VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Pope Francis will confer the ministries of lector and catechist to women for the second time, in a Mass to be held at the Vatican this Sunday.
In a press release sent out by the Dicastery for Evangelization, the Holy See Press Office announced that the conferral of the two ministries would take place on January 22, which would be this year’s “Sunday of the Word of God” – as started by Francis in 2019.
The Dicastery wrote:
During the celebration, the ministries of Lectorate and Catechist will be conferred on lay men and women, specifically three people will receive the ministry of Lectorate and seven that of Catechist.
The ten men and women come from Italy, Congo, the Philippines, Mexico and Wales, wrote the Dicastery.
The Holy See has announced #PopeFrancis will formally institute women as Lectors and Catechists for the 2nd time, on Sun 22, Jan at the #Vatican.
He did so for the 1st time last year in what was called “an heretical attack on Our Lord’s institution of the apostolic ministry.” pic.twitter.com/ibQu05ZKDp— Michael Haynes 🇻🇦 (@MLJHaynes) January 17, 2023
LifeSiteNews has contacted the Holy See Press Office, seeking more precise information on the number of men and women who will receive each specific ministry. This report will be updated upon receipt of a response.
Sunday’s event marks the second time that Pope Francis will institute women as lectors and catechists. His first such occasion was on the same Sunday of the Word of God in 2022 when he installed six women and two men in the ministry of lector and acolyte, with three women and five men being installed as catechists.
Under Pope Francis’ groundbreaking January 2021 motu proprio Spiritus Domini, Canon Law was changed to allow the liturgical institution of female lectors and acolytes, both of which are minor orders. This was followed by the May 10 apostolic letter Antiquum ministerium, which further drew on texts from Vatican II to establish the lay ministry of catechist for both men and women.
With these moves, Francis continued the liturgical upheaval seen following the Second Vatican Council. The ministries of lector and acolyte have been traditionally reserved to men and were stepping stones on the way to the priesthood. Even though women have regularly performed such roles in recent decades, they had never been formally instituted to do so, until Francis’ papacy.
Writing shortly after the release of Spiritus Domini in 2021, liturgist and theologian Dr. Peter Kwasniewski warned that the Pope’s altering of Canon Law to push women through the liturgical ministries “fits snugly into this larger pattern of rupture from Catholic tradition.”
In Kwasniewski’s recent book Ministers of Christ, – explaining and defending the traditional Catholic teaching on reserving the liturgical ministries to men only – he wrote that Spiritus Domini was “a tectonic shift both in theology and in praxis.”
Pointing to the current “backdrop of the pervasive feminism,” Kwasniewski added that the motu proprio thus “continues to stoke the flames of a false egalitarianism that will never stop agitating for women deacons and priests.”
Moreover, it reflects a failure to understand why ministries were reserved to men in the first place, and why the inclusion of women in these roles is contrary to the very nature and structure of the Catholic liturgy.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider contributed to Kwasniewski’s book, and highlighted the great need for the Church to fully restore the traditional minor orders – porter, lector, exorcist, acolyte. Bishop Schneider described their modern rejection as “a novelty that comes close to the liturgical views of certain Protestant communities.”
He called instead for a re-establishing of the minor orders “with the same theological significance that the Church has always expressed in her lex orandi,” along with instruction to be given to lay Catholics on “the true meaning of their common priesthood in the liturgy and the highest source of their dignity.”