the members of the two Pontifical Commissions for the Study of the Diaconate of Women, include more women.

But even the commission I served on was comprised of members of other, more permanent Vatican commissions, or they were members of university faculties in Rome. Except me. I was the only member of my commission with no Roman or Vatican connection.

Ministry

The Commission I served on was about ministry as the Vatican formally defined it then and how the Vatican realistically defines it to this day. If you ask the folks at Merriam-Webster, "ministry" comprises the office, duties, or functions of a minister.

That is, ministry is about the office, duties, or functions of a member of the clergy.

As I noted earlier, Pope Francis seems to depend on categories invented by Hans Urs von Balthasar, categories the pope calls "theological."

He said the ministerial dimension is that of the Petrine church and the Marian principle is the principle of femininity in the Church. That appears to eliminate women.

As grating as these categories are, it is important at this point to recall how Pope Francis has referred to women from the very beginning of his pontificate.

In May 2013, during his first address to the International Union of Superiors General, Francis recommended that the sisters be mothers, not old maids.

His repeated "jokes" and other comments about women have fallen flat time after time.

Who can forget his calling women theologians the "strawberries on the cake"? That was ten years ago, but it signaled one way Francis saw women professionals then.

What about now?

Francis has repeated his feminine analogies about the Church.

Just last March, in an address to participants in a conference entitled "Women in the Church: Builders of Humanity," the pope said, "The Church is herself a woman: a daughter, a bride and a mother."

While the qualities he attributes to women are laudable for everyone, he emphasises two aspects of "women's vocation": style and education. He notes that "style" includes the ability "to bring love where love is lacking, and humanity where human beings are searching to find their true identity."

He speaks directly to the conference participants about "education," expressing his hope that "educational settings, in addition to being places of study, research and learning, places of ‘information,' will also be places of ‘formation,' where minds and hearts are opened to the promptings of the Holy Spirit."

Without digressing to the 1967 Land O'Lakes Statement and its controversy or Pope John Paul II's Apostolic Constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae on Catholic universities, I must note here the distinction between theology and apologetics, as well as the tasks and duties of the diaconate.

As for Catholic education, the fact of the formative influence of Catholic education cannot be disparaged nor denied, but theology is not apologetics.

As for the diaconate, the deacon is ordained to the ministries of the Word, the liturgy, and charity. If we consider the historical position of the deacon as the principal coordinator of the charity of the Church, then the duty of the deacon to proclaim and preach the Word in the liturgy becomes evident.

If we apply the pope's words to the diaconal ministry of women throughout the centuries, in the West up through the mid-12th century, we can see that it was women deacons who brought love where love was lacking and who provided formation to women and children.

We know women were ordained in Lucca, Italy in the mid-1100s, but realistically in the 12th century, no person who was not destined for priestly ordination could be ordained deacon.

Since by that time, most women deacons were monastics, with few serving as what might be termed "social service" deacons, and because the diaconate as exercised by men had become mostly ceremonial and generally moribund, the sacramental ordination of women to the diaconate ceased in the West.

I spoke at length about women in management. But what about women in ministry?

It is impossible to ignore Pope Francis' emphatic "no" when he was asked in a CBS television interview about the sacramental ordination of women as deacons.

He seemed to support his "no" with his opinion that the "deaconesses" in the early church—and "deaconess" is the word he used—that the "deaconesses" in the early church served diaconal "functions" without being sacramentally ordained.

That understanding is not supported by scholarship.

A little recent history

Since 1971, the Church has, at various times and various levels, directly discussed the ordination of women as deacons.

In 1971, the second meeting of the Synod of Bishops included substantial discussion about women in ordained ministry.

By 1973, Pope Paul VI established a Commission on the Role of Women in Church and in Society, which met intermittently over a period of two years. In that Commission, the question of women priests was immediately off the table.

But at its first meeting, one of the commission's fourteen women members asked to discuss women deacons.

The Commission's president, an Italian archbishop, immediately closed the discussion.

He said the diaconate was a stage of orders directly connected to the priesthood—this argument would soon be termed the "unicity of orders" -and therefore women deacons could not be considered.

Even so, he augmented the commission's final two-page report with a seven-page private memorandum to Pope Paul VI, which was much more positive about women deacons.

Meanwhile, in 1969 the International Theological Commission had been created to address questions of doctrine.

The world's foremost (male) theologians gathered in Rome on occasion to discuss pressing issues for the Church.

Women in ministry soon became one of those pressing issues, and the Secretary of the International Theological Commission, perhaps at the suggestion of the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, named a small sub-group of theologians to study the female diaconate.

Their discussion was quite positive—even Yves Congar thought the ordination of women as deacons was possible—but despite some members urging a positive vote on the question, none was taken, the question was tabled, and the ITC proceeded to write a document that opined women could not be ordained as priests.

The official commentary to that document stated that the question of women deacons would be left for "further study."

Academic debate continued, and there remained no consensus as to whether the women deacons of history were sacramentally ordained.

However, to say the women of history were not sacramentally ordained would be to dispute the intent of the ordaining bishops, who used the same ritual for women deacons as for men deacons.

The formal rituals used to ordain women were performed within the Mass, where the persons to be ordained as deacons—whether male or female—were ordained by the bishop inside the sanctuary, through the laying on of hands with the epiclesis (or calling down of the Holy Spirit); they were invested with a stole, self-communicated from the chalice, and the bishop called them deacons.

That is, both male and female candidates were ordained in identical ceremonies and were called deacons, or, in some languages, the women deacons were called "deaconesses."

So, why could women not be ordained today?

