"We Must Go Forward"

May 12, 2016 6:19 AM

In response to a question from one of the 900 woman religious gathered at the Vatican today on behalf of the International Union of Superiors General (representing nearly half a million Catholic women religious on five continents), Pope Francis said he would convene a commission to study the possibility of permitting female deacons in the Catholic Church, "signaling an historic openness to the possibility of ending the global institution’s practice of an all-male clergy."

On Facebook, Father James Martin, SJ, hypothesizes that "Women deacons would be able to baptize, preside at marriages and funerals, and preach during the Mass. Their preaching at Mass would mean that the church would finally be able to hear, from the pulpit, the experience of over half its members. Taken together, all this would be an immense gift to the church. This news fills me with immense joy."

For more on the history of women deacons in the early Church and the (so far unsuccessful) efforts to bring women deacons to the modern Church, see here.

posted by sallybrown (39 comments total)

Whoa. WHOA.
posted by corb at 6:29 AM on May 12, 2016 [4 favorites]

This is huge. I hope the comission itself includes women.
posted by CrazyLemonade at 6:30 AM on May 12, 2016 [4 favorites]

Damn. This is huge.
I have a lot of issues with the Church™ but, I really do like this Pope.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:33 AM on May 12, 2016 [8 favorites]

"The consecrated woman is an icon of the church, an icon of Mary,” said Francis. “The priest is not an icon of the church, he is not an icon of Mary. He is an icon of the apostles, of the disciples ... but not of the church of Mary.”

I always thought it was a little weird that a religion that puts the sacred feminine so up-front in its iconography would also put so much importance on having men and only men in leadership positions. Talk about putting women on a pedestal.
posted by Strange Interlude at 6:38 AM on May 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

I have a lot of issues with the Church
posted by Thorzdad

Considering that they straight up STOLE your classic hanging-on-the-world-ash routine, that's understandable.
posted by Strange Interlude at 6:45 AM on May 12, 2016 [9 favorites]

It's nice to see the Roman Catholic Church trying to catchup to the rest of us.
posted by Stynxno at 6:50 AM on May 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

Whoa. WHOA.

Mush, MUSH!
posted by Segundus at 6:51 AM on May 12, 2016 [6 favorites]

To be clear, deacons are not priests, right? They can fulfill some functions of priests, but lots of really important stuff is still off-limits. So even this proposal would still be for second-class status, rather than actual equality.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:04 AM on May 12, 2016 [5 favorites]

A commission will be convened to study the possibility of permitting female deacons..... in other words, more talk, no action. But lots of good PR for the Pope.
posted by easily confused at 7:05 AM on May 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

What is there to study? No respect for the pope until the church treats everyone equally.
posted by agregoli at 7:05 AM on May 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh!
posted by Going To Maine at 7:43 AM on May 12, 2016

[wry chuckle] My Anglican stepfather does not like priests who are women, and so is desperate to "join Rome" and become a Catholic... but he's also a divorcee, so no Holy Communion from the Catholic Church!

So which will be first, I wonder: woman priests, Communion for divorcees, or him getting to sort his issues out with the big guy in person?
posted by alasdair at 7:46 AM on May 12, 2016 [7 favorites]

A lot of Catholic parishes have more women actively involved than men, and so this is kind of just tacking to follow a wind that's already blowing.

I'm all for it: if you have passion and faith, your own damn religion shouldn't stand in your way.
posted by wenestvedt at 8:04 AM on May 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

ArbitraryAndCapricious, I think of Catholic deacons kind of like PAs or NPs in a clinic: for the big stuff you still need a priest (e.g., marriage), but most of your "retail" visits are for services they can handily render (counseling, preaching the homily, communion services [but not the Eucharist itself], etc.).

When there are communities where a priest only shows up an hour a week, you can have a deacon nearby who provides most of the pastoral care. To double the pool of possible people providing this should be a no-brainer, especially when it's a middle ground between "nothing" and "nun" that lets women finally have a real choice in how to serve.
posted by wenestvedt at 8:09 AM on May 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

Deacons have a direct historical and traditional heritage in the church and there's a lot of theological support for them, in a way that doesn't conflict with priesthood.

