Vatican City, Oct 20, 2024 / 08:30 am (CNA).
Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), has reportedly apologized for what he called a “misunderstanding” regarding his absence from an Oct. 18 meeting of synod delegates about a Vatican study group on women’s roles in the Church.
Attendees confirmed to CNA over the weekend that there was significant frustration among synod delegates over both the cardinal’s absence from the meeting and how the meeting itself was conducted.
More than 90 synod delegates attended the encounter expecting to engage with Cardinal Fernández and members of study group five, one of ten announced in February to examine theological questions that emerged out of the first session of the Synod on Synodality last year.
This group is charged with exploring “some theological and canonical issues around specific ministerial forms,” in particular “the question of the necessary participation of women in the life and leadership of the Church.” This includes the questions surrounding the possibility of female deacons.
Instead, attendees on Friday were greeted by two officials from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith who were not members of the study group, according to sources. The officials reportedly distributed slips of paper with an email address for submitting feedback and could not answer most questions posed by delegates.
The Pillar reported that in a statement to synod participants late on Oct. 18, Cardinal Fernández said he was “sorry for the misunderstanding” and that his absence was “due not to any unwillingness, but to my objective inability to attend on the scheduled day and time.”
The cardinal added that he had previously indicated two dicastery officials would attend the meeting in his place. He offered to meet with interested synod members on Oct. 21 “to listen to their reflections and receive any written documents from them.”
Earlier this month, Cardinal Fernández announced that study group five had shifted its focus away from the question of women deacons as an ordained group.
On Oct. 2, the cardinal said: “Based on the analysis so far…there is still no room for a positive decision” on ordaining women deacons “understood as a degree of the sacrament of holy orders.”
Fernández said the group was instead examining historical ways women have exercised authority in the Church apart from ordained ministry.
The question of women deacons has been studied and debated in recent years.
In July 2024, Cardinal Mario Grech, secretary general of the Synod of Bishops, said the DDF was studying “the women’s diaconate” within the context of its in-depth study of ministries.
However, Pope Francis has repeatedly reaffirmed that holy orders remain reserved for men.
In an interview published in October 2023, the pope said: “The question of whether some women in the early Church were ‘deaconesses’ or another kind of collaborator with the bishops is not irrelevant, because holy orders is reserved for men.”
Meanwhile, Pope Francis held two private audiences over the weekend, including participating women and the synod’s lay members. No details have been released about the content of these meetings.
He also received Cardinal Mario Grech and Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, the relator-general, and Special Secretary Riccardo Battocchio.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
One interpretation is the predictable and signaled-earlier recommendation for “non-ordained” deaconesses. And, then, would this step be aligned with another “study group” recommendation for theologically trained laity to sometimes read the gospel or give the homily (the role of ordained priests, as extensions of bishops under the Apostolic Succession!)?
OR, at least the “non-ordained” deaconesses could be enlisted to routinely confer the “non-liturgical, informal, and spontaneous” blessings on cohabiters and other “irregular” couples, especially “couples” of the LGBTQ persuasion.
AND, non-ordained deaconesses could be only a halfway-house into (invalid) ordinations later, much as civil unions were the doormat for oxymoronic gay “marriage.” But, said Cardinal Fernandez: “’Based on the analysis so far…there is still no room for a positive decision’ on ordaining women deacons ‘understood as a degree of the sacrament of holy orders’.”
Only “understood”?
INSTEAD, are we well overdue to simply recall the already-existing “positive decision” to NOT ordain women deacons? Since such is both “understood” AND factually (!) “a degree of the sacrament of holy orders,” AND therefore already unambiguously addressed in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, 1994?
QUESTION: Why is synodal discourse so much like amnesia, or a carnival shell game, or mud-wrestling?
The gradualism thingy: “Time is greater than space!”
Although he forgot that you can’t measure time, which is to identify time without space.
Furthermore, you cannot have space absent of things, or beings. Since space is the measurement of one being to another, or theoretically to some unknown being. Consequently, it is being that owns priority, which by its essence cannot be understood as subject time and space. That is, those beings and related truths which by their nature possess permanence. One example would be Man.
What a mess from this “make a mess” pontificate…
This has been on-going Marxist Activism since the 1950s. When will Catholics take back their church for these infiltrates ?
That photo reminds me of a comment made by Fr Gabriel Amorth concerning Fr Candido Amantini: just by looking at a photo he could see if the person was in need of exorcism.