Several reasons are given, all of which fall to either logic, history, or both. They are,

• Women deacons were blessed but not "ordained";
• "Deaconess" always means the wife of a deacon;
• Male and female deacons had different functions;
• The unicity of orders limits ordination to men (cursus honorum);
• Women cannot image Christ (iconic argument);
• Women are not valid subjects for ordination;
• Women are "unclean" and restricted from the sanctuary.

Since the 17th century, scholars have argued over the history of women deacons, one or another questioning whether the women deacons of history were sacramentally ordained.

In the 17th century, one scholar, Jean Morin, studied all the existing liturgies in Latin, Greek, and the languages of Syria and Babylonia.

He determined that the liturgies met the criteria for sacramental ordination set forth by the Council of Trent.

A century later, another writer disagreed.

When we arrive at the 1970s, the question of women in the church, especially the question of women priests, was in the air.

Nothing came of the work of the ITC sub-commission, except one member, Cipriano Vagaggini published a long and dense article stating his positive view.

Vagaggini was so well thought of, that the 1987 Synod of Bishops asked his opinion on women deacons, which he freely shared.

After reminding the assembled bishops that in 1736, when Pope Benedict XIV approved ordained women deacons in the Catholic Maronite tradition, he permitted them to administer the sacrament of extreme unction within their monasteries, Vagaggini continued:

If that is the case, one senses the legitimacy and urgency for competent authorities to admit women to the sacrament of order of the diaconate and to grant them all the functions, even the liturgical functions that, in the present historical moment of the church, are considered necessary for the greater benefit of believers, not excluding—as I personally maintain—if it is judged pastorally appropriate, equality between the liturgical functions of men deacons and women deacons. (- Cipriano Vagaggini, "The Deaconess in the Byzantine Tradition" in Women Deacons? Essays with Answers, Phyllis Zagano, ed. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2016, 96-99, at 99.)

His recommendation went nowhere, and around that time I was told in Rome by the highest placed women in the Curia that "they can't say ‘no'; they just don't want to say ‘yes'".

The discussion continued and was picked up by the 1992-1997 ITC, which again formed a subcommittee and again found in favor of restoring women to the ordained diaconate.

Their 17-page document was printed, numbered, and voted on, but not promulgated. The ITC president objected. He was then the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

So, the question went to yet another ITC subcommittee, which in 2002 published a paper stating that the question was "up to the Magisterium" to decide.

Nothing happened.

Until, in 2016, the International Union of Superiors General (UISG) asked Pope Francis to form another Commission. And so I went to Rome that following November in 2016.

There was another pontifical commission, which met twice for one week each, in September of 2021 and July of 2022.

The Synod on Synodality

The first session of the current Synod on Synodality asked for the reports of each Commission because in synodal discussion some felt ordaining women as deacons would restore a tradition, while others disagreed.

The Synod stated that questions about women were "urgent," and so, one of the ten "study groups" charged by the pope and the Synod office to provide detailed reports to Synod members was charged with the question of women deacons.

Meanwhile, as I mentioned, in his televised interview with CBS-TV's Norah O'Donnell, the pope said "no" to women deacons.

Specifically, he denied the possibility to Norah O'Donnell, who asked him:

Norah O'Donnell (23:05): I understand you have said no women as priests, but you are studying the idea of women as deacons. Is that something you are open to?

Translator (23:15): No. If it is deacons with holy orders, no. But women have always had, I would say the function of deaconesses without being deacons, right? Women are of great service as women, not as ministers. As ministers in this regard. Within the Holy Orders.

That could be the end of it, or not. I am attempting to get the Spanish recording or the Spanish transcript.

What did the pope understand?

Was he being asked about the diaconate as a preliminary step to the priesthood?

On the face of it, his response is wholly incorrect.

There was no distinction between women deacons and deaconesses throughout history. It is a fact that some, if not all, were sacramentally ordained.

What the Church has done the Church can do again.

And the Church has done it.

On May 2, the Greek Orthodox Church of Zimbabwe ordained a woman deacon—they prefer the term "deaconess"—using the liturgy it uses for ordaining men as deacons.

The ordaining prelate, Metropolitan Seraphim, just changed the pronouns.

We know that Synod reports from every corner of the world ask the Church to recognise the baptismal equality of all people.

While women are increasingly added to church management, the only response to requests for women deacons has been Pope Francis' televised "no."

We sit and wonder what the future holds.

I cannot tell you what my Commission did.

Despite my three requests to the Commission president, then-Archbishop Luis Ladaria, twice in writing and once in person, I have not seen what he gave Pope Francis in the name of the Commission I served on.

I can tell you one thing, however.

After our first meeting formally closed, I asked to say just one more thing, to the group and to the Commission president.

I said: "When I arrived at the Vatican, I was listed on the guest list as ‘Monsignor Zagano.'"

One member asked: "If she's a monsignor, what are we doing here?"

Exactly.

• Phyllis Zagano, Ph.D. is senior research associate-in-residence and adjunct professor of religion at Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York.
• Transcript from Rita Cassella Jones Lecture at Fordham of September 17, 2024.

Joe Grayland - What's the point of having deacons

You've written a lot about the diaconate and women as deacons.

So I'm going to start because, coming with a little bit of a parish priest appreciation, it's like, why do I need a deacon?

What I need is an assistant priest.

So, why do we need deacons?

Why do we have them at all?

What's the purpose and the point?

Phyllis Zagano

Well, you know, that is the situation the Church was in since the 12th century.

And I think the Church found itself devoid of the diaconate when the priests, mostly the priests in Rome, but priests in other places in Europe, were getting more and more annoyed that the fellow who was going to be elected as bishop was a deacon.

And so when we talk about the diaconate, we're talking about many, many different things.

We talk about the diaconate today, I have the same question.

What good is the diaconate?