The role of a deacon is not a lesser priest, it's a separate vocation.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 8:52 AM on May 12, 2016 [4 favorites]

Agreed, dorothyisunderwood. There is overlap, but they have a different role in the parish.

We're lucky to have one who does amazing music and is a good preacher, but who doesn't do as much in other areas. Which is fine, we're very glad to have him, and he complements our pastor (and the fill-ins who say about half of the Masses per weekend)! but I know other deacons in other parishes find different ways to serve.

I would be really happy to see this reform go through.
posted by wenestvedt at 9:07 AM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

20 years ago in my ecclesiology class I predicted that we'd be talking about opening the diaconate to women in about 20 years, so yay 20-years-ago me for your high-quality predicting skills! (I also predicted, against the grain of the rest of the class, that we'd be talking about female deacons before there was significant movement to allow married priests -- everyone else thought we'd have married priests as a common direct-entry route under the Roman canon and within the decade -- but I think the finances, the job demands, and the public sexuality issues are suuuuuper significant hurdles for married priests. As in, the average priest in the US works an 80 hour week (protestant ministers work closer to 60); priests in the US earn about $25,000 a year; and they'd be expected to support a HUGE family -- let's say six kids, you can end up with just six with diligent use of the rhythm method -- on a tiny salary, in a Church that preaches not just a living wage but a family wage, and that prefers to have one parent (doesn't matter which) available in the home. That is obviously not the 80-hour-week priest, and you really can't support a family of 8 on $25,000/year, and everyone in the parish can count and can tell if you're using birth control on the sly. Protestant ministers also have a considerably higher divorce rate than their socioeconomic peers, because of the stress and demands of the job, so that's also a pretty significant hurdle to consider since Catholics don't "do" divorce.)

"To be clear, deacons are not priests, right? They can fulfill some functions of priests, but lots of really important stuff is still off-limits."

Holy Orders is one of the seven sacraments, and there are three levels of it -- deacon, priest, and bishop. (Everything else -- cardinals, archbishops, monsignors, even pope -- are courtesy titles or administrative titles, not sacramental orders.) Holy Orders is the one sacrament that has been wholly closed to half the Church by virtue of being available only to men, so allowing women to seek ordination as deacons is a BIG DEAL. Like, a huge fuckin' deal. Like, it's almost inexpressible how huge a deal it is. Scholars are pretty certain are were female deacons mentioned in Paul (Phoebe in Romans, for example); they appear in Clement, Origin, and Pliny; they are mentioned in the canons of Nicea and Chalcedon (325 and 451). It's under Constantine -- as the Church gets more official and more Roman and therefore more male -- that women show up less and less as deacons in documents. (They persist longer in the Eastern Church, until the Orthodox get their knickers in a twist over menstruation.) After that, the deaconate in the West is closed to women for 1500 years. (And slowly morphs into what's called the "transitional deaconate" where it was closed to everyone but men on the path to ordination as a priest; the "permanent deaconate," which has only just started coming back after Vatican II, allows men, including married or widowed men, to seek ordination JUST as a deacon and stop there. Once the permanent deaconate came back, it was pretty clear (IMO) that eventually we'd be talking about reviving the female deaconate as well.)

Anyway, deacons can proclaim the Gospel at Mass (which laymen in general can do since Vatican II, with special permission; deacons don't need permission, tho); similarly they can assist at communion without permission (as lay people can with permission, since VII); they can baptize (without it being considered "irregular"); they can witness marriage vows and render a marriage sacramental (technically the bride and groom PERFORM the sacrament of the marriage, the priest just witnesses it -- also technically the sacrament of marriage includes sexual intercourse so it's good that nobody witnesses that part these days, just the vow part, man so awkward). So of your seven sacraments, deacons can perform Baptism and Marriage; priests can do those plus the Eucharist, Confession, and Anointing of the Sick; and bishops can do all of those plus Confirmation and conferring Holy Orders. Deacons are also traditionally responsible for charitable works in the parish.

