Back to the Priesthood

Many people are still writing about Hans Küng and church blessings for those in same-sex unions, but I’m going to shift back to the priesthood. Specifically, to Pope Francis’ call for a three-day symposium in February 2022 to discuss the issues involved. I have to hand it to him; he acts on his belief that airing issues helps resolve them. I’m just not sure about this.

It certainly is not planned to be a hurly-burly event like the Synod on the Amazon. There’s only one panel, for example, and guess what it’s on? WOMEN! “Round table: woman and ministry, status questionis.” (Anything in Latin is a little too close to clericalism for me. And I think it means that this panel is not presenting settled theology, as the rest of speakers seem to be doing.) The participants are Martha Olavarrieta de Gomez Serrano, Sr. Alexandra Smerilli, and Michelina Tenace. Olavarrieta and her late her husband Enrique were appointed to the Pontifical Council for the Laity by John Paul II in 2004. Parents of nine children, they were active in family ministry in Mexico City and organized the VI World Meeting of Families there. I assume she’s still a lay leader in similar activities.

Smerilli, of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, has a more public profile, at least on Google. She is Full Professor of Political Economy at the “Auxilium” Faculty of Rome and teaches at other universities as well. In 2019, Pope Francis appointed her as one of five State Councilors of Vatican City. That’s “the body that exercises legislative power in the Vatican City State,” so it might be interesting for WOC’s UN contingent to get to know her. Maybe they already do. (See the Previous blog below for the way our representatives are thinking.)

In March 2020 Smerilli was appointed as coordinator of the working group on economics of the Covid-19 Commission of the Vatican, and this year as Deputy Secretary of the Dicastery for the Integral Human Development Service, where she will be in charge of the sector on Development. Characterized by Vatican News as an “eminent economist,” Smerilli brings technical expertise as well as a sense of mission to the panel in February. The Vatican release notes “the growing number of women occupying important positions within the Roman Curia,” and that Smerilli “affirms that men and women are the image of God and that, consequently, ‘this vocation of alliance and reciprocity must be carried out not only in the family sphere but in all other areas of life, even in the place of work. I believe that in the Roman Curia as well,’ she concludes, ‘it is necessary to live this reciprocity in order to better express the riches of our God who is communion.’” Humm. At least it’s not complementarity, though that’s the way the session on consecrated life is characterized. I’ll leave presenter Sr. Alexandra Diriart to NCAN or LCWR to research.

Tenace is an organizer of the symposium, and is professor of theology at the Gregorian University. She writes on “theological anthropology, themes on the Christian East, and spiritual theology,” according to her CV. Most interesting to me is a 2017 book she introduced and edited, From the nail to the key: the fundamental theology of Pope Francis. She also publishes on Vatican Councils, including II; baptism; religious life; and mysticism. Most translated into most languages: Keepers of wisdom. The service of superiors (2007). That’s religious superiors, though I did not find any indication that she is a member of an order. Her publisher’s biography identifies her as “a member of the Aletti Center from the beginning,” which has links to Easter and Christmas liturgies, but appears mostly to sell books and religious goods. Only in that bio is “Since 2018 she has been a consultant of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith” – another woman Vatican insider.

So do we have any better understanding of how WOMEN will be discussed at this Symposium on the Priesthood? You can draw your own conclusions.

I do wonder if this symposium is an attempt to bring some Bishops into Vatican II and to stop others from wandering beyond it. The Congregation of Bishops arranged it; we noted the recent appointment of Sister Nathalie Becquart as its first female undersecretary, mentioned only by The Tablet. Open to anyone, they are expecting bishops and those responsible for priestly formation in dioceses around the world to attend.

All three symposium organizers have long “Interventions” as part of the Vatican press release. Tenace is most to the point. Careful examination of the priesthood is urgent now, she says, because “we must think about the foundation that links the ministerial priesthood with the common priesthood of the baptised… every age develops an updated ecclesiology… Changes cannot be dictated by cultural pressures, but neither should they exclude the fact that in the issues that prompt change, there is a call to free the faith from encrustations of the past.”

In NCR, the Catholic News Service summarizes her focus, “The clerical abuse scandal, she said, makes the questions of priestly identity, vocational discernment and formation more urgent.”  Tenace herself says “This is the guiding idea of the Symposium: to deepen the theology of the priesthood, to reaffirm the essential features of the Catholic tradition on the identity of the priest, perhaps freeing it from a certain clericalisation.” More than perhaps, it seems from the agenda, which would be a good thing. Not so good if you’re interested in a married priesthood; the interventions emphasize celibacy, though only Tenace says “in the Latin tradition,” perhaps because she’s studied the Eastern Church.

And it’s really not so good if you’re interested in opening priestly ordination to people of all genders. I didn’t find even women deacons addressed except in an answer to a question reported in La Croix International. I do fear that the “updated ecclesiology” will not be updated enough. But we have almost a year to raise our voices in Rome, as we are accustomed to doing.

You can do your part before April 25 by sharing your dream of vocation with WOC! Right now my dream is “vocation, not formation.” The latter seems to be the driving force of the symposium. Vocation means call from God, not a carefully orchestrated blast from the past. Let’s bring that to Rome next February!