Why would anybody want to be a deacon, particularly a woman?

Why would a woman want to be a deacon?

And why would a parish priest want to have a deacon?

Well, if you can't have an assistant priest, if you're not knitting one in the basement these days, you're well off to have a deacon.

But I don't think that's the only reason to have a deacon. When we think of the diaconate as it is, it's about its liturgical functions.

The deacon can do the wedding, the deacon can do the baptism, the deacon can do the funeral.

The diaconate to me is really bringing the Gospel in action to the people of God.

So it's the deacon, really historically, who managed the Church's charity.

And if we really recover the diaconate today, I think the deacon would be the one to help get the checkbook out of the pastor's hands and spread the wealth around, take care of the poor.

I really think that that's what it's about, evangelisation and taking care of the poor.

Joe Grayland - So what about transitional deacons?

Okay, so what do you think then about transitional deacons?

Do they have a point in your opinion?

Phyllis Zagano

Well, there's one diaconate and the diaconate is still a stage on the way to priesthood.

But when we think of what they call improperly, actually, the transitional diaconate, as opposed to the improperly called permanent diaconate, when we think of the diaconate as a stage on the way to priesthood, it is, I think, a necessary training ground for priests.

But I don't know that it's necessary at all, really.

Many people have written on this. I really haven't written that much about it, but a lot of people have said there's no reason to ordain anyone a deacon before that person's ordained a priest.

So, it's what we do.

It's our custom now.

It is confusing.

I don't like the term transitional deacon any more than I like the term permanent deacon.

But it's what we have.

And I don't think it's going to change.

Joe Grayland - Why bother about deacons?

Where does your love and interest for the diaconate come from?

What's influenced you over the years to even bother with the whole thing, given how difficult it can be?

Phyllis Zagano

Well, how difficult the whole Church can be.

I think the love is the love of the Gospel.

And the job of the deacon is to preach the Gospel, to spread the Gospel, to bring, as William Deitwig says, "drag the ambo to the streets."

And I just found myself in a situation, a position when I was finishing my doctorate actually, of learning about the diaconate, learning that there had been women in the diaconate, and marching myself into the local seminary and telling them I wanted to study to be a deacon.

And I stayed there for about a year, taking courses, mostly part-time.

But the encouragement came from the Papal Nuncio to the United States, actually.

When I was at the seminary, there were a couple of fellows who were not what we call lifers.

They had finished college and were just starting their graduate studies there.

Everybody else in the seminary had been in the system for eight or ten years.

And they said, "Well, the Nuncio's coming. How's your Cassock and Sash?" - which I didn't have.

So I wore a yellow pantsuit.

Joe Grayland: And they saw you coming!

Phyllis Zagano: They kind of noticed me.

We sat not in the chapel, but in the refectory. My friends set me on the end so that when the Nuncio and the bishop walked by, it was really hard to miss.

And the bishop, who knew me; the bishop had played basketball with my father.

The bishop looked down and said, "Phyllis, what are you doing here?"

I said, "I'm studying".

So soon enough, a lovely young priest came to me and said, "The Nuncio would like to see you in the front hall."

So I went.

And it was Archbishop Jadot, and he interviewed me for 20 minutes about a vocation to the diaconate.

And he said, "Don't quit."

And so, you know, then I went, I finished my doctorate, I was teaching, I was working for John Cardinal O'Connor.

I actually got a request before I started working for O'Connor as Archbishop of New York. I actually worked first in the military archdiocese.

I got a request from the director of vocations for the Archdiocese of New York that this Vicar General of the Military Ordinariate, as it was at the time, John O'Connor, wanted to know how to get more women in chaplaincy in the military.

So I said, "Tell him to ordain us."

And she came back and said, "He wants a longer answer."

So I wrote a big paper.

And I gave an equivalency of military rank and structure, particularly Navy rank and structure, talking about enlisted and warrant grades and officer grades, and the way that a warrant grade could be established for the diaconate.

The diaconate was certainly a ministry that the Catholic chaplaincies could use in the American military.

So he asked to see me, and I went in, and of course the fight was on.

And he encouraged me, he outlined with me my first book, Holy Saturday.

He told me that he would get it to the Pope.

I said, "Oh, you don't know the Pope."

Well, he did, and he ended up as the Archbishop of New York, and I worked for him.

So I just continued the studies, continued my own work, but also continued interest, training as a spiritual director, working where I could in chaplaincies and church-related entities.

Joe Grayland - Woman suing the Church

I wonder whether you've heard about the 62-year-old woman in Belgium who's suing the church, the Belgian church, because they won't allow her to become a diaconess.

Do you think, there's lots of things going on there.

Do you think it's a matter of justice?

Would you agree with what she's doing?

You know, even though I'm not asking you to understand everything, you know, you probably don't know her personally, but do you think the idea is good, or is it a waste of time?

Phyllis Zagano

Is it a matter of justice that she do this? Well, justice for whom?

You know, the question, if it's justice for the Church, if the Church deserves the ministry of women and its diaconate, then the conversation needs to be concluded in a positive manner.

It has been suggested to me to sue in ecclesiastical court, the restrictions against women and the diaconate.

It's not something I've pursued, certainly, or even studied.

But I would say she's not asking to be a diaconess, she's asking to be a deacon, unless she is in the Eastern tradition.

And I will tell you that on May 2nd of this year in Harare, Zimbabwe, the Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Africa ordained a woman a diaconess.

And so there is a movement, particularly now with our older cousins, explaining that this is truly a sacramental ministry to which women can be called.

So I don't know anything about what's going on in Belgium.

It's interesting, but I don't find going to the courts helpful in really in most any controversy.

Joe Grayland - Was the woman ordained a deacon

I want to come to an example I was reading as well of the woman who was ordained a deacon.

