Does Catholic Synodality Promise Ecclesial Freedom for Catholic Women?

Since the October 2021 initiation of a worldwide Catholic “Synod on Synodality,” which culminated in October 2024, internal and external discussion about women’s place in the Church and world has intensified. Over two years, Catholic diocesan, national, and continental in-person and virtual synod meetings called for increased women’s participation in Church governance and ministry, and many directly called for the restoration of women to the ordained diaconate. 

This proposal focuses on synodal efforts of the 2021-2024 Synod on Synodality to examine structures and policies that restrict and, ultimately, endanger women, and the possibilities for continued synodal discernment for and about women. 

Synodal discussion was and is intended to see how the Church can move forward, within its stated boundaries. Even so, major points of discussion regarding synodal practices are that 1) all decisions are taken by hierarchy (Final Document #151), and 2) the Canon Law stipulating that: “Those who have received sacred orders are qualified, according to the norm of the prescripts of the law, for the power of governance, which belongs to the Church by divine institution and is also called the power of jurisdiction.” (Can. 129 §1) Further, the canon states that “Lay members of the Christian faithful can cooperate in the exercise of this same power according to the norm of law. (Can. 129 §2). (It is to be recalled that the original discussion of the revisions to the Code of Canon Law in 1983 centered on the distinction between “cooperate” and “share.”) 

During the most recent Synod, in-person Synod meetings of some 365 members (including 54 women) took place in Rome during October 2023 and 2024. The Final Report of the final meeting of the Synod, accepted by Pope Francis as magisterial (official) teaching, states “There is no reason or impediment that should prevent women from carrying out leadership roles in the Church: what comes from the Holy Spirit cannot be stopped. Additionally, the question of women’s access to diaconal ministry remains open. This discernment needs to continue.” (Final Document, #60) 

The history of women in the Church documents the ways women have been and are marginalized, underpaid, and treated unprofessionally in Church circles. Significant and well-known historical research demonstrates that women were ordained as deacons. Restoring the tradition of ordained women deacons is important because deacons are clerics. Church canon law restricts certain offices and tasks to members of the clerical state. While some women hold major administrative and managerial offices, women cannot have specifically ministerial or jurisdictional positions within the clerical sphere. Diaconal ordination would qualify women for limited sacramental ministry, but would not significantly change their qualification for jurisdiction, except in limited legal circumstances. Even so, the ordination of women as deacons, brought forward by the Synod on Synodality and approved for implementation by ecclesiastical groupings and diocesan bishops, would expand the vision of ecclesial freedom for women.

Further, the restoration of women to the ordained diaconate would refute claims in some circles that women cannot “image Christ,” a denigration that negatively affects the status of all women, Catholic or not. Despite increasing leadership positions in the Church and secular society, women remain subjects of oppression in many places. The underlying cause for both, the statement that women cannot image Christ, given as a bar to their ordination, reverberates in Christian and non-Christian cultures. Because so much of the world and the Church accept a second-class nature of women, each rarely recognizes that women and children are the most endangered humans on the planet and that women and children face the direst consequences of international disregard for their needs.

In an important development, especially since there is no definitive Catholic teaching against restoring women to the ordained diaconate, the Greek Orthodox Church in Zimbabwe ordained a woman as deacon in May 2024. To date, there has been no official Catholic commentary on that event.

Before and since Pope Francis appointed me to the 2016-2018 Pontifical Commission for the Study of the Diaconate of Women, the same arguments have been adduced against the restoration of women to the ordained diaconate. The Synod on Synodality opened a door to free determination and acceptance of the church’s tradition, which would be in keeping with the partially recovered tradition of women ordained as deacons in Orthodoxy. The remaining question is whether the ongoing process of synodality will bring about a free Catholic acceptance of ordained women, as well as whether there will be any ongoing process of synodality in the future.