Anyway, opening Holy Orders to women -- even "just" as deacons -- would be a big fuckin' deal. A HUGE fuckin' deal. A "my facebook feed is going crazy with Catholic women's ordination activists freaking out" fuckin' deal.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:21 AM on May 12, 2016 [33 favorites]

(You guys do not even understand how hard my Catholic-theologian-heavy facebook feed is freaking out, baby pictures have been totally pushed off the page.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:23 AM on May 12, 2016 [20 favorites]

Whoa.
posted by wenestvedt at 9:30 AM on May 12, 2016

Holy shit. I haven't thought of myself as a meaningful part of the Church for years, and I have a lot of problems with it still--but this is an enormous move. Wow.
posted by sciatrix at 9:31 AM on May 12, 2016

Hope this goes better than Pope Paul VI and the Pontifical Commission on Birth Control. The majority opinion of the 72 person commission was that contraception wasn't evil. However 7 dissented and Paul VI went with the minority opinion anyways when he wrote Humanae Vitae .
posted by charred husk at 9:37 AM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

Any inkling of progress in the church is welcome, of course. But I'm not ready to applaud anyone for this. Even if the commission decides in favor of the proposition – which remains to be seen – women would still not be equals in the church. Less institutional misogyny is certainly better than more institutional misogyny, but they'll earn my respect on this issue once they achieve no institutional misogyny. Not before.

The fact that people celebrate Francis as the "progressive" Pope only shows how low the bar is set for the Catholic church. Sure, he's occasionally gestured vaguely in the direction of gay rights, and that's not insignificant – but he's also made statements that reiterate the church's long history of homophobia. The church remains the #1 obstacle to reproductive rights around the world, causing untold suffering. Etc.

The Catholic church isn't even remotely progressive under Francis; it's just slightly less regressive. Until they adopt and enforce complete gender parity, they will remain one of the planet's biggest and most influential advocates of misogyny. Nice to see them trying, but they aren't there yet.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 10:16 AM on May 12, 2016 [6 favorites]

This should really be a no-brainer; there are female deacons in the New Testament, for heaven's sake. Paul even sends one to carry his letter to the Romans and read it to them.
posted by EarBucket at 10:25 AM on May 12, 2016 [4 favorites]

I understand how this may appear to be mere crumbs from the table for a group the Church has consistently subjugated for most of its history, I understand the skeptic reading of this as a PR move that will go nowhere, I understand that doing the right thing shouldn't require praise, but --

It's hard to put into words how meaningful even just this announcement feels. The Church shaped the person I am (my understanding of life and death, my morality, my habits of thought and worship, my family rituals, my schooling). The Church's treatment of women (and its lack of acceptable response to the pedophilia scandal) drove my break from the Church starting in my teens, and since then my agnosticism has grown, but it remains the bedrock of my culture, somehow. I remember so well being a serious, devout little girl who wondered why God only called men to the clergy. Why aren't I good enough? It made me cry this morning to think about a little girl sitting in a pew where I once sat and seeing a woman on the altar in a deacon's robe.

Is this everything? No, it's not even a promise of something that's not even full equality. But compared to what I thought I would see from the Church in my lifetime, this looks like a miracle. And it gives me faith (ha) that I might see other needed changes come to pass.
posted by sallybrown at 10:42 AM on May 12, 2016 [13 favorites]

A commission will be convened to study the possibility of permitting female deacons..... in other words, more talk, no action. But lots of good PR for the Pope.

That there's even talk is a monumental thing in regards to the Church.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:54 AM on May 12, 2016

I feel happy this gives some people hope...and sad because it is such a small gesture. I feel bitter, actually, that people think, "wow" at this at all.
posted by agregoli at 12:04 PM on May 12, 2016

I just mean to call this itsy bitsy step "monumental" sounds crazy to me.
posted by agregoli at 12:05 PM on May 12, 2016

I am not a Catholic but there is one issue that interests me here from a management legal perspective.

