While there's a consensus that women's roles need to be promoted, participants remain divided on how to achieve that goal.

The Vatican's synod, which started on Oct. 4 and goes until Oct. 29, is the result of a two-year-long process engaging Catholics at every level, from faithful at the local parish to continental leaders.

Now, the 364 lay and religious participants present at the synod are poised to address questions ranging from sexual abuse to LGBTQ welcoming to hierarcichal structures.

Few topics have captured the attention of attendants more than the question of women's roles in the church.

Participants were encouraged to maintain the confidentiality of the small working group discussions taking place at the synod.

But speaking to Religion News Service, attendants said the question of the ordination of women remains fairly evenly split, with some bishops leaning against and religious sisters leading the charge in favor.

In many ways, this synod has seen many firsts for women. For the first time a woman, Sr. Nathalie Becquart, is undersecretary of the synod office at the Vatican.

Sister Maria de los Dolores Valencia Gomez, a sister of St. Joseph of Lyon, is the first woman to preside over a synod.

In the months leading up to the summit, the resources of the Women's Ordination Worldwide advocacy group were made available for the first time on the synod website.

A record 54 women are participating, and voting, during the synod. In the past, synod events were exclusively attended by bishops and a few priests who acted as secretaries and writers.

Synod discussions so far have addressed the topics of women's ordination to the priesthood, the female diaconate and the creation of alternative ministries that would allow women to have an equal representation in the traditionally male dominated institution.

Whereas the pope has shut the door to the female priesthood in the past, Francis recently opened an unprecedented opportunity for debate on the topic.

Answering a series of questions, or dubia, sent by conservative prelates regarding the synodal discussions, Francis said there is no "clear and authoritative doctrine" on the question of ordination, and it can be "a subject of study."

Pope Francis created two commissions to study the possibility of the female diaconate, which would allow women to preach at Mass and perform marriages and baptisms but not celebrate the Eucharist or hear confessions.

Opponents fear allowing women to the diaconate would open the door to women being ordained as priests.

Some participants at the synod, and Catholics looking in from the outside, have voiced the possibility of finding alternative roles and ministries for women in the church.

They argue that if the church is going to defeat clericalism, a term used to describe the special status held by Catholic clergy, then the solution is not to ordain more people.

While synod officers, and the pope, have encouraged synod participants to be creative in the search for solutions to the church's woes, there have so far been few inspired solutions to the much-needed promotion of women's roles.

For some synod participants, the solution is already there: allowing women to become priests or deacons. A significant push toward this solution came from the religious sisters within the synod.

A "cohort" of nuns favoring female ordination, and especially women deacons, has formed at the synod, said participants.

The women, mainly from Latin America and some from Europe, are said to have initially bonded because they could all speak Spanish.

Nuns from Italy to India have come forward in recent years to denounce unfair treatment by male clergy who, they claim, often regard them as nothing more than free labour.

Cases of nuns being sexually abused by priests or bishops have also emerged in recent books and reports.

Liberal-minded nuns at the synod have embraced the cause for a women's diaconate with gusto, participants said, with some pushing the envelope further by asking for the elimination of titles reserved for clergy, such as "your eminence" or "your excellency," which promote clericalism.

But to some, the idea of women being allowed to become priests remains beyond the pale.

One synod participant said he felt "violated" by the idea of women priests, while another Eastern Orthodox attendant voiced surprise at the Western "obsession" with female clergy.

The argument that the ordination of women would fill the emptying seminaries of Europe was shot down by representatives from Africa and Asia who take pride in their growing number of priests.

At the tail end of the synod, the question of whether female ordination will make it in the final document remains uncertain, participants said.

The goal of this synod is not to come up with solutions, after all, but to pose questions and foster a feeling of communion.

Attendants will likely vote on an amorphous or scaled-down version of the vibrant debates on women's ordinations that have filled the Vatican halls this month.

For advocates for female ordination who have looked at this event with hope, the result of this first consultation might be disappointing.

For conservatives, the final document might be the latest sign of how this pontificate has exposed the church to an unbridled liberal shift.

Debates are likely to evolve ahead of the second part of the synod, when participants will meet again in October of 2024.

In the end, it will be Pope Francis who will make the final decision on the matter when he publishes the apostolic exhortation born from the synodal discussions.

Francis has so far avoided tackling the complexities of dogma directly, opting for his signature pastoral approach instead.

If gestures speak louder than words under Francis, then his meeting with Sr. Jeannine Gramick (pictured) on Oct. 17 at the Vatican made a clear statement.

The Philadelphia-born nun has called for women to become cardinals and is the founder of New Ways Ministries, a Catholic network promoting the welcome and inclusion of LGBTQ Catholics.

In 1999, she was banned from pastoral work by the Vatican's doctrinal office.

The meeting signaled that the pope is welcoming "not just LGBT people but those who have been shunned by society and the church," Gramick said in an interview with National Catholic Reporter shortly after the audience.

"I think Pope Francis is trying to get us to move forward, to open our eyes and look to the future and to the changes in the world," she added.

• Claire Giangravé is an author at Religion News Service.
• First published in Religion News Service

They were there to celebrate St Phoebe's feast day.

St Phoebe is mentioned in the New Testament's Letter to the Romans just once. She was an associate of St Paul and a female deacon of the early church.

