Pope Francis had the grandest of ambitions: to tackle some of the thorniest questions facing the Roman Catholic Church.
But when bishops and lay people convene Wednesday at the Vatican to talk about its future, one of the most contentious — whether women can be ordained as deacons — has already been taken off the agenda.
The decision, which came after four years of global consultations, has angered — but hasn’t discouraged — Catholics in some parts of the world.
“You can’t erase us, you can’t dismiss this,” said Miriam Duignan, a leader of Women’s Ordination Worldwide, one of several groups supporting female deacons that will be staging various events in Rome during the gathering. “You can’t deny the reality of what Catholics have asked for or dismiss a justice issue because some people objected to it.”
For many Catholics who are demanding a more egalitarian church, the synod — as meetings of bishops are known — was seen as an opening to address major issues considered taboo until recently, including the question of female deacons, the requirement that priests be celibate and the place of L.G.B.T.Q. people in the church. Expectations were heightened when, in a historic first, Francis had allowed 54 women to participate as voting members of the 368-member assembly, which mostly comprises bishops.
Deacons are ordained ministers who can preach and perform weddings, funerals and baptisms. But they can’t celebrate Mass, a role reserved for the all-male priesthood.
Opponents to allowing female deacons see it as a first step to making them priests, which they say would violate 2,000 years of church doctrine and undermine its authority. Conversely, some historians point to documents showing that women were deacons in the early church.
Enthusiasm over the prospect of change was dampened, however, when a meeting last year ended with a document that said it was “urgent” that women have more leadership roles in the church — but punted on the issue of female deacons.
Then in February, Francis announced that the issue would be handed to a study group, which will report its findings to the pope next summer.
This month’s meeting will instead focus on how the church can more fully engage the faithful and encourage greater dialogue at all levels, within the context of the diversity of the global church.
These are not moot points; fewer men are entering the priesthood in most of the world. And even as the number of Catholics has increased, especially in Africa and Asia, there are no trustworthy statistics on how many are attending Mass and participating in the life of the church.
Many Catholics say the church has to keep pace with the reality that women already manage parishes in some areas of the world where there is a shortage of priests, like the Amazon and even in the United States.
Some bishops felt they had been given a mandate to push for greater equality, so removing the question of female deacons would disappoint their faithful. “There are expectations on the part of many of our Swiss Catholics,” said the Rev. Felix Gmür, Bishop of Basel. “The involvement and engagement of women is crucial for Switzerland.”
During his 11-year papacy, Pope Francis has opened some doors to women, changing laws to formally allow women to give readings from the Bible during Mass, act as altar servers and distribute Communion. He also named several women to high-ranking positions in the Vatican, including appointing Sister Nathalie Becquart of France as one of the synod’s top officials. But he has ruled out ordaining women as priests, and in a recent CBS interview seemed to close the door on female deacons definitively as well.
Sister Linda Pocher, a theology professor in Rome, said that Francis had invited her to organize four seminars about women in the church — including a session with a female Anglican priest — for his group of closest advisers, evidence, she believed, that the “pope has the issue of women at heart.”
But she thought that the pope had decided to postpone a decision on female deacons because there was not enough consensus.
On Tuesday evening, Francis presided over a penitential liturgy in St. Peter’s Basilica and asked for forgiveness for a host of sins, including those against women. Speaking on behalf of the church, “especially us men,” Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the prefect of the Vatican’s department for laity, family and life, asked for forgiveness, “feeling shame for all the times that we have not recognized and defended the dignity of women.”
Though female deacons won’t be discussed, women’s leadership and ministry are still on the agenda.
Some delegates said it would have been unreasonable to expect that such a global assembly could have arrived at a consensus on a wide variety of topics in the space of a month.
“We’re dealing with everything from financial issues around transparency, to how pastoral councils work, to the role of the bishop in managing cases of abuse, to L.G.B.T.Q. welcome, to polygamy, the list of what we’re dealing with in the room is just is so immense,” said Prof. Anna Rowlands, who teaches Catholic social thought and practice at Durham University in England. “There’s this tension between the time it takes to build consensus in the room, and the pressing urgency of the clamor coming from, you know, outside of the walls of the synod office and how you live with both those things.”
The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit father who is an outspoken advocate of greater L.G.B.T.Q. inclusiveness in the church and is a delegate, said some people would inevitably be disappointed. “But I would also say that there was progress made last year because things that had never been discussed before were discussed,” he said. “And so that itself was a step forward.”
Another liberal Jesuit, the Rev. Thomas Reese, who is not a delegate, pointed out that while some North American and European Catholics hoping to see major changes might see the synod as a “complete bust,” for other areas of the world the fact that the pope “wanted to get women seats at the table is revolutionary in parts of Africa, Latin America and Asia.”
Observers said they hoped that the process of listening that Francis has enacted would inspire the bishops to act courageously. “I am still very much excited about the synodal process,” said Ellie Hidalgo, co-director of Discerning Deacons, which advocates female deacons. That’s because having the discussion, she said, allows “synod members to highlight the leadership and the ministry of women that we’re already seeing all over the world.”
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