Questions of inclusion

Questions of inclusion 

The Tablet
10 August 2016 | by Massimo Faggioli | Comments: 0

Commission on Women in the Diaconate

Asking Pope Francis bold questions during an audience could be a new way to reform the Church. His impromptu remark, made to the heads of women’s religious orders in the Vatican, about his intention to create a commission to study the question of women in the diaconate – “especially regarding the earliest days of the Church” – turned out to be a promise. Less than three months later, on August 2, the Vatican announced the appointment of a “study commission on the diaconate of women”.

The commission consists of a president and 12 members, evenly split between men and women. Of the six women, only two are members of religious orders; six of the three are Italians, and all are European, except one from the US; four are based in Rome. The six men are all priests but only one is Italian; three are based in Rome.

The impression is that this is a commission representative of different theological orientations and attentive to the delicate balance created by the still ongoing transition from Benedict to Francis. The mandate and agenda are not entirely clear yet (especially its institutional relationship with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the International Theological Commission), but it is a commission whose conclusions have certainly not already been written.

It is atypical of Vatican commissions. The average age of the group seems lower than usual. The appointees are not cardinals, bishops or Church bureaucrats but scholars, all with strong institutional relations with the Catholic academic world. Their areas of expertise are much more the Fathers of the Church and ecclesiology than Church history. This suggests that there may have been a shift between Francis’ original announcement on May 12 (the diaconate of women in early Church history) and the appointment of the commission – which does not seem to be about the history of the diaconate of women.

There is no expert on the male diaconate or on the theology of ordained ministry. There are several experts on medieval theology, but not on other periods. The absence of Church historians, of historians of the liturgy, and of relevant experts – such as on the Syriac (Antioch) and Armenian tradition – is striking.

What is more typical of a pre-Francis Vatican commission is the dominance of Europe and North America, with theologians from Asia and Latin America notably absent. Four are Italian-speaking, three are Spanish-speaking, two each for German and English geo-cultural areas (both English-speaking members are from the US, but very different one from the other). Interestingly, the Rome of the Vatican is more represented by the female members than by the male members.

Membership of the International Theological Commission appears to have been an important criterion in the make-up of the commission. Experts in the field, such as the German dogmatician Peter Hünermann, the Belgian canon law expert and ecclesiologist Alphonse Borras, and the Italian ecclesiologist Serena Noceti, are absent. Only Phyllis Zagano has advocated openly for the women’s diaconate. Her appointment is surely important in giving a  voice to the diaconate’s champions, but it remains to be seen how her particular role and agenda will fit within the commission. The other members are (at best) open to talk about women in the diaconate, without a substantial record on the issue.

A particular case is Fr Karl-Heinz Menke, who has published on the diaconate in Theologie und Philosophie in 2013, and who, right after his appointment, gave an interview to the conservative German newspaper Die Welt stating his opposition to women joining the diaconate and differentiating between deacons and deaconesses: “The justified call for more participation by women in the Church would hardly be met, if at all, by admitting them to an exclusively serving function. Women who were called deaconesses but were not equal to deacons would more likely feel discriminated against than valued more highly,” he said.

Moreover, Fr Menke stated, “deaconesses never participated anywhere in Church ministry through ordination [to the priesthood]”. His theological opposition is based on the assumption that, “since there is only one single sacrament of orders (in three levels, i.e. deacon, priest, bishop), the admission of females to the sacramental diaconate, bestowed by ordination, would mean their admission also to priestly and episcopal ordination”. He did say in the same interview that women cardinals might be possible.

While some members of the commission are familiar with the ecclesiology of Vatican II – and might be open to developments on women in the diaconate – for others it is more difficult to say. Among the issues that will give more of an indication of its intent will be the language that members use for the work of the commission, whether they conduct informal “hearings” of other experts, and what kind of support (logistical and “political”) the commission will get from the Roman Curia.

