The month-long Vatican summit ended with a call for women to take more leadership roles in the Catholic Church, but not for the ordination of women as priests, as some progressives had hoped at the start of the process.
The meeting was the end of a four-year consultation aimed at gauging the views of every church-going Catholic around the world, with Pope Francis opening the usual synod of bishops to some of the laity, including 368 voting delegates of nearly 60 women.
Members of the plenary voted on each of the 151 proposals.
While all proposals passed with the required two-thirds majority, the largest number of “no” votes went to proposals for women to take on more leadership roles in the church, whose clergy are all male.
Advocates for a greater role for women in the church hope the synod will call women to serve as deacons. The synod made no progress on the measure, but its final document said “no reasons or obstacles can prevent women from holding leadership positions in the Church”.
Currently, the Catholic Church only allows men to become deacons, ordained priests, who can officiate at baptisms, weddings and funerals, but not at Mass, unlike priests.
While reform groups also wanted concrete ways to better welcome gays and lesbians into the church, the final document made no mention of LGBT+ people and only made passing mention of those who feel “ostracized or judged” because of their “marital status, status, or identity.” people.
Reverend James Martin is a well-known American Jesuit priest responsible for the LGBT community and a member of the Synod of Bishops.
Progressives may be disappointed, but some conservatives have been uncomfortable with the entire summit from the beginning.
It’s a massive undertaking, with the 87-year-old pope calling the final text a “gift” to the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, but many traditionalists oppose opening the consultative process – his personal project – to the rest of the world. Believers question the idea of weighing the views of lay people.
But it fits with Pope Francis’ view that grassroots Catholics should play a greater role in shaping the future of the church, not just cardinals and bishops — just one of the many reasons traditionalists give him a hard time one.
