An interview with Pope Francis was aired on the American television network CBS 60 Minutes on 20 May. Over the course of the interview, Norah O’Donnell asked the Pope whether there would ever be the prospect within the Catholic Church of a woman being ordained as a deacon in Holy Orders. The Pope’s reply was a blunt ‘No’. Pressed a little further by O’Donnell, the Pope elaborated. He had no problems recognising deaconesses as in the early Church, but women deacons in Holy Orders were definitely excluded.
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This negative response came as a surprise to many Vatican watchers. Firstly, because the Pope has been quite constructive in promoting women to positions of responsibility in the Church. Secondly, because he had commissioned two groups of experts to investigate the question of women deacons. The first was to explore the role of women as deacons/deaconesses in the history of the Church. The second was to review the theology of the diaconate as such. The first commission apparently came back with inconclusive results. The second met in September 2021 and July 2022, but the results of these discussions, too, have not been made public.
The third and main reason, however, for the surprise that greeted the papal negative is that in making any response at all the Pope was pre-empting the work of one of the ten groups of theological experts that had been commissioned subsequent to the first session of the Synod on Synodality to study the question of women’s possible access to the diaconate and to bring the results of their investigations to the second session of the Synod in October 2024.
Over the last fifty years there has been much coming and going over the admission of women to Holy Orders – not surprisingly, as many other Christian denominations over this period have taken steps to admit women not just to the diaconate but also to the priesthood and even to the episcopacy. Just recently, for instance, even the traditionally conservative Orthodox communion has ordained a woman deacon in Zimbabwe.
In April 1976 the Pontifical Biblical Commission was instructed to address the question of what evidence there was in Scripture to support, or to deny, access to women to the priesthood. The Commission concluded unanimously: ‘It does not seem that the New Testament by itself alone will permit us to settle in a clear way and once and for all the problem of the possible accession of women to the presbyterate.’ In a further response the Commission voted 12-5 in favour of the view that Scripture alone does not exclude the ordination of women, and 12-5 in favour of the view that the Church could ordain women to the priesthood without going against Christ’s original intention.
The ink, however, was hardly dry on the Commission’s response before the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in October 1976 promulgated the ‘Declaration on the Question of the Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood’ – the Declaration ‘Inter Insigniores’. It taught that for doctrinal, theological and historical reasons the Church ‘does not consider herself authorized to admit women to priestly ordination’. This negative response was invoked briefly and in passing in a subsequent Apostolic Letter of Pope John Paul II: ‘Mulieris Dignitatem’, in October 1988, and in much greater detail in his 1994 Apostolic letter: ‘Ordinatio Sacerdotalis’, which addressed the question explicitly. Pope John Paul II not only declared that the Church has no authority to confer priestly ordination on women but further enjoined that this judgment was to be ‘definitively held by all the Church’s faithful’.
The phrase, ‘definitively held’, excited much fluttering in theological dovecotes both in the Vatican and internationally. Did the Pope by this phrase intend to indicate a formally infallible papal dogmatic definition? In response to a dubium (doubt) in October 1995 the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith further responded that the exclusion of women from access to priestly ordination was to be understood as ‘belonging to the deposit of the faith’. Then in a commentary, ‘Ad tuendam fidem’, in July 1998, the Congregation, commenting on ‘Ordinatio Sacerdotalis’, reasserted the teaching : ‘The Supreme Pontiff, while not wishing to proceed to a dogmatic definition, intended to reaffirm that this doctrine is to be held definitively, founded on the written Word of God, constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium’. And again in December 2002, the Congregation issued a ‘ Decree on the Attempted Ordination of some Catholic Women’ and used similar language: ‘The denial of this doctrine is rightly considered the denial of a truth that pertains to the Catholic faith’.
'What is surprising, however, is that the Pope has taken the unusual medium of a CBS 60 Minutes programme to express his negative judgment on women deacons. One would have expected such a judgment to be dignified by an Apostolic Letter, a Declaration or a Motu Proprio.'
So, while the Pope seems to resile from pronouncing a formal papal infallible dogmatic definition (as, for instance, in the 1950 definition of the Assumption), the exclusion of women from priestly ordination was proclaimed as an authoritative (infallible?) teaching of the Church’s Magisterium.
In respect of women’s ordination to the priesthood, Pope Francis has not retreated from the teaching of Pope John Paul II. Indeed, both in a 2013 interview and in an October 2016 statement to reporters while returning from a visit to Sweden, he has explicitly invoked the authority of ‘Ordinatio Sacerdotalis’ to exclude women from access to priestly ordination. He has hitherto, however, seemed more open to the possibility of ordaining women as deacons. As I noted earlier, he has established two commissions to investigate the question, and, although the report of neither commission has been made public, ordination of women to the diaconate has been the subject of ongoing discussion for almost ten years. At the Synod on the Amazon in October 2019, 137 of the 185 bishops commended the ongoing discussