Rome Newsroom, Oct 17, 2023 / 14:10 pm (CNA).
Spending too much time on the “niche issue” of women priests or deacons distracts the Church from addressing what women really need, a theologian participating in the Synod on Synodality said Tuesday.
“As a woman, I’m not focused at all on the fact that I’m not a priest,” Renée Köhler-Ryan, one of 54 women delegates to the Synod on Synodality, said at a press briefing Oct. 17.
“I think that there’s too much emphasis placed on this question,” the Catholic professor added. “And what happens when we put too much emphasis on this question is that we forget about what women, for the most part, throughout the world, need.”
Köhler-Ryan is head of the School of Philosophy and Theology at the University of Notre Dame in Sydney, Australia. She participated in the Church in Australia’s plenary council and is writing a forthcoming book on St. Edith Stein’s “Essays on Woman.”
Paolo Ruffini, president of the synod’s information commission, told journalists that synod discussions on the afternoon of Oct. 16 focused a lot on the role of women in the Church, including whether women should be able to preach the homily at Mass and the “reinstatement of the female diaconate.”
Another topic of discussion, he said, was “how to overcome clerical models that impede communion or that can impede the communion of all the baptized.”
Köhler-Ryan said “some people are very focused on this idea that only if women become ordained will they have any kind of equality.”
But, equality is “not a one for one thing” in the Church, she said, pointing out that the Synod on Synodality has focused a lot on the idea of unity in diversity.
“Well part of that diversity is that there are realities of motherhood and fatherhood that are both spiritual and biological and that are really important for understanding what is going on across the whole Church,” the wife and mother added.
She said the issue of women’s ordination “distracts” the Church from what it could be doing to help women in other ways, like offering greater support to families and working mothers.
“I think that’s a far more interesting conversation for most women than what I tend to think of as a kind of niche issue,” Köhler-Ryan said.
Köhler-Ryan’s comments came shortly after another delegate described women’s participation in the Synod on Synodality, where they are full voting members for the first time, as “setting the stage for future changes.”
Sister Maria de los Dolores Valencia Gomez, a Sister of St. Joseph, led the Synod on Synodality assembly Oct. 13 in her capacity as one of Pope Francis’ 10 president-delegates. She described the experience of sitting with the pope “as a symbol of this opening, this wish that the Church has … for something that places all of us at the same level.”
Another synod participant, one of 13 people tasked with helping put together a summary document of the Oct. 4–29 assembly, told the National Catholic Reporter last week that he would be open to a female diaconate.
“The question of the ordination of women is clearly something that needs to be addressed universally. … And if it were to be that the outcome was for ordination to the diaconate to be open to women, I’d certainly welcome that,” Bishop Shane Mackinlay of Sandhurst, Australia, said in a podcast interview.
Ruffini said Monday’s discussions also included requests for “greater attention to an inclusive language in the liturgy and ecclesial documents” and that the word “cooperate” in canon 208 of the Code of Canon Law, which says all Christians “cooperate in the building up of the Body of Christ according to each one’s own condition and function,” be changed to “co-responsibility.”
On “the possible reinstatement of the female diaconate,” Ruffini said there was reference to first studying the exact nature of the diaconate.
About women deacons, Köhler-Ryan said what the synod is “identifying at the moment is where there needs to be more theological consideration of different issues, and I think I can safely say this is one where there needs to be more consideration, knowing that this has been an issue that has been looked at before.”
During his pontificate, Pope Francis has formed two temporary commissions to study the question of women deacons.
The first, in 2016, examined the historic question of the role of deaconesses in the early Church. In 2019, it was announced that the 12-person commission had not reached any consensus on the question.
In April 2020, the pope formed a second commission after the topic of female deacons was discussed at the Amazon Synod the prior October, together with a request for the 2016 commission to be reestablished.
At the end of the October 2019 meeting, synod members recommended to Pope Francis that women be considered for certain ministries in the Church, including the permanent diaconate, which is an order within the sacrament of holy orders.
But in his apostolic exhortation on the Amazon, published in February 2020, Pope Francis called for women in the South American region to be included in new forms of service in the Church, but not within the ordained ministries of the permanent diaconate or priesthood.