So, some questions were raised in the German media, the Catholic media, here in Germany, and the questions were really: Was it right or worthwhile for one part of an Orthodox communion to operate without having consulted the rest?

So that's one question.

But more specifically for the diaconate is, in what manner or form was this woman ordained?

So is it a sacerdotial thing that she's received?

Is it a laying on of hands?

Is it an institution?

What words would we use in the Roman church, if you like, or in the Western world to describe what happened to her in terms of ritual?

And also to describe, would we use the word ontological change in terms of...

I know, yes, I can see your heads going, God help us.

But it is a real problem, which you actually address in your book.

But it's that concept of, was she ontologically changed?

Did the ritual provide that ontological ritualiszation?

What happened there?

Phyllis Zagano

I'm not going to get into the ontological debate, but I will tell you, I've seen photographs of the ordination.

She had the laying on of hands inside the iconostasis.

The ritual was the ordination ritual for the Orthodox church.

It's part of the section, or Harare is part of the Patriarchate of Alexandria, which agreed, and also with the agreement, as I understand it, of His All Holiness Bartholomew.

So, it was not so much a departure that it may have been presented in the German papers.

Maybe four or five years ago, there was another ordination in another part of Africa.

And that was more likely an ordination to the subdiaconate, which is still a major order.

But the women there, the five women there, three religious and two lay people or vice versa, were ordained.

And the intent of the bishop at that time was to ordain them to the diaconate, not to the subdiaconate.

However, American money interests said that if he did that, they would pull their money from him.

So it was a subdiaconal ordination, and that's all I know about that.

But I will say that the one in Harare, and I haven't spoken, an American named Dr Carrie Frost was there.

I've spoken to her before, but not since.

She was there to witness it, and she was assuring me that it would be a liturgically correct Greek Orthodox ordination, which is to a major order, and that the woman would be considered a member of the clergy and a deacon.

She wanted me to know there are women deacons in Bulgaria.

There are women deacons in certain places of the Orthodox world that we really don't hear about, and they do proclaim the Gospel.

And they're not all women religious.

And this particular woman is not a religious.

She will be what might be termed a social service deacon.

She's not a monastic deacon.

She'll be out there working with the people, and that was the intent of the bishop, the ordaining bishop.

That's what he said he wanted.

Joe Grayland - The Gospel with hands and feet

So he wanted in many ways then to go back to the roots that you talked about at the beginning of our conversation, that taking the checkbook away from the pastor, I think, was the phrase you used, but getting out there and being part of that social outreach of the church, you know, where the Gospel actually has feet and hands and an intention beyond a proclamation within the liturgy or a homily without reality behind it.

I think it's interesting, don't you think, that if Orthodoxy moves in this way, do you think it makes it easier for Roman Catholicism to follow on?

Do we need them to take the lead rather than the Anglicans?

Phyllis Zagano

Well, I'll tell you, years ago, one woman, a Greek Orthodox woman, spoke with His All Holiness in Constantinople, and he said, well, you know, we don't want to get ahead of the Romans on this.

And another woman I know, a great funder actually in Boston, spoke to Cardinal Sean O'Malley, and he said, well, we don't want to get ahead of the Orthodox on this.

And, of course, three women speaking together said, we could figure this out pretty easily, boys.

I think it's helpful that the Orthodox are reclaiming their tradition.

And the most important thing is that you use the word "sacerdotal ordination," the diaconal ordination is not a sacerdotal ordination.

Pope Benedict XVI, with omnium in mentum in 2009, really echoed the words of the catechism, which had been promulgated, what, in 1983, that basically the diaconate is not the priesthood.

And we see this in Lumen Gentium 29.

We see it in many, many places, that the diaconate is clearly not part of the priesthood, which really rebounds to your question about the so-called transitional and permanent diaconates.

The diaconate is part of holy orders, but it's not part of the priesthood.

And to get that through, the minds that govern the decisions in the Church, I think is the most important barrier that we must overcome.

There is no need, no reason, to assume that an individual ordained as a deacon will actually become a priest.

However, with the work of Gresham in the codification of the Cursus Honorum, at the time you could not be ordained a deacon unless you were, for the most part, going to be ordained a priest.

That's really where the problem is, and it's eight, nine centuries old.

So it's a steep hill to climb.

And I think it's a question of a greater understanding that's needed in the church on both sides of the altar rail on what exactly is the diaconate and how can the diaconate be part of the circle.

Joe Grayland - Catholic Social teaching, Synodality and Women

I want to move the circle on a little bit.

Your recent book, Just Church, was a fascinating read: Catholic Social Teachings, Synodality, and Women.

Why did you put those three elements together?

Phyllis Zagano

Well, the book actually came out a little while ago.

It was completed before the most recent meeting of the Synod.

Catholic Social Teaching, I found an interesting way to enter how women have been discussed in the church.

And of course, I was interested in the way the Synod would be and is discussing the questions relative to women in the church.

So, I just felt there'd be a one, two, or three step, and we first have to understand what Catholic Social Teaching is.

We can take a look at how Catholic Social Teaching has spoken about women, which I do.

Then we can try to understand what is Synodality, and then see how these two concepts have affected the discussion about women in the church and how they might affect the discussion going forward.

The last time we spoke, three years ago, I think, on this program, and at the time I read a letter from someone who I said was a bishop, who I knew, actually was a Jesuit bishop.

Well, actually, I didn't tell you it was from the Pope.

And what he wrote to me, now he wrote me this in 2020.

So, this is one year before the Synod was announced.

And he talks about discernment.

He thanks me for my work and how relevant it is to the question of discernment.

And I'll read you the paragraph that I read on your program three years ago.

