FRANKFURT AM MAIN (LifeSiteNews) — The members of the heterodox German Synodal Way have approved a text calling for female deacons.
The text entitled “Women in Sacramental Ministries. – Perspectives for the conversation in the Universal Church” was approved by over 93% of the Synodal Assembly and over 80% of the 58 German bishops. The vote took place on March 11 during the fifth Synodal Assembly in Frankfurt am Main.
The document calls for a female diaconate and further research and studies into the possibility of women being ordaining deacons, priests, and bishops.
READ: German bishop claims the New Testament paves way for female ‘ordination’
The document stressed that a female diaconate should not be implemented only in Germany but in the entire Catholic Church.
“The German bishops advocate in Rome the admission of women to the sacramental diaconate for all those particular Churches which desire this on the basis of their pastoral situation,” it reads.
In the previous Synodal Assembly in September 2022, the members of the Synodal Way already approved a “foundational text” that called for female ordinations. The text approved on March 11, 2023, is considered an “action text” that focuses on the implementation of a female diaconate in Germany and the universal Church.
READ: Over 80% of German bishops present approve Synodal Way text calling for women’s ordination
The heterodox text of the Synodal Way is clearly at odds with perennial Church teaching. The Catholic Magisterium has always taught that the fact that Jesus chose only men when He instituted the sacrament of the priesthood during the Last Supper has forever bound His Church to hold to an exclusively male priesthood. Pope John Paul II reaffirmed this teaching in his 1994 apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis.
She [the Catholic Church] holds that it is not admissible to ordain women to the priesthood, for very fundamental reasons. These reasons include: the example recorded in the Sacred Scriptures of Christ choosing his Apostles only from among men; the constant practice of the Church, which has imitated Christ in choosing only men; and her living teaching authority which has consistently held that the exclusion of women from the priesthood is in accordance with God’s plan for his Church.
John Paul II furthermore declared 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.”
During the fifth Synodal Assembly, which took place from March 9 to 11, the members of the heterodox Synodal Way also approved a text that called for laypeople to preach during mass and confer baptisms and a document that allows for “sex changes” on baptismal certificates and paves the way for “transgender” priests.