The subject of women deacons has previously been studied by the Church, including in a 2002 document from the International Theological Commission (ITC), an advisory body to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
In the document, the ITC concluded that female deacons in the early Church had not been equivalent to male deacons and had neither a “liturgical function” nor a sacramental one. It also maintained that even in the fourth century, “the way of life of deaconesses was very similar to that of nuns.”
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Ross Perot said in the 1996 presidential debate that should the NAFTA agreement go into effect in the United States, there would be a huge sucking sound as hundreds, if not thousands, of U.S. based businesses fled the states for Mexico. He didn’t win the election, but he did predict correctly the mass exodus of companies from the U.S. into Mexico and other first and second world countries. Here’s a prediction not too unlike his: if the Novus Ordo Church takes it upon themselves to ordain women into either the deaconate or priesthood, there will be a huge sucking sound as thousands, if not millions, of men leave the sanctuary never to step foot in another Novus Ordo church again.
Mark, you left out that women by the millions will also leave in search of a validly celebrated Mass.
A tangential comment: About 30 years ago – around the time of Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, actually – Peter Kreeft and Alice von Hildebrand wrote a small booklet titled “Women and the Priesthood”. Each of them wrote a section on the reasons why only men can be priests in the Catholic Church. Franciscan University Press was the publisher. It’s been out of print for a while. Used ones are hard to come by and expensive when you find them. I gave my copy to a dear priest friend of mine, since he has more frequent conversations on the topic than I do.
If anyone who can do anything about this is reading this, or if you know someone who can: Please put this booklet back into print! I can’t think of a time since its publication that it has been more needed than today. The arguments are easy to understand and make a lot of sense. It should be required reading for everyone at the SoS.
I want to state categorically that this so-called Synod is NOT a Synod. Call it an assembly of “Here-Comes-Everybody” but don’t call it a Synod. A Synod is an assembly of bishops who are the successors of the Apostles. Pope Francis: Stop selling off the patrimony of the Universal Church.
The slide into hell begins with the corruption of language. It’s even cross-cultural! Said the Chinese emperor of his collapsing domain, when asked what he would do to save his people: “I would restore the meaning of words.”
very interesting
Amen !!!!!!!!!!!
There are several hundred Bishops participating in the Synod. And all the dioceses in the world also carried out consultations, surveys, and events. If the Pope, if the Church says that it is a Synod, why do you affirm that it cannot be defined as a Synod? What do you base on to argue this assertion that goes against what the Church and its legitimate authorities actually say?
As a Catholic woman myself, I will say that I dont envision ANY scenario in which I would attend a Mass conducted by a woman,nor take communion, go to confession, or have a family member married by one. There is NO biblical support for this and it smacks of secular woke talking points. Woman who want that sort of thing might try to track down one of the barely surviving liberal Protestant sects who paved the way by engaging in this— assuming they still have their doors open. I engage in a Catholic ministry in which I am quite happy. And I am most certainly nobody’s second class citizen.
I agree totally!! Thank you for speaking out on this matter.
The idea of women priests makes the serious mistake of focusing on what we do, not on what we are as women. That is the same mistake that has been made throughout the centuries where women have been valued for their activities as mothers and homemakers and active religious.
Didn’t John Paul II say that being comes before doing? This whole discussion avoids the question of the being of women and whether women are necessary to the Church as women.
Sadly, Sister, real discussion of the inherent natures of things (truths derived from the things that are) was jettisoned when the modernists ransacked the Church at Vatican II and tossed St. Thomas and what we refer to as “Realism”; the gift of the expression of common sense experience (among other things foundational to our intellectual nature). Perhaps, when the modernists come to their senses (don’t hold your breath) they’ll begin to appreciate, once again, the difference that common sense actually makes. Let us hope!
I enjoy battles! That’s why I publish articles on Where Peter Is.https://wherepeteris.com/author/sister-gabriela/
My latest article about Prof. Ratzinger’s talk on Oct. 10, 1962 shows why those who want to go back to a “traditional” faith that existed before Vatican II are simply following a limited theology that dates from the 17th century. Prof. Ratzinger makes that clear.
So I have no hesitation about writing unpopular articles, no matter who dislikes them.
“Pope Francis: Stop selling off the patrimony of the Universal Church.” —Deacon Peitler.
. . . consult, instead, with your close friends Ste. Thérèse
and Our Lady, Untier of Knots FIRST, before you do any more
damage to the Church.