"Losing the next generation:" Canadian Catholic women express disappointment that role of women not to discussed at synod

 

Due to space constraints, my story about how Catholic women are responding to news the role of women in the Church won't be discussed at the synod had to be shortened in the paper. The full article is below. The Free Press version can be found in the sidebar here.

Catholic women in Canada are responding with disappointment to news there won’t be any discussion during this Synod on Synodality in Rome about the ordination of women as deacons in the Roman Catholic Church.

That announcement was made Oct. 21 by Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, who heads the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

According to Fernandez, Pope Francis has indicated the matter of allowing women to become ordained deacons "is not mature at this time."

Instead, he said that people interested in this topic could make submissions to a commission established by the Pope Francis in 2020 to study the subject.

The synod concludes on Saturday; the final document from the delegates is expected to be released on Friday.

Louise Dowhan of Winnipeg had been hoping and praying there might be a breakthrough about the role of women in the Roman Catholic Church at this synod. For her, the decision sends a worrisome signal to younger Catholic women.

“In many parts of the world the Catholic Church is losing the next generation, and the Church is either oblivious or does not care, neither of which is in keeping with a synodal church,” she said.

By not talking about the role of women at the synod, the “message the Roman Catholic Church sends to the world is that it is acceptable to treat women as second-class citizens.”

Catholic women around the world supported the synod in good faith, believing it would address the topic of women in the Church, Dowhan said. “Can the Vatican say it was doing the same?” she asked.

Jeanie McKibbon is a member of Catholic Network for Women’s Equality, an organization that advocates for an inclusive and accountable Roman Catholic Church. She believes the Church needs more women involved in decision-making if this topic is to move forward.

“The only way to change the decisions that Church makes is to change the decision-makers,” said McKibben, who lives in Calgary.

Despite being disappointed by the Cardinal’s statement, “we must continue to focus on increasing the number of women in the governance structure of the Church so we can make better decisions about how to ‘be Church’ going forward,” she said.

Rosemary Ganley spent the first two weeks of October in Rome during the synod “watching and listening and praying with the faithful resisters from 10 countries,” as she put it.

Although disappointed, Ganley—a life-long Catholic and freelance columnist in Peterborough, Ont.— finds hope in the “faith and sophistication of the loyal opposition” of women who are advocating for greater inclusion in the Church.

For Mary Ellen Chown of Oakville, Ont., the decision to shelve the discussion at the synod sends a negative message to women in the developing world.

“There is overwhelming evidence that when girls and women are given equal opportunity in society, the prosperity of the whole community is improved,” she said, adding that “this can be a matter of life and death in communities experiencing extreme poverty and the dire effects of climate change.”

If the hierarchy of the Catholic Church truly wants to alleviate suffering due to poverty, “it needs to model equality, with women as co-equal partners in ministry and governance,” she said.

“The experience, wisdom, and leadership of women needs to be at every table of Church ministry and decision-making so that together, we can get on with the urgent work of healing the world,” Chown added.

For Sister Veronica Dunne of Winnipeg, this is nothing new. Catholic women, she said, have experienced rejection in the Catholic Church for hundreds of years.

“I understand this matter as being about sexism and the underlying power relationships that constitute sexism,” she said. “There has to be a transformation of the relationship and the power dynamic for something new to really emerge, which is what I understood the synod was trying to do.”

For her, women need to continue the “courageous work of continuing to address that power dynamic . . . saying yet again that there are some vocations in the Catholic church that are simply not possible for women, because God created us female, is abusive.”

The Church, she said, should encourage the full flourishing of all creation in which all can “find meaning, purpose, joy, and practice love and justice.”

Photo above: Catholic women in Winnipeg pray for the synod on Oct. 11.