Today Catholic deacons are ordained clergy. They preach and minister in the community but can't celebrate Mass.

Like priests and bishops, they are always men.

The pilgrims - called Discerning Deacons - prayed for Phoebe's intercession to restore Catholic women to the diaconate.

"Phoebe represents hope and evidence that women have been in service to the church since the beginning," says Discerning Deacons' member Lisa Annan.

"This isn't new. It makes me feel that it can happen in the future."

The prayer service opened the Discerning Deacons' "Year of St Phoebe," and is part of the Synod on Synodality.

Discerning Deacons hope the synod, which concludes in 2023, might lead to reforms that will welcome women as deacons.

Canon law defines deacons as clergy who minister to the people of God in "word, liturgy and charity".

While women fulfil some roles already, they cannot minister to people in places such as immigrant detention centres, hospitals and prisons that don't allow unordained people to serve.

Joining the diaconate would also allow women to proclaim the Gospel and preach during Mass.

Until the 12th century, the Catholic Church ordained women deacons. In his Letter to the Romans, Paul introduces Phoebe as a "deacon of the church" and entrusts her to deliver his letter to the Romans.

She is the only woman in the New Testament with that title.

While the Catholic Church has not ordained women in 800 years, it has made exceptions where male priests are in short supply.

In the Amazon region of northwestern Brazil, a woman has been the mainstay of the church's social outreach.

In 2019 many Pan-Amazonian bishops asked the Vatican for a permanent diaconate for women.

One of them, Archbishop Roque Paloschi of Brazil, was among the seven-member Brazilian delegation to Mexico City for the St Phoebe prayer service.

The five-day pilgrimage sponsored by Discerning Deacons includes Mass at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe and visits to the birthplace of Juan Diego and the Mayan pyramids at Teotihuacan.

The pilgrimage will also seek ways to continue to engage with bishops, priests and laity as the synod process unfolds.

"The first step is listening well. It's a new discipline for us — the art of listening well to another and setting aside agendas says one pilgrim.

So far the group has held listening sessions as part of the synodal process, drawing some 9,000 Catholics. Its 38-page report reflects people's desire for a female diaconate that works with people on the margins.

They're realistic that restoring the diaconate will be an uphill climb.

But they are glad to be able to elevate St Phoebe's example. Even today, she's still relevant.

"I see her in every mother and grandmother who has helped to pass on the faith," explains one.

Pope Francis says each of the 12 commission members (six men and six women) have quite different positions on the issue, and two years into their research they have stopped work.

On the positive side for ordaining women deacons, the commission found evidence and agree that female deacons performed functions such as immersion baptisms for women, anointing of the body and investigations into marriage annulment.

As an example, a document was found showing deaconesses were called by the bishop when there was a marriage dispute for the dissolution of the marriage.

"The deaconesses were sent to look at the bruises on the body of the woman beaten by her husband. And they gave testimony before the judge," Francis says.

However, a sticking point for the commission was whether women underwent the same sacramental ordination as male deacons.

"For the female diaconate, there is a way to imagine it with a different view from the male diaconate," Francis said during an in-flight press conference earlier this week when he was returning from a visit to North Macedonia and Bulgaria.

"Fundamentally, there is no certainty that it was an ordination with the same form, in the same purpose as male ordination. Some [of the commission members] say there is doubt, let's go ahead and study."

Francis says while the commission members "all had different positions, sometimes sharply different, they worked together and they agreed up to a point.

"Each one had his/her own vision, which was not in accord with that of the others, and the commission stopped there."

The commission's inability to agree will probably be a blow to proponents of ordaining female deacons today, as well as the umbrella association of religious sisters which in 2016 asked Francis to create a commission to study the issue.

Deacons today are ordained ministers, not priests, though they can perform many of the same functions as priests. They preside at weddings, baptisms and funerals, and they can preach. They cannot celebrate Mass.

Currently, while married men can serve as deacons, women cannot.

Further study into the issue will be arranged, although Francis has not said whether the commission members would be invited to undertake this or if another panel would be selected.

He did say, however, that members of the commission were continuing to study the issue on their own.

Advocates for the women's diaconate say it would provide women with a greater role in the ministry and governance of the church, while helping address the effects of the Catholic priest shortage by allowing women to perform some priestly functions.

Opponents say ordaining women would signal the start of a slippery slope toward ordaining women to the priesthood.

Source

• America Magazine
• AP News
• Catholic Herald
• Image: Getreligion

Scheuer told Francis with regards to the Eucharist as the font, center, and summit of the life of the church, three changes are called for. Read more:

Reflecting that he recently had ordained 14 men to the permanent diaconate, the Cardinal of Vienna said "perhaps one day also female deacons."

There had been female deacons in the Church in the past, he says.

Pope Francis, who often speaks of the importance of women's role in the Church appointed a new commission of six men and six women to examine the possibility of ordaining women to the permanent diaconate in 2016.

Archbishop Luis Ladaria, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is president of the commission. Although the commission's report is rumoured to have been completed, this has not been confirmed. Copies of the supposedly completed report have not been published or provided to the press.

In 2002 the International Theological Commission, an advisory body to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued a report which gave a thorough historical context of the role of the deaconess in the ancient Church.

The commission overwhelmingly concluded that female deacons in the early Church had not been equivalent to male deacons, and had neither a liturgical nor a sacramental function.

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: National Catholic Reporter