Among the substantive issues will be the appraisal of the theology of the diaconate at Vatican II, of the 2002-2003 document of the International Theological Commission on diaconate (fruit of the work done between 1992 and 1997), and of Benedict XVI’s 2009 motu proprio Omnium in mentem that detached the male diaconate in canon law from the priesthood. Then, in February 2015, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi announced the creation of a “permanent consultation” at the Pontifical Council for Culture about the role of women in the Church: not much has happened since.

If a historical parallel is possible, what comes to mind is Paul VI’s commission for the study on women in society and in the Church (1973-1976), which was a positive response to a wish expressed by the Bishops’ Synod of 1971, which was charged to talk about women’s apostolate, not ministry. But Paul VI’s commission worked at the beginning of the first disappointments of the post-Vatican II period. The pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI did not address the issue of the role of women in the Church through study commissions but through magisterial pronouncements that were neither preceded nor influenced by a phase of theological discussion.

So far, on the issue of women, the difference between Francis and his two immediate predecessors has been in terms of style and process. There may be more to come.

Massimo Faggioli is a church historian and professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University, Pennsylvania.

Who’s who on the commission
Archbishop Luis Francisco Ladaria, president of the Spanish Jesuits and secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith since 2008. His appointment is not merely ex officio, being an expert in the Church Fathers, and secretary of the International Theological Commission between 2004 and 2009.

Sr Nuria Calduch-Benages, sister of the Holy Familiy from Catalonia, is an Old Testament scholar, member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, and a full professor at the Gregorian University in Rome.

Sr Mary Melone, an Italian Franciscan, is the first female president of Rome’s Pontifical University Antonianum, appointed by the Vatican in 2014.

Francesca Cocchini, a faculty member at Rome’s La Sapienza state university and at the Patristic Institute Augustinianum, she specialises in Origen and in the Alexandria tradition.

Mgr Piero Coda, president of the Sophia University Institute (of the Focolare movement), member of the International Theological Commission and among the most respected theologians in Italy who has written on Vatican II. President of the association of Italian theologians, ATI, 2003-2011.

Marianne Schlosser, German theologian at the University of Vienna and member of the International Theological Commission (appointed in September 2014) who has written on the spiritual theology of Bonaventura, Catherine of Siena, Claire of Assisi and Thomas Aquinas.

Michelina Tenace, theologian at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University, and a specialist on the Eastern Christian traditions (especially Vladimir Soloviev and Gregory Palamas).

Phyllis Zagano, senior research associate-in-residence at Hofstra University in New York and the author of many publications on women in the Church and on women deacons (most recently: Women Deacons? Essays with Answers, 2016). She has called the commission “a wonderful opportunity for the Church”.

Fr Santiago Madrigal Terrazas, Jesuit and professor of ecclesiology at Madrid’s Pontifical University Comillas, and the author of many publications, including reminiscences of  Vatican II, the theology of Josef Ratzinger and Ignatius of Loyola.

Fr Karl-Heinz Menke, emeritus professor of dogmatic theology at the University of Bonn and member of the International Theological Commission (appointed September 2014), with publications on Antonio Rosmini and Josef Ratzinger. Recently suggested the Pope could open up the cardinalate to women, so enabling them to help elect the next Pope.

Fr Robert Dodaro, American Augustinian and president of the Patristic Institute Augustinianum, a specialist on Augustine, and editor of the pre-Synod book Remaining in the Truth of Christ (2014); critical of the possible openings in the practice of the Church towards divorced and remarried Catholics.

Fr Aimable Musoni, Professor of ecclesiology at the Pontifical Salesian University in Rome and a specialist on Cyprian of Carthage and on ecclesiology and inculturation. A Rwandan, he is the only member of the commission to come from Africa.

Fr Bernard Pottier, Belgian Jesuit, faculty member at the Institute d’études théologiques in Brussels and member of the International Theological Commission (appointed September 2014), and a specialist on Gregory of Nyssa. He has published works on the diaconate, including a book with Alphonse Borras, The Grace of the Diaconate.