They may have to pass celibate clergy requirement first. If you require the female clergy to be celibate then you have big problems that have to be dealt with when they get pregnant. These are problems that do not ever have to be dealt with when your clergy is male only and if they are pretend-celibate only at least they don't ever get pregnant and everybody in the parish can see it.

Any Vatican inside dope on the priority of celibate priests versus male-only priests or is this 95 % the same issue?
posted by bukvich at 12:14 PM on May 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

Deacons don't have to be celibate. Case in point: my 89 year old married grandfather is a deacon.
posted by LizBoBiz at 12:18 PM on May 12, 2016 [5 favorites]

I just mean to call this itsy bitsy step "monumental" sounds crazy to me.

Sure if you look at it from the perspective where even the very existence, nevermind the inner workings, of something like the Catholic Church is crazy in itself. And that’s a perfectly valid perspective.

But the reality is, it does exist, and it has been doing what it does for a long time, it’s the oldest institution within that particular religion and the parts of that religion that progressed more split into other churches soooo, if we want to deal with reality, we have to deal with those inner workings, not with some level of wishful thinking where the Catholic Church wasn’t what it actually is and has been.

In that sense, I accept that this is as monumental as people are saying.

Don’t get me wrong - I share your reaction on a personal level, a part of me is thinking (to put it politely) "oh wow thanks very much soo generous of you old men in robes", but there’s no point judging this out of context, as if that history never existed, we might as well wish that Church had never existed. It’s a useless attitude.

Of course the bar is set low. With religion, with religious institutions, and especially with the most traditional archaic patriarchal institutions, if you’re a progressive minded person, religious or atheist or agnostic doesn’t matter, you welcome any progress you get, step by step, with no illusions, with no false hopes, but with acknowledgement of what that step forward means within its context.
posted by bitteschoen at 12:33 PM on May 12, 2016 [5 favorites]

I was raised Catholic. And I can't see this in any other context as, "nothing, really, arrving too late." I'll clap when women are treated equally in the church and gays aren't compared to nuclear weapons. So maybe another 1500 years from now?
posted by agregoli at 12:36 PM on May 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

I was raised Catholic too, and I left for a lot of reasons--and the hierarchy's assholishness was one, albeit a small one. (Catholicism is, of course, more than the hierarchy, even if the hierarchy tends to marginalize progressive Catholic organizations and orders.) But I'm pleased to see things becoming better for the people who chose to stay, or who don't see another option for themselves, or who are working to change things from within.

I hear the "too little, too late" sentiment. But you know, for those of us who are willing to celebrate any step forward from a notoriously hidebound and enormous church--a step that is, in context, enormous? I dunno, the chorus of "I don't care, because the Church is terrible" is rubbing me the wrong way a bit. Do you mind giving the people who are pleased about a step forward that will positively affect Catholic women if it goes through the room to be pleased?
posted by sciatrix at 12:41 PM on May 12, 2016 [6 favorites]

Deacons don't have to be celibate -- just chaste, which for married people means "as much consensual, respectful, unitive, loving sex with your spouse as you want, just no non-spouse sex."

"Any Vatican inside dope on the priority of celibate priests versus male-only priests"

We do already have married priests -- in the non-Western rites (under rules similar to the Orthodox), and via special entry conversions usually by Anglicans who are already married. It's not an absolute bar to priesthood. It's just very irregular under the Roman canons (i.e., the set of rules that govern most Catholics).

I did mention this in passing above, but one of the issues with married priests is that Catholics are not supposed to be using birth control. While you can tell if a female priest is having sex because she gets knocked up, you'd be able to tell that your married male priest was using birth control because his wife WASN'T getting knocked up nearly often enough. But the $25,000 a year a parish priest earns (in the US) isn't enough to support a non-birth-control family, and the Church theologically backs a family wage. (Which is somewhat higher than a living wage -- it enables you to have just ONE adult in the family work full-time and support a spouse and children.) So there's a real PRACTICAL bind there w/r/t a married male priesthood, in that the sexing of your wife is NO PROBLEM AT ALL (there will always be a celibate clergy; but it can be, as it has been in the past, a minority position preserved primarily in the orders, while diocesan priests are largely married) theologically, but the having of a billion children and supporting of a family are not things that Church is currently structurally prepared for. Protestant ministers earn three times the wage for a church with half the membership in the US; it's a really stark disparity.