"Discernment is not an organisational technique and not even a passing fashion, but it is an interior attitude rooted in an act of faith.

"Discernment is the method and at the same time the goal that we propose.

"It is based on the belief that God is at work in the history of the world, in the events of life, in the people we meet and speak to us.

"This is why we are called to listen to what the Spirit suggests to us with often unpredictable ways and directions."

And he goes on to talk a little bit more about that.

But I don't even think I got it.

I don't think I understood what he was saying in 2020.

And I think we are all trying to grasp.

And I think, you know, I'm trained as an Ignatian director.

Why didn't I get it?

I had been told that the Holy Father was waiting to hear the voice of the Spirit on the question of women in the diaconate.

I think genuinely, and going back to the book, genuinely, that is what I was setting up, and that is what is happening.

Joe Grayland - Taking the Gospel to the streets

We see that Catholic social teaching has taken the Gospel to the streets.

We see a growing understanding of what is synodality, what is discernment.

And now we can take a look at the question of women.

Do we need deacons, such as you asked?

Do we need women deacons, such as you suggest?

These are things to be discerned and carefully discerned.

Can I just go back to some things in your book.

On page 25, you talk a little bit about the UN and what they've been up trying to do.

And you say, not in your words, but in mine, that the Church remains at odds with a lot of these sort of statements.

You know, that we've got, you don't say this so much, but we've got all of this language, all of this intentional language around the place of women and the place and families and everything like this.

But when it comes down to it, maybe the point is that lay people cooperate with power, but they don't share it.

This is an example that comes out of the Australian Plenary Council, you know, and their vote on the diaconate for women.

And I'm just wondering whether, again, another quote from page nine, which I thought was really cool, ontological equality, while also admitting hierarchical subordination.

And so, taken out of context, you know, which is the perfect thing for an interviewer to do, taken out of context, putting all of those things together.

What do you think is the big problem, not the problem, or the challenge that the Church is facing in terms of laity being involved and being included, being activated, but more particularly in terms of women being included?

And then I suppose it comes down to the very particular question around women in the deaconate, which I think is very particular.

But could you take us back up out of the roots, to the top of the grass, and give us an overall view of where you see the Church being at odds with the reality of the world in which many Western Christian Catholic women live?

Phyllis Zagano

Well, you know, Joe, I think the Church will always be at odds with the world as it is typified.

I've just been invited to debate at the Cambridge Union in the UK that feminism is incompatible with religion.

And I wrote them back and said, please define your terms, because if you're talking about feminism that is pro-abortion, etc., of course, if you're talking about feminism that says, no, excuse me, women can do jobs just as men can do, and there's really no restriction, well then, no, it's not.

And in fact, that is something that the Church is, that religion needs to support.

When you talk about authority in the Church, and you reference the term cooperate, I know you were thinking about Canon 129, which was actually written by Joseph Ratzinger, with the exception of one comma.

It went straight into the 1983 Code of Canon Law, that basically lay people can cooperate but not share in governance.

And that is where the tension lies.

And in fact, in terms of the somewhat significant advances that Pope Francis has made in terms of giving women position in the Curia, it's still management, not ministry.

The jobs are ancillary to the spreading of the gospel, not that they're not necessary, but they don't include women at the altar, they don't include women at the ambo, they don't include women in an official capacity, I think, managing the Church's charity.

Except, you know, it's certainly legally, there are ways to do it.

But I think when we, and they certainly don't include women as single judges, you have to be a cleric to be a single judge in a canonical trial.

So there are things that a cleric, and I was just reading this morning, discussions about how the woman deacon of history has always been considered a cleric.

Joe Grayland: There are certain things that are necessary, clerical status is necessary.

Now, does that also imply power?

Phyllis Zagano: Not necessarily.

You know, if you think of power in terms of authority, the woman who is the abbess in history may also have been a deacon, most likely was.

She has ultimate authority in her abbey and her abbey territories.

That authority is also given over to her by the members of her community.

So if we move back to the 21st century, and we find the authority that rests in the episcopacy, it is still given over by the people.

The authority to the bishop is given over by his priests and deacons, and the authority of the people of God is similarly given over.

I don't know, I was asked the other day about power and women asking to be deacons so they could have power.

And my answer is simply that if you're looking to be ordained to have power, you probably want to do something else.

But isn't that the problem?

Well, yeah, it is a problem, but you won't get much or any.

And certainly an individual who comes to be a deacon, just because he or she can't be a priest or a bishop, they'll be shown the door.

I mean, they're just two separate questions.

But again, let's return to the circle.

If we think about the way that a community can discern, and I know that the Australian meeting was not last summer, but the year before, I think it was, was contentious.

And I am aware that 18 Australian bishops voted down the original wording that included women deacons, and I think only five voted it down and one kind of abstained when they reworded it.

But there was still some admission that the people in that assembly did have some power to change things.

I have been described a couple of times as quite interested in the meeting. After tea time, two bishops stood with the rest of the people who refused to sit down or take their seats.

And I've talked to a couple of the bishops who were there.

And, you know, sometimes in families, discussions get tough, and I think this was one of them.

Joe Grayland - Women deacons a sign of a just Church

Why would you suggest that the deaconate for women would be a sign of a just church?

Would it be a sign of the end of discrimination?

Would it be a sign of a theological movement?

Would it be a sign of coming back to the original source?

Phyllis Zagano

You know, Mary Magdalene, for instance, proclaimed the resurrection?

Well, again, I said this before: the question of justice, it's not so much justice for me, and I want this job.

It's more justice for the people of God in a couple of different directions.

First of all, and I've said this quite often until the Holy Father has a woman proclaiming the gospel in St Peter's at a Mass he celebrates, the church really doesn't have the right to say women are to be recognised as equal and to be held as equally human to men.

