Women Cardinals?

No sooner had Pope Francis issued his curial reform which opened important Vatican positions to lay women and men, did Phyllis Zagano raise the question of women Cardinals. You probably know Zagano as a member of the first papal commission considering the question of women deacons. I assume that her persistent advocacy helped that commission end its deliberations in a stalemate. She does not give up on that issue.

Zagano is not as committed to women Cardinals, at least in this article, but she does ask, “Would it make a difference?” Of course, I answer. Cardinals vote for the Pope. 

Beyond that, Cardinals also advise the Pope and recently have headed all the important Vatican departments, or dicasteries. (You might as well get used to this term, used in the curial reform document.) Zagano asks two important questions: “But if any Catholic can head a curial office, the question becomes, does the title come with the job? More importantly, is the title needed to do the job?” If all the dicasteries were headed by Cardinals, it would suggest that at least the leadership is equal. It might undermine the well-understood hierarchy among the various dicasteries, which unfortunately seems to have been affirmed by Pope Francis in the curial document. 

A headline about recent appointments in America caused my heart to beat a little faster: “Pope Francis names a Jesuit and a nun to lead human development dicastery.” Both are indeed leading, but Cardinal Michael Czerny is the prefect and Sister Alessandra Smerilli is the secretary, which seems to be like the President and Executive Director roles in American nonprofits. A lot of shared power, but not exactly equality. Sister Smerilli has several important positions in the Vatican, like Adviser of Vatican City State and Consultor of the Synod of Bishops, as well as Sustainability Advisor to the Pope. Up and coming, we might say, in our American way.

Zagano raises another problem, however: Canon Law. In the 1917 revision, she reports, a cardinal had to be “at least a priest.” In 1983, he had “to accept ordination as bishop.” Nothing in the current curial document addresses that, though Zagano notes that in the 1960s French philosopher Jacques Maritan was talked about as a potential cardinal – he declined? – and in the 1980s it was rumored that Mother Theresa was under consideration. “So lay and female cardinals are not beyond the realm of possibility,” she concludes. 

Last year, the former editor of the women’s supplement to the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, Lucetta Scaraffia – you can read a spirited analysis by Jamie Manson of her departure – responded to America’s great idea to publish Avery Dulles’s 1996 treatise against women’s ordination. Scaraffia wanders around many topics related to women, but the headline focuses on her conclusion: appoint women “cardinal deacons.” Deacons would not have to be ordained priests, she argues, and she credits British anthropologist Mary Douglas with the insight into how appropriate a symbol that would be for women. Scaraffia says it would be “prophetic,” and calls on the “institution” to begin the process. 

There are at least two processes in process now, I would remind you. One is Sr. Nathalie Becquart’s Synod, also headed by Cardinal Mario Grech. He is Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops; she and Mons. Luis Marín de San Martín are both Under-Secretaries, just to note the usual pattern. But I have written enough on that.

The other is the German Synodal Process, which has generated much controversy of late. Christopher Lamb has the best article in The Tablet, because he explains how Francis is set apart from all the complainers, which Lamb numbers now at 92:

During that synod assembly in Rome more than two decades ago, Bergoglio’s job was to “gather the material” and “arrange it”. But – as Francis told a group of Jesuits in Malta earlier this month – the then secretary-general of the synod office, Cardinal Jan Pieter Schotte, would “remove this or that thing, which had been approved by a vote of the various groups”.

“There were things he did not consider appropriate. There was, in short, a pre-selection of materials.”

Schotte’s approach showed “a failure to understand what a synod is,” Francis told his fellow Jesuits. “Today, we have moved forward and there is no going back.” He’s right. The synods of bishops since Francis became pope nine years ago have seen a freer exchange of views, a greater focus on listening and a much less stage-managed process. 

If you only read one article about this, read Lamb’s. It was the inspiration for my including it in this blog and then I lost access to it. I went on to write what follows, but I want to think there is hope in this synod process, even with the criticisms of the Germans. 

Prominent moral theologian Charles Curran reviews a lot of the politics of the German Synodal Way as well as  the basics of the “Roman Synod,” as he calls it, in a February article in NCR. He summarizes what’s controversial about the former and his own gloomy assessment:

The German Synodal Way, to its credit, has identified many of the areas of discussion and disagreement within the church — the ordination of women, a reform of church teaching on sexual ethics including homosexuality, the acceptance of married men into the priesthood, more lay input on the appointment of bishops. All recognize the German Catholic Church cannot change the teaching of the universal Catholic Church on these issues. Likewise, the Synodal Way, in my judgment, is not going to go into schism by cutting itself off from the teaching of the universal Catholic Church. In the end, the Synodal Way could easily cause more disillusionment and even occasion more Catholics leaving the church.

Since then, an international group of at least 70 bishops (now 92) have also weighed in on the German Synodal Way. Michael Sean Winters does us a favor by interviewing a signer, Bishop Michael Warfel of Great Falls-Billings, who worried about “irreformable doctrine” and “confusion,” and then David Gibson, director of the Center on Church and Culture at Fordham University, who gets into the papal politics of most of the signers: 

The very apparent subtext is that the pope is not doing his job 'so we will do it for him.' 

This letter is rather astonishing when you consider what would happen if a group of bishops from Germany or Italy or elsewhere wrote to the American church chastising us for our many faults, some of which could be characterized as nearly schismatic. The opposition to Pope Francis, to Vatican II, to the pope's key teachings in Amoris Laetitia and Laudato Si', the use of great wealth and influence to foment divisions in the Church, the subsidizing of the old Latin Mass as a source of division — all these things are grave problems for the unity of the church.

I like being reminded of all this. I also chuckle every time I open the Catholic News Service article on the response of German Bishops Conference President Bishop Georg Bätzing, who “thanked the bishops for their April 11 letter and said he was glad that the bishops were taking the process of Germany’s Synodal Path seriously. But he assured them that ‘the Synodal Path in no way undermines the authority of the church, including that of Pope Francis, as you write.’” I credit Barb Fraze and Greg Erlandson for a complete report of the letter of the 70 (now 92)  bishops and Batzing’s response. I do not chuckle when I read this: “I would be very surprised, however, if you and the signatories of the open letter did not see the importance of the necessity to face the question of abuse as a church and to draw consequences for the church and its structures.” Batzig places the Synodal Way in its context of the sexual abuse crisis in Germany. 

The structure of the German Synodal Way is open. Irme Stetter-Karp, is president of the Central Committee of German Catholics and the lay co-president of the Synodal Path. She was more outspoken about women’s ordination than the official resolutions are, which only endorsed women deacons. But maybe, to return to Zagano and Scaraffia, they might eventually be Cardinal deacons.