Secondary issue, we know that married Protestant ministers get divorced at higher rates than their socioeconomic peers due to the demanding nature of the job; we presume the same would hold for married Catholic priests (who work even longer hours than Protestant ministers), and that presents another serious theological problem in a church that doesn't recognize divorce. So what you may see is the married priesthood opened to men over 40, who are changing careers, on the grounds that they're not going to be having more children and their marriages are probably at that point pretty stable -- which is basically what they did when they reopened the "permanent deaconate" to married men over a certain age. (There are also, frankly, some pastoral problems with sending 25-year-old men with no life experience outside college and grad school out into the world as priests to counsel and care for people 30 years their senior -- adult-entry, career-change ministers in general often have a smoother transition into ministry. Lots of young direct-entry ministers are very good at it! But it's definitely a tough transition when you're that young.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 12:48 PM on May 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

sciatrix: Do you mind giving the people who are pleased about a step forward that will positively affect Catholic women if it goes through the room to be pleased?

Thank you.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:22 PM on May 12, 2016 [7 favorites]

Yeah this is like "wow they're even discusdimg this in my lifetime??" big. I'm very much wondering how my very religious relatives are taking this - some people in my hometown were incredible sniffy and dismissive when male deacons started practicing very recently (in the last couple of years). I bet there will be heart attacks if this were to actually come to pass (which I hope to God it does.)
posted by billiebee at 1:28 PM on May 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

Eyebrows McGee--I see your points, but I think that in a world of married priests the church will certainly pay higher salaries to priests (to say nothing of the fact that food / board is often already provided by the rectory, which makes it easier to live on a $25K salary).

And while divorce will still presumably be an issue, but I doubt that contraception will be. We've already seen some cracks in the church's opposition to birth control, and I don't think that's going to be rolled back; it is, in the long run, not that significant a doctrinal issue. I'd be very, very surprised if we get married priests (or female priests) before the ban on contraception is lifted.

That's not to say I don't like your "over-40, career switch" idea, though.
posted by thecaddy at 2:46 PM on May 12, 2016

I don't think the church can afford to give living wage salaries for married priests and still staff churches in the same way they have been. The priesthood as it stands is only possible because most are celibate - otherwise the "no accumulating wealth and personal possessions" stuff could be a real problem.
posted by corb at 2:51 PM on May 12, 2016

"I think that in a world of married priests the church will certainly pay higher salaries to priests "

Oh, they will certainly have to! It's just that it will require massive, massive, massive structural change. I think allowing married men of a certain age to become permanent deacons gives a hint of the ways the Church might try to thread that needle on allowing married priests without going immediately bankrupt, at least to start with.

""no accumulating wealth and personal possessions" stuff could be a real problem."

Diocesan priests don't take a vow of poverty. They are to receive a wage that enables them to live simply but with dignity -- "Since clerics dedicate themselves to ecclesiastical ministry, they deserve remuneration which is consistent with their condition, taking into account the nature of their function and the conditions of places and times, and by which they can provide for the necessities of their life as well as for the equitable payment of those whose services they need." 281-1 is the canon in question. There's some further instruction about living simply and avoiding vanity, and being entitled to a yearly vacation and to retirement pay/care.

Everybody knows some priest who buys a new car every couple of years.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:01 PM on May 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm glad to see this happening. I can understand the reluctance given the lack of precedent to ordain women to the priesthood or the episcopate (though I don't agree with it at all), but there is no reason at all not to ordain women to the diaconate. Of course, there is no strong argument for universal celibacy amongst priests either. I'm glad my church already allows the ordination of women and married people, and it is nice to see any positive movement from the Vatican.
posted by pattern juggler at 12:50 AM on May 14, 2016