I mean, it's as simple as that.

I've been told by officials of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is now the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, I've been told that women cannot image Christ.

I said, watch me. And I wrote a book about it.

You know, that women cannot image Christ is silly.

It's a silliness that is restricted to naive fiscalism.

If you think that only a man on this planet can represent in any way the love and beauty of the risen Christ...

And I think that (women representing the image of Christ) is the justice the church needs.

The church in justice needs to have the whole gospel proclaimed.

The church in justice needs to have all its people ministered to and ministered to as they need to be ministered to.

You know, the Holy Father, and twice I've heard him say this, once in a commission meeting and again in public, or actually first in public, to the International Unions of Superiors General.

He said, you know, he had spoken with an expert, a scholar of Syrian history, who told him that when a woman accused her husband of beating her, she would go to the woman deacon who would examine the bruises and then give testimony to the bishop.

Well, that to me says so much.

The bishop affirmed the testimony of a woman and probably did something about it.

I mean, it's almost an annulment, you know.

And so when you move to the present, when there is a single judge, the single judge is not going to be a woman.

So you will not have a woman going into us for an annulment, telling a single judge who would then give testimony basically to the bishop that there is reason for an annulment.

And that to me, I debated American Professor Sarah Butler at a seminary in Philadelphia years ago.

And she said, oh, women deacons only minister to other women.

I said, well, who ministers to women today?

I mean, even if you restrict the work of women deacons to other women, so what?

Joe Grayland - Cultural beliefs about women

Well, it takes us back to the original, as I mentioned, Mary of Magdala.

And the whole question that is subcutaneous there is about somebody proclaiming a truth when they are considered before the law to be incapable of proclaiming truth.

Yet when the Christian church takes it on, as you've just said, and a woman testifies for another woman in front of a bishop and the bishop does it, then you begin to see that there is a tradition that women are truth tellers within the church.

An uncomfortable tradition, possibly.

Phyllis Zagano

You know, that comes in collision, I think, with a lot of cultural beliefs about women.

I walked out of Mass the other day with a 82-year-old woman, religious, and I told her something that maybe she could mention to the pastor.

She said, well, he's not going to listen to us.

And the influence, well, the implication was he's a man and we're not.

And that's quite true.

And you do find that the stained glass ceiling does exist in other traditions who have ordained women to the diaconate and to priesthood, certainly in the Anglican communion.

Although there are more and more Anglican women bishops, not that I'm arguing for either Anglican bishops or priests, but there is the cultural problem of the way men in the world relate to women in the world.

And as I alluded to or said earlier, until the pope stands up and says, you know, that women are trustworthy enough to proclaim the gospel, even to preach, I don't think the church has the right.

And I will blame the church.

I will blame the church for female genital mutilation.

I'll blame the church for dowry burnings.

I'll blame the church for menstruation huts.

I'll blame the church for wife beating.

There are many instances around the world where women are really badly treated and denigrated and looked down upon.

And you don't know this.

I've suffered it myself.

You know, I love to go to places where they have no idea who I am and they treat me like I'm a dimwit.

I mean, you just laugh because it's so, it's so sad, really.

Joe Grayland - Synods affirm women's diaconate as sign of hope

Recently, you may be aware that in Austria the synodal process there has affirmed the decision of the women's diaconate as a sign of hope.

But, and here in Germany the same, and in various other places it's come through the synodal process.

However, on the other side of it, we've seen other people like Cardinal Sara and others in Africa talking very strongly against these Western European colonial ideas, with introducing the thing that I would describe as an African exceptionalism.

Where in sub-Saharan Africa, you know, the exception is that gay people can be mutilated, burnt, raped, and then killed.

It's perfectly okay for the African episcopate to accept that.

Possibly because they've got some other problems they think are much more important.

Like having to face down Islam, for instance, or as a scholar friend of mine who's in Tübingen at the moment from Nairobi has been informing me of the movement of young people back to the pre-colonial worship forms and understandings of God.

That's a context.

My point is this.

Is it possible that the push for women deacons, equality of women, to not accept, you know, the arguments of the menstruation huts and all the rest of it, is a thoroughly European, North American, white person, I don't know how you describe it.

It's become very difficult to describe.

But it's sort of our argument, but it's not an argument of the global South, which is also a sort of a silly sort of term, because the global South doesn't include places like Australia and New Zealand.

I mean, you know, from all of your travels, what do you think it's just, do you think we're the only ones really interested in it?

Or, you know, is it European, North American exceptionalism to have women or want women or need them?

Phyllis Zagano

Well, European, but probably not Italy, North American, but also Australia and South America and Central America.

I sat at a table with Wilfred Nepier in South Africa, the retired cardinal, who told me that he objected to my pushing Western ideas down his throat.

I said, well, no one's pushing anything down anybody's throat.

If your territory does not need or wish for women in the diaconate, it will not have it.

It's as simple as that.

If Austria and Germany find that the diaconate can include women and the church can accept it, and there is a need for it, then that's what it is.

I sat at a table with the bishops of Cambodia and Thailand, and I asked them about women in the diaconate.

They said, we wouldn't care, male or female, we need the help, number one, but you know what, we don't have enough educated people to make them deacons.

That was, I think, before the Holy Father invited the church to include women as acolytes and lectors.

I can see where, for example, in Cambodia and Thailand, formally training and installing women and men as lectors and acolytes would be a wonderful expansion of the church's ministry.

I think that the cultures that can accept the ordination of women will, and the cultures that cannot may move to have a greater understanding of the equality of women as human beings.

Even if they do not include women in their own diaconates, if they have diaconates at all, I think it could still be helpful as an example of the way women can and should be recognized and respected.

