Next Wednesday Pope Francis will formally open a Synod of Bishops in Rome that could plot the future of the Catholic Church — but an international group of women will hold an alternative synod alongside the official event, pushing for female equality.
Two of the keynote speakers at the alternative synod — entitled Spirit Unbounded — will be former Irish President Mary McAleese and Cherie Blair, wife of the former British prime minister.
Both women will be urging change in the official Church’s thinking on the role of women, given that, even though they make up more than half its members, women have for too long been denied a significant say in the way the Church is organised and governed.
For many members of the 45 pro-reform Catholic organisations across the globe who will be represented at the alternative synod, female ordination is top of the agenda.
In the extensive worldwide preparations for the official synod, the role and status of women emerged as a pressing concern for many, with a widespread desire to see priestly ordination opened up to women.
Mrs McAleese has said that time for introducing real change is running out for the Pope and his bishops, and has warned of a deepening credibility crisis that has been long in the making.
Cherie Blair says the Church’s track record on women is at best mixed, and that it needs to change.
“There remains a strong sense that the Church does not do enough for women, that its structures and teaching on matters such as birth control do not always serve women well,” she said.
Preparations for the official month-long synod (October 4-29) began in September 2021 when the Vatican released a preparatory document. Catholic faithful around the world then met in their parishes to discuss and prioritise issues to be included on the synod’s agenda.
Out of all of this a working document — the 'Instrumentum Laboris' — was fashioned, and this will guide discussions at the upcoming official synod. But the synod will be in two phases — the second and crucial phase will take place in Rome in October 2024.
It will bring together 464 bishops, clergy, and lay people, including some women (a total of 54), to discuss hot-button issues ranging from the tsunami of clerical sexual abuse that has engulfed the Church, to LGBTQ+ inclusion, married priests, and female ordination. It will be the first time that lay participants will have the right to vote.
“It is something truly important for the Church,” the Pope has said. He has made “synodality” a central theme of his papacy.
The Irish theologian Gerry O’Hanlon SJ has described synodality as “a more collegial form of universal government in the Church” whereby decision-making powers would be restored to the laity.
Mrs McAleese is scheduled to deliver a major speech at the alternative synod on Friday, October 13, during which she will call on the official synod to acknowledge “a widespread desire” for a Church which is “a discipleship of equals”.
For many women throughout the Catholic world, this translates as female ordination.
“They have to do something more than a cynical exercise of kicking the can down the road,” said Mrs McAleese, with reference to the participants in the official synod.
Miriam Duignan of Women’s Ordination Worldwide, one of the organisations taking part in Spirit Unbounded, expects strong support for a march by pro-ordination supporters in central Rome on October 6 — two days after the official synod gets under way.
“The Catholic Church doesn’t have enough priests, and yet everyone knows nuns and laywomen are already doing 90% of the work in the parishes — then they have to stand aside when a priest is needed to say Mass,” she said.
She warns that, right now, things are at a tipping point.
Although Francis, since becoming Pope in 2013, has convened two commissions to look into the question of female deacons (a first step on the road to female priests), so far he has failed to act.
“He doesn’t see that the discrimination he speaks out against in the wider society also happens in the Catholic Church,” says Ms Duignan.
Although the official synod working document asks synod delegates to consider how women can be better included at all levels in the Church, it does not specifically mention the possibility of women priests.
A major stumbling block here may well be the stance on women priests taken by Francis in November 2013, in the first major document of his pontificate (Evangelii Gaudium — 'The Joy of the Gospel').
In this, he reiterated Pope John Paul II’s position that “the reservation of the priesthood to males ... is not a question open to discussion”.
Francis said this even as he acknowledged that meeting demands that the legitimate rights of women be respected — based on the firm conviction that men and women are equal in dignity — presents the Church with profound and challenging questions which cannot be lightly avoided.
That leaves the question — will this forthcoming synod, on which Pope Francis has pinned so much hope (it may turn out to be a referendum on his pontificate), evade this profound challenge?