The following is a transcript of a Raised Catholic podcast episode.

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Today is episode 178: Women in the Church

Hi friends. Happy Pentecost! If you’ve listened to this podcast for a while, then you will know that Pentecost is my very favorite feast day. There is just something so beautiful about receiving a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit each year that is so moving to me because God knows that we humans, and the Church, really need Him, right? We get lost and we get in our own way so much, don’t we, and we really need God’s Spirit to help clarify and direct us as we walk out this life of faith. What a blessing that God knows our need and He provides for us. I’ll link to some previous Pentecost episodes for you in the show notes if you’d like to dig further into that topic, because though I wish I were talking about my very favorite feast day this week, I find I keep turning back to a couple of news items and a disturbing trend that I bet you’ve heard about.

In the first, a professional sportsball player gave a commencement address at a conversative Catholic college in which – well, he had quite a lot to say on quite a few topics, actually, but on the role of women, he said that work done in the home was more valuable than any professional or ministerial accomplishment, even going so far as to say that his own wife’s life “really started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother”. I imagine that the female graduates in the crowd, most of whom were not mothers, might have been surprised to learn that their lives had not yet started, but his comments were unsurprising given the speaker’s conservative Catholic background. Many in the American Catholic Church are leaning more into “traditional” practices these days, and along with them a culture warring and misogynistic ideology that, to me anyway, does not sound a whole lot like Jesus who routinely both worked with and honored women.

The comments, though troubling, were to be expected given the speaker and the setting, but it was a part of Pope Francis’s interview with CBS’s Norah O’Donnell that I have really struggled with this week. And maybe you have, too.  

In the interview, Pope Francis was asked, “For a little girl growing up Catholic today, will she ever have the opportunity to be a deacon and participate as a clergy member in the church?” Francis responded, “No.”

When pressed by O’Donnell about the study and discussion currently underway to look at the possibility of women deacons in the Church, Pope Francis doubled down. “Women have always had, I would say, the function of deaconesses without being deacons, right? Women are of great service as women, not as ministers, as ministers in this regard, within the holy orders,” said Francis, referring to the sacrament of ordination.

Now friend, I have to be honest. I was both heartbroken and mystified at the Pope’s words here. 

In our baptism, we were each called to be priest, prophet, and king in the context of the Church. We serve as priest through our sacrificial efforts to bring people to God, as prophet through our witness to the truth in word and deed, and as king in our efforts to lead others, using our talents to advance the Kingdom of God. As you might remember in the baptism of your own kids, there is no gender distinction made in our baptismal call. 

Starting with Jesus and in the early Church, as noted in the Book of Romans, chapter 16 and elsewhere, women served alongside their brothers in apostolic roles, as deacons, as patrons and as ministers. Over the first three centuries of the Church, their role was increasingly curtailed and today, though we find many Catholic leaders including Pope Francis, acknowledging the fact that the modern Church would not exist without women and the work we do, and though Francis has appointed more women to leadership roles than any Pope before him, we as a Church seem to be stuck at the line of ordained ministerial roles. And honestly, friend, I don’t get it. 

With our Church’s horrific modern history of corruption and abuse of children and coverup, one would think the presence of women in leadership roles and ordained ministry would be a common-sense move to combat the clericalism and brotherly protection in which these abuses thrive. For this reason and many, many others, it’s my opinion that the time is now to begin to make these shifts. And I am, by far, not alone.

Francis’s words unleashed a firestorm here in the U.S. among advocates of women’s ordination, groups that have met with him on this very topic, and church historians who point to the Biblical reality of women deacons in the early church. Kate McElwee, executive director of the Women’s Ordination Conference, said, “It’s a very sad day when a powerful man like a pope tells a young girl that they can’t, or will never be equal in their own church and will never be able to follow their call from God”. According to the National Catholic Register, “Phyllis Zagano, a Religion News Service columnist and senior research associate at Hofstra University who served on the first commission on women deacons, expressed concern about the comment’s impact on the synod in an email. ‘Surely Pope Francis did not intend to shut down several decades of study and ignore the import of Spirit-led discernment, which he has been so keen to emphasize as the modus operandi of the Catholic Church’.” The lay-led organization, Voice of the Faithful, said, “Pope Francis’ position, especially considering his synodal approach and his own institution of study groups to address the issue, is heart-breaking and would itself seem to be suicidal in the longer term. The incongruity of his “No” with the foundational principles of synodality upon which to change the culture of the church is startling. Women’s voices must be heard and women’s indispensable service to the church from the very beginning must be validated in tangible ways.”

The possibility of women deacons has been studied in two commissions during the pontificate of Francis. The first came back with ‘inconclusive results’, and as to the second study, the results were never made public. The idea of women deacons was raised in the first part of the Global Synod on Synodality, and this is a topic that many people, including me, were looking to see revisited this October as the Synod concludes. 