I'm certain that if, not actually if, when it rolls out, it'll be the same as the diaconate was rolled out after the Second Vatican Council.

That is, Episcopal conferences would need to decide if they would include women in their own diaconates, and Rome would approve their requests.

And then it would go back, and the Episcopal conferences would simply say to their bishops, individual bishops would make their own decisions about what they need in their diocese.

And one would hope, with an increase in synodality, that the bishop's decision could be a more synodal decision, and less of an individual "I'm in charge" decision, which the church suffers in too many places still.

Joe Grayland - Census fidei

Maybe there are other things going through your head and you would like to give us a sentence or some sort of phrase just to wrap up maybe the loose ends of this conversation.

Something that occurs to you that I haven't asked that I should have asked, or a point that you'd just like to emphasise before we wrap up.

Phyllis Zagano

Well, I think the thing I would like to emphasize is that the work of the church, the mission, you know, the synod talks about communion, mission, and participation.

As the dogmatic constitution of the church teaches, we must be in communion on matters of faith and morals.

You know, the census fidei is there, and it's very important.

The mission of the church to me is to spread the gospel and to act on the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And participation is who gets to do what.

And I think that's where we are in terms of figuring it out as we go along in our different cultures.

You know, Joe, you're in Germany. Others are listening in New Zealand, in Australia.

I'm in the United States.

Everybody has a different situation.

But if that situation and if that conversation has the gospel at its centre, I think that's where we will progress as human beings, certainly, and as Christians.

• This is a transcript of a conversation between Phyllis Zagano and Joe Grayland on the topic of the diaconate. The text has been edited in parts for flow.
• Phyllis Zagano is American author and academic. She has written and spoken on the role of women in the Roman Catholic Church and is an advocate for the ordination of women as deacons. She is a researcher and adjunct professor a Hofstra University. Her latest book is "Just Church: Catholic Social Teaching, Synodality, and Women".

That sums up the synod and the state of the Catholic Church's attitude toward change.

In October, hundreds of bishops, joined by lay men and women, priests, deacons, religious sisters and brothers met for nearly a month in Rome for the Synod on Synodality.

At its end, the synod released a synthesis report brimming with the hope and the promise that the church would be a more listening church.

Some 54 women voted at the synod. Back home, women are still ignored.

Why?

It is not because women quote the Second Vatican Council at parish council meetings. It is because too many bishops and pastors ignore parish councils.

It is not because women of the world do not write to their pastors and bishops. It is because without large checks, their letters are ignored.

The Synod on Synodality was groundbreaking in part because it was more about learning to listen.

It was more about the process than about results. Its aim was to get the whole church on board with a new way of relating, of having "conversations in the Spirit," where listening and prayer feed discernment and decision-making.

Even now, the project faces roadblocks. At their November meeting this week in Baltimore, U.S. bishops heard presentations by Brownsville, Texas, Bishop Daniel Flores, who has led the two-year national synod process so far.

His brother bishops did not look interested.

To be fair, some bishops in some dioceses, in the U.S. and other parts of the world, are on board with Pope Francis' attempt to encourage the church to accept the reforms of Vatican II, to listen to the people of God.

Too many bishops are having none of it

The synod recognized the church's global infection with narcissistic clericalism.

It said fine things about women in leadership and the care of other marginalized people. Yet the synod remains a secret in many places. Its good words don't reach the people in the pews.

Ask about synodality in any parish, and you might hear "Oh, we don't do that here." You are equally likely to hear "When I" sermons ("When I was in seminary," "When I was in another parish"), and not about the Gospel.

Folks who were excited by Francis' openness and pastoral message just shake their heads.

The women who want to contribute, who want to belong, are more than dispirited.

They have had it.

And they are no longer walking toward the door — they are running, bringing their husbands, children and chequebooks with them.

In the Diocese of Brooklyn, it was recently discovered that Mass attendance had dropped 40 percent since 2017.

It is the same in too many places.

The reason the church is wobbling is not a lack of piety.

It is because women are ignored.

Their complaints only reach as far as the storied circular file.

What do women complain about?

Women complain about bad sermons, as discussed. Autocratic pastors. And the big one: pederasty.

If truth be told, women do not trust unmarried men with their children.

Worldwide, in diocese after diocese, new revelations continue. Still.

Many bishops and pastors understand this.

Francis certainly does, but he is constrained by clerics who dig their heels into a past many of them never knew.

More and more young (and older) priests pine for the 1950s, when priests wore lace and women knew their place. That imagining does not include synodality.

Will the synod effort work?

Francis' opening to women in church management is promising. Where women are in the chancery, there is more opportunity for women's voices to be heard. No doubt, a few more women there could help.

Getting women into the sacristy is trickier.

While it seems most synod members agreed about restoring women to the ordained diaconate as a recognition of the baptismal equality of all, some stalwarts argued it was against Tradition.

Still, others saw the spectre of a "Western gender ideology" seeking to confuse the roles of men and women.

So, they asked for a review of the research. Again.

Women know the obvious: Women were ordained as deacons.

There will never be complete agreement on the facts of history, anthropology and theology. Women have said this over and over.

If there is absolute evidence that women cannot be restored to the ordained diaconate, it should be presented, and a decision made.

The women have finished speaking about it.

• Phyllis Zagano is an author at Religion News Service. She has written and spoken on the role of women in the Roman Catholic Church and is an advocate for the ordination of women as deacons.

One programme has an American host who smirks at the concept of spiritual conversation.

On the other side of the street, more liberal Catholic media focus on questions of including people in the church, be they gay, poor, Indigenous, female, migratory or divorced.

Some are more interested in only one position; a few cover them all.

