Women’s Ordination Advocates respond to final Synod on Synodality Document
For Immediate Release: October 26, 2024
The Women’s Ordination Conference (WOC) finds the Final Document of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, released 26 October 2024 by the Vatican’s synod office, an insufficient and disappointing response to the multi-year process meant to respond to the needs of the church today.
While the deeply theological text points to the fruits of a more collegial church, its overtures to the equality of women and equal gifts bestowed upon all God’s people through baptism ring hollow without clear steps for implementation. On the issue of women deacons, simply, the question remains “open” but in need of further discernment.
Endless “study” on the subject of women is a patriarchal stalling tactic by ordained men to maintain the status quo. Ordained men decide the parameters and pace of synodality, and when the time is “ripe” for women’s ministries. And they do so at an incalculable cost. The church has lost generations of women who endured the pain and humiliation of having to prove the validity of their calling. How long must women wait? Or more consequentially: Will women wait?
If, as the document 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,” then we must work as a church to remove all barriers to women’s ministerial leadership with urgency.
The document also encourages women’s participation in existing roles within the church, but doesn’t engage in deeper reflection on the clerical and machismo culture that discourage or prevent such ministries from being realized.
Nevertheless, WOC expresses gratitude for the work of the synod assembly, particularly the lay delegates and experts whose attention to the voices on the margins made space for the calls of the people of God in the synod hall. This new model of being church pushed the Vatican toward greater transparency and accountability, and we pray this spirit of conversion toward openness continues.
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CONTACT: Kate McElwee, Executive Director, Women’s Ordination Conference
Founded in 1975, the Women’s Ordination Conference (WOC) is the oldest and largest organization working to ordain women as deacons, priests, and bishops into an inclusive and accountable Roman Catholic Church. A feminist voice for women in the Roman Catholic Church, WOC is a grassroots-driven movement that promotes activism, dialogue, and prayerful witness to call for women’s full equality in the church.