There was so much more than just this topic that was covered in the hour-long 60 Minutes interview with O’Donnell and Pope Francis that you can dig into for yourself, and I’ll link to that plus lots of commentary on this issue for you in the show notes, but I guess today as a cradle Catholic active music minister who raised two kids in the Church, I’m just sort of shaking my head and I wonder if you can relate. 

What does it mean when a church leadership puts considerable time and resources into studying a topic over and over again, only to shut down any possibility of change?

What does it mean to be a ‘listening church’ in a time of Synod and then put up a wall to a large segment of the church that wants to be heard, and that wants to live out their call?

In this time of trending traditionalism here in the American Catholic Church, what should we say to the younger generations of women who might have seen a possibility for ordained ministry in the pontificate of Francis that they did not see at any other time? And what do we say to women like me, women in mid-life, who have been doing our very best to be faithful within the context of this church, that were hoping to see some glimmer of reform in our lifetimes? 

I honestly don’t have an answer to any of these questions today, friend, and I don’t know where you land on this topic. If we disagree here, that’s perfectly fine – all are welcome here – but for me, I don’t feel particularly hopeful today for this church of ours. I do, however, feel hope in God’s Spirit.

At the end of one of two Pentecost masses for which we did music ministry last week, there was a short ceremony signifying the end of the Easter season in which the Easter candle was extinguished. The idea was that the light of Christ and His Spirit are no longer external entities, but they are given to each of us anew in Pentecost, male and female, ordained and lay, and His light now shines, not in a candle, but in us. I found this ceremony profoundly moving, because I know that that light is alive in me and it is alive in you, in your presence and in the work that was ordained for you by God before your life even began.

In the first reading of the mass on Pentecost Sunday, we get the story about when the Spirit first descended on the Church, and so much of this reading is about language and communication. In the Book of Acts, chapter two, we read about devout Jews from every nation under Heaven – the Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, etc. – hearing the disciples speaking in their own language. This reading always touches me because it could have been instead that God enabled the people to speak in the language of the would-be clerics, in this case the Galilean disciples, but that is not what happened. Instead, God caused a change in the leaders’ communication, enabling them to “speak in different tongues,
as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.” It was the leaders who made the shift to meet the people where they were.

Humility, encounter, engagement, self-sacrifice, opening doors of communication. That was the blueprint that the first leaders of our church used to spread the good news. In this time of Pentecost in which God’s Spirit lives anew in each one of us, it is my deep prayer for the Church that we would meet each person where they are, speak in a way that they can receive, put up no barriers to the Spirit, and move forward as a Church of many parts that reflects the self-sacrificial love of Jesus for each one as we meet our call from God. 

That’s my prayer anyway, today. And I guess I’m wondering, friend, how about you?

Thanks so much for being with me today, friend. If you need me, you can find me on Instagram @kerrycampbellwrites, at Substack at kerrycampbellwrites.substack.com, where I hope you’ll leave a comment on this week’s episode, or on my website at kerrycampbell.org. Thanks so much for rating, reviewing, subscribing and most importantly, sharing this podcast with a friend.  That makes a real difference in growing our community, so thanks. If you would like to support this podcast financially, there are a couple of ways for you to do that in the show notes, along with some resources related to today’s episode, so do check all of that out, but before we go, let’s pray together.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in us the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and we shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the Earth. Guide us, our families, and your Church, God, in every way as we strive to live out the call that you have for each one of us. We pray in the name of Jesus and wrapped in the mantle of Our Mother, Mary, amen.

Thanks so much for listening today, friend. Have a good week ahead, and I’ll see you next time.

Show Notes

This week we take a look at recent news developments that reflect and may inform the role of women in the Catholic Church moving forward, along with a range of reaction.

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Thanks as always to my friend, Peter Vaughan-Vail, for providing the beautiful harp music you hear in this and every episode.

Here are some resources to help you dig into this week’s topic on your own:

1. Article: ⁠Despite pope’s clear ‘no’ on CBS, promotors of women deacons hold out hope⁠, from National Catholic Reporter

2. Article: ⁠Pastoral pope shines through in CBS News’ interview⁠, from National Catholic Reporter

3. Article: ⁠Pope Francis says ‘no’ to women deacons in ’60 Minutes’ interview⁠, from America Magazine

4. ⁠Transcription⁠ of O’Donnell’s interview with Pope Francis

5. Org: ⁠Women’s Ordination Conference⁠

6. Org: ⁠Voice of the Faithful⁠

7. Org: ⁠Catholic Women Preach

8. Essay: ⁠Pentecost⁠ from kerrycampbell.org 3/2020

9. Podcast/transcript: ⁠Raised Catholic ep. 77: Pentecost Takeaways⁠

10. Podcast/transcript: ⁠Raised Catholic ep. 125: Pentecost – The Amazing Movement of God⁠