To feed the stories, various lobbying efforts set up in Rome join one side or the other, presenting conferences, position papers and books on their topics.

For example, in a public theatre at an event called "The Synodal Babel," American Cardinal Raymond Burke, a fierce critic of Pope Francis, read a long argument against the synod itself.

Meanwhile, at an event billed as "Spirit Unbounded," Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister and former President of Ireland Mary McAleese called for equality in all areas of church life and practice.

And then there are books to add to the excitement.

One, by two Latin American activists and printed in eight languages by The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, or TFP, calls the synod a Pandora's box.

The English edition's foreword is by Burke. The book recounts with horror that women have asked to join church governance and ministry.

A book called "Credo" by another Francis critic comes with an imprimatur from American Bishop Peter Libasci, who is currently the subject of an abuse investigation.

Written by Athanasius Schneider, an auxiliary bishop in Kazakhstan, who has written against both Muslims and Jews, it aims to replace the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Unsurprisingly, it presents demonstrably false information about the history of women ordained as deacons and denies the authority of the pope to admit women to official lay ministries.

The back-and-forth is dizzying, and it will not end soon.

The synod is the synod. Parts of the Catholic world are involved. Some are not.

More speeches and more documents will create more controversy.

More anger and more division will cause louder calls for or against one or another issue, which is the opposite of what the synod is supposed to do, which is to resolve differences and make plans to move forward in peace.

Above all the noise, Pope Francis looks outside Vatican walls to a suffering world.

He calls for prayer and fasting for world peace.

He asks for warring nations to stop fighting, to peacefully resolve their differences. He even phoned American President Joe Biden the other day to press the point.

And that is what Francis wants for the church.

• Phyllis Zagano is an author at Religion News Service. She has written and spoken on the role of women in the Roman Catholic Church and is an advocate for the ordination of women as deacons
• First published in Religion News Service. Republished with permission.

This first pope from the Americas has breathed new life into the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, refashioned the Vatican's staid bureaucracy, and pushed the Catholic Church to focus on the needs of the environment and global peripheries.

One especially interesting turn: Only 22 years after Pope John Paul II claimed the church had "no authority whatsoever" to ordain women as priests, Francis in 2016 created a first-of-its-kind papal commission to study the history of the ordination of women as Catholic deacons.

Even more, in 2020, after that commission had wrapped up its work, the pope created another.

For an institution known for thinking in terms of millennia, this is something akin to lightspeed.

And Francis deserves special applause for listening to the voices of Catholic sisters, long neglected or, worse, mistreated by the Vatican, who bravely asked him to create the first commission.

What's particularly frustrating, then, is the near-complete lack of transparency about the work of the commissions.

Asked by NCR's then-Vatican correspondent Joshua J McElwee in 2019 about the first group's research, Francis said the 12 members of that commission had been unable to find consensus about the role of women deacons in the early church.

A few days later, the pope announced the group had written a report.

He formally handed the text over to the Rome-based umbrella organization of Catholic sisters around the world, the International Union of Superiors General, or UISG.

The document has never been released publicly.

The UISG and the commission members have kept almost total silence about what it said.

But as Phyllis Zagano, a recognized global expert who served on the commission, has surmised, the pope said he gave only a portion of their text to the sisters.

The rest presumably remains with the Vatican's powerful Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The work of the second commission is even murkier.

Although one Catholic news outlet reported that it had met together for the first time in August 2021, more than a year after the announcement, the Vatican has released no other information about its operations.

It is officially unknown how many times the group has met, if they are still meeting, or if they have written a report of their own.

The lack of information is egregious. Continue reading

Dr Zagano was one of 12 scholars appointed by Pope Francis in 2016 to the commission to study the diaconate as it existed in the early Church to ascertain the possibility of women deacons.

The Pope said their research was inconclusive and in 2020 reconvened a new commission to examine the question.

Addressing an online seminar on 3 September held to coincide with the feast of St Phoebe, who is recognised as a deacon saint in Orthodox churches, Dr Zagano referred to an "ongoing battle" for the female diaconate, and she believes the interest has grown in Australia over the 10 years since she last visited the country.

Though known for arguing strongly for ordination of women to the diaconate, Dr Zagano said that in many places women acolytes, lectors and particularly catechists hold important roles and, in some places, what may be needed is greater investment in lay parish leaders rather than widening the scope for ordination.

But she said the discussion about the female diaconate had become circular, and she "can't imagine that the Holy Father would be able to make a statement about the topic before the Synod on Synodality in 2023".

Australia's Plenary Council motions, which are yet to be sent to Rome, include a recommendation that should the universal law of the Church be modified to authorise the diaconate for women, that the Australian bishops examine how best to implement it in the context of the Church in Australia.

It comes as the Church in other countries undertakes similar discussions in the lead up to the Synod on Synodality called by Pope Francis for October 2023 in Rome. German bishops voted in favour of women deacons earlier this year as part of the country's current synod path process.

More than 100 people joined the two-hour seminar organised by Mercy Sr Elizabeth Young of Liturgy on the Margins and supported by Catholic Religious Australia.

Another speaker, associate professor Anthony Gooley of the Broken Bay Institute and a deacon of the Archdiocese of Brisbane, said the permanent diaconate is vital but often undervalued, misunderstood and lacking necessary support in the life of the Church.

Ordination of women to the diaconate should "not be a means to increase the power or representation of women or to replace a shortage of clerics elsewhere, any more than the ordination of any man as a presbyter, bishop or deacon should be made for the purpose of increasing their power or the shortage of clerics.

"It must be affirming of our faith, affirming our faith in the tradition and affirming this history," he said.

Reprinted with permission of Catholic Weekly.

Sources

Catholic Weekly