Vatican commission again says no to ordaining women as deacons, but urges other ministries

A sec­ond Vat­i­can study com­mis­sion has de­ter­mined that women should not be or­dained as dea­cons, deal­ing an­oth­er set­back to Catholic women who hope one day to be able to pre­side at wed­dings, bap­tisms and fu­ner­als.

The Vat­i­can on Thurs­day took the un­usu­al step of pub­lish­ing a syn­the­sis of the com­mis­sion’s find­ings, in­clud­ing the mem­bers’ votes on spe­cif­ic the­o­log­i­cal ques­tions. The re­port left open the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fur­ther study but pro­posed in­stead the cre­ation of new lay min­istries for women out­side the or­dained di­a­conate, sug­gest­ing that the is­sue for now is closed.

Dea­cons are or­dained min­is­ters who per­form many of the same func­tions as priests, pre­sid­ing at wed­dings, bap­tisms and fu­ner­als. They can preach but can­not cel­e­brate Mass.

For male sem­i­nar­i­ans, the di­a­conate is a tran­si­tion­al min­istry on their way to be­ing or­dained as priests. Mar­ried men can al­so be or­dained as per­ma­nent dea­cons. Women can­not, al­though his­to­ri­ans say women served as dea­cons in the ear­ly Chris­t­ian church.

Pope Fran­cis in 2016 or­dered a first study com­mis­sion on the is­sue fol­low­ing a re­quest from the um­brel­la or­ga­ni­za­tion of the world’s fe­male re­li­gious or­ders, the In­ter­na­tion­al Union of Su­pe­ri­ors Gen­er­al. Af­ter that com­mis­sion ap­par­ent­ly failed to reach con­sen­sus, Fran­cis cre­at­ed a sec­ond study com­mis­sion in 2020, named for its pres­i­dent, pres­i­dent Car­di­nal Giuseppe Petroc­chi, which re­leased its re­port Thurs­day.

The mem­bers were not iden­ti­fied. Petroc­chi though con­clud­ed that there are two cur­rent­ly ir­rec­on­cil­able schools of the­o­log­i­cal thought on the ques­tion, re­quir­ing the Vat­i­can to take a pru­den­tial ap­proach. One school of thought would al­low for a fe­male di­a­conate, while the oth­er would not.

Giv­en the im­passe, the cur­rent state of re­search “rules out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of mov­ing in the di­rec­tion of ad­mit­ting women to the di­a­conate un­der­stood as a de­gree of the sacra­ment of Holy Or­ders” the re­port said.

But it left open the pos­si­bil­i­ty for fur­ther study, say­ing the cur­rent state of in­ves­ti­ga­tion doesn’t al­low for a “de­fin­i­tive judg­ment to be for­mu­lat­ed.”

Some Catholic women want min­is­te­r­i­al recog­ni­tion

Catholic women do much of the church’s work in schools and hos­pi­tals and are usu­al­ly re­spon­si­ble for pass­ing the faith to the next gen­er­a­tion. But they have long com­plained of sec­ond-class sta­tus in an in­sti­tu­tion that re­serves the priest­hood for men.

In many parts of the world, they have pressed for greater roles in both de­ci­sion-mak­ing man­age­ment jobs and min­is­te­r­i­al vo­ca­tions.

Dis­cern­ing Dea­cons, a U.S.-based group press­ing for the or­di­na­tion of women dea­cons, ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment at the re­port’s con­clu­sions. It called for a “wider, more in­clu­sive process” to keep study­ing the is­sue and vowed to car­ry on ad­vo­cat­ing.

“The Petrochi Com­mis­sion’s find­ings re­flect on­ly a small sam­pling of the church,” the group said in an emailed state­ment to The As­so­ci­at­ed Press. “We be­lieve a wider, more in­clu­sive process — one that takes se­ri­ous­ly the ex­pe­ri­ence and vo­ca­tion of women — is need­ed. This mo­ment in­vites deep­er lis­ten­ing, not clo­sure.”

Women’s Or­di­na­tion Con­fer­ence, a U.S.-based group that ad­vo­cates for women priests, said it was “ap­palled” by the Vat­i­can’s “re­fusal to open its doors to women, even a crack. Make no mis­take: this is a de­ci­sion that will harm the glob­al church,” the group said.

Ad­vo­cates for ex­pand­ing the di­a­conate to in­clude women say do­ing so would pro­vide women with greater role in the min­istry and gov­er­nance of the church, while al­so help­ing ad­dress the ef­fects of the Catholic priest short­age in parts of the world by al­low­ing women to per­form some priest­ly func­tions.

Op­po­nents say or­dain­ing women to the dea­conate would sig­nal the start of a slip­pery slope to­ward or­dain­ing women to the priest­hood. The Catholic Church re­serves the priest­hood for men, say­ing Christ chose on­ly men as his 12 Apos­tles.

Fran­cis had been com­fort­able al­low­ing de­bate on the is­sue while punt­ing any de­fin­i­tive de­ci­sion. The fe­male di­a­conate was dis­cussed dur­ing his 2019 Ama­zon syn­od, or meet­ing of bish­ops, and again dur­ing Fran­cis’ big­ger years­long re­form syn­od, which in 2024 called for the ques­tion to re­main open.

But a spe­cial study group on women dea­cons with­in the syn­od frame­work turned its re­search over to the Petroc­chi com­mis­sion ear­li­er this year, es­sen­tial­ly end­ing its work. Petroc­chi not­ed that the is­sue was on­ly rel­e­vant in a few coun­tries and on­ly 22 sub­mis­sions had been re­ceived, say­ing that was hard­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the glob­al church.

Leo seems non­com­mit­tal on is­sue

Pope Leo XIV or­dered Petroc­chi’s syn­the­sis re­port re­leased, and that could sug­gest that for him the is­sue is now closed. Leo has spent much of his first months as pope ty­ing up the loose ends of Fran­cis’ pon­tif­i­cate, and the women dea­con is­sue re­mained an out­stand­ing ques­tion.

The for­mer Car­di­nal Robert Pre­vost has said pre­vi­ous­ly that women can­not be or­dained as priests, and has seemed non­com­mit­tal on whether women could ever serve as dea­cons.

Dur­ing a 2023 press con­fer­ence, Pre­vost ac­knowl­edged that Fran­cis had cre­at­ed the two study com­mis­sions but he warned that turn­ing women in­to cler­ics “doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly solve a prob­lem, it might make a new prob­lem.”

Phyl­lis Zagano, a re­searcher at Hof­s­tra Uni­ver­si­ty in New York and a mem­ber of the orig­i­nal 2016 com­mis­sion, com­plained that the doc­u­ment is­sued Thurs­day “does its best to present the top­ic in a neg­a­tive light” by ar­gu­ing that “since women are barred from priest­ly or­di­na­tion, they may not be or­dained as dea­cons.”

“The long re­port does not present ev­i­dence or a the­o­log­i­cal ar­gu­ment, on­ly the opin­ion that more study is need­ed. In short, they can­not say ‘no,’ they sim­ply do not want to say ‘yes,’” she said in a state­ment.

ROME (AP)