VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — After consternation among Synod members and also in the left-leaning press, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández declared that the issue of female diaconate is “not mature” at this time but that the Vatican is looking at other options for “female leadership in the Church.”
The encircling storm around the issue of female deacons throughout this session of the Synod on Synodality – despite officially not being part of the discussions – reached new levels on Friday.
Synod members used a free afternoon to meet with Study Group 5, which is assessing the issue of female diaconate.
The meeting had been requested after the cardinal briefed synod members at the beginning of the month about the issue, saying that no approval would be given to female deacons at the moment but that “in-depth study” would continue until 2025. “The Dicastery judges that there is still no room for a positive decision by the Magisterium regarding the access of women to the diaconate, understood as a degree of the Sacrament of Holy Orders,” said Fernández, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), thus ruling out female deacons but also appearing to do so on a temporary basis.
READ: FULL coverage of the Synod straight from Rome
A considerable number of Synod members attended the meeting, at which they expected to meet with Cardinal Fernández as the leader of the Study Group and discuss their thoughts about the issue.
However, Fernández did not appear, leading members to call it a “disgrace” and a “disaster.”
Members of the press, keen for the female diaconate, were quick to criticize Fernández as indeed they have been quick to criticize the imprecise details about who make up the personnel of Study Group 5.
Angered by Fernández’s no-show on Friday, critics questioned whether the concept of synodality was really being practiced.
Cardinal Fernández explains
In an attempt to calm the waters, Fernández addressed the assembly on Monday morning and his comments were later shared with the press. He confirmed what was already known, namely that Monsignor Armando Matteo – doctrinal secretary of the DDF – is coordinating the study group and explained Matteo’s absence was due to a medical procedure.
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Fernández reiterated his previous comments about the female diaconate, once again ruling them out and once again appearing to do so in a temporary manner:
We know that the Holy Father has expressed that in this moment, the matter of the female diaconate is not ripe and has asked that we do not dwell on this possibility at the moment. The study commission on the theme has reached partial conclusions, which we will publish at the right moment, but I have to say that I am in full agreement. {Emphasis added}
Why? Because to think of the diaconate for some women does not solve the problem of the millions of women of the Church. Besides, we have not yet taken some steps that instead we could take.
Fernández pointed away from female presence in Holy Orders and instead moved toward other “ministries” such as that of catechist instituted by Pope Francis in Antiquum ministerium, which provided for the formal institution of women as catechists, and the first institution of women in the roles in 2022.
Fernández also pointed to Querida Amazonia (QA) that emerged from the 2019 Amazon Synod and its proposals for women to “lead communities and perform various functions,” especially in the absence of priests.
He also commented that few priests have wanted women instituted as acolytes – something Francis authorized in 2021 with Spiritus Domini – and further pointed to a dearth of permanent deacons.
“These few examples show us that rushing to ask for the ordination of deaconesses is not the most important response today for promoting women,” Fernández said.
Vatican’s plan moving forward
To further the study group’s investigation, he has asked for testimonies from women “who are truly at the head of their community or who hold important roles of authority, not because they were imposed by the communities, or as the result of a study, but because they acquired this authority under the impulse of the Spirit in the face of a need of the people.”
He also urged that, notwithstanding what he described as a current inopportune time to approve female deacons, that the Vatican will continue to study the question by reconvening the commission set up in 2020 to study the question, and which is led by Cardinal Guiseppe Petrocchi. Synod members are invited to send their proposals to Petrocchi.
“I am convinced that we can go forward step by step and reach some very tangible results so that it may be understand that there is nothing in the nature of women that prevents them from holding very important roles in the guidance of the Church. What truly comes from the Holy Spirit cannot be stopped,” Fernández closed.
Petrocchi’s 2020 commission is the second that Francis has commissioned. The first such commission was a 12-member body to study the issue of “women deacons” convened in August 2016 that included Phyllis Zagano, a leading advocate of “ordaining” women to the diaconate, and ex-CDF prefect Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer as its president.
Fernández’s stance against female deacons is in line with Church’s unchanging teaching. In his 1994 apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, Pope John Paul II taught, “I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”
Cardinal Ladaria defended John Paul’s text in 2018 as bearing the mark of “infallibility.”
However, Fernández’s stance against female deacons appeared to have a caveat: ruling them out but not permanently. Describing the question as “not mature” or “not the most important response today for promoting women” is not the same as forthrightly reiterating Church’s unchanging condemnation on the topic.
Given this, and his promotion of new forms of “ministries” for women, it seems increasingly likely that an attempt will be made to divorce the diaconate from the priesthood and thus open it up to all.
Indeed, this has been the demand from a number of synod members, including U.S. Cardinals Blase Cupich and Robert McElroy. Earlier this year, McElroy argued that divorcing the diaconate and the priesthood “could make it easier to have women deacons.”
Full coverage of the Synod on Synodality can be found at this link here on LifeSiteNews, and on the X account of LifeSite’s Vatican correspondent.