A Vatican study group has called for broader access to positions of authority for Catholic women worldwide and for the Church to confront what it described as persistent patterns of clericalism and machismo. Source: NCR Online.
The unsparing analysis, rare for a Vatican document, came from a study group created as part of the Synod of Bishops on synodality tasked with examining women’s participation in the life and leadership of the Church. Its final report was published yesterday.
The Church must move beyond a view of women limited to certain characteristics “such as motherhood, tenderness or care” that can “leave little room for other equally important feminine qualities, such as leadership, counsel, the capacity for teaching, listening and discernment,” the report said
The group, established by Pope Francis and whose work was carried out by the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, said the Church must grapple honestly with cultural and institutional obstacles that continue to affect women’s participation in ecclesial life.
“There exists within the contemporary ecclesial mentality a certain pattern of thought and behaviour identifiable as clericalism or machismo,” the report said, adding that such attitudes create “distrust and, not least, distance among women”.
The document defined clericalism as “the tendency to transfer automatically the authority and unique role that properly belong to the priest in the celebration of the Eucharist into all other areas of community life”.
The study group was originally expected to address women’s access to the diaconate, but that task was later entrusted to a different commission established in 2020. That group voted against admitting women to the diaconate at this time.
Though less than 20 pages, the report includes 54 pages of appendices tracing the historical contributions of women to the Church, testimonies from women in Church leadership, theological debates about Church authority and the contributions Francis and Pope Leo XIV have made to promote the role of women in the Church.
Recognising the progress still needed to promote the role of women in the Church has “generated a specific discomfort among many women concerning their participation in the life of the communities to which they belong,” the Synod report said.
As a result, it noted that some women have left the Church, disengaged from parish life or called for a review of existing forms of leadership.
The report acknowledged the increasing presence of women in positions of responsibility within the Roman Curia and diocesan structures.
FULL STORY
Synod defends women’s leadership in Catholic Church, criticises ‘machismo’ (By Justin McLellan, NCR Online)
