Women’s Ordination Worldwide (WOW) is disappointed but not altogether shocked to learn that the Amazon Synod has concluded some married men will get the green light to be ordained as priests while women’s ministry will remain marginalised and requiring of yet further study.
We are told that opening up the ordination of married men in the Amazon region is a recognition of sacramental leadership that emerges from the community. But the church community also includes women and it is women who are currently present in the majority of ministerial roles and are already recognized as leaders by the people they serve.
Why must the Church re-open a commission on women deacons when the historical evidence of women deacons is abundant and the call for women deacons, even within in the Synod Hall, is overwhelmingly clear. Why must the Church pursue the ‘creation of new ministries for women’ as if to treat women as a sub-group requiring exceptional paths and distinct categories for their work without confronting the fact that women live both priestly and diaconal vocations already and should be ordained. This blatant disparity in the treatment of male and female vocations and ministry is a reinforcement of age old prejudice and is a blow to the majority of Catholics who dared to hope that this time might be different.
Adding married men to sacramental ministry in the Amazon will further push aside the women the Synod recognised are currently doing the work. This reinforces prejudice and signals the supplanting of women whose spiritual leadership will be sacrificed in the name of God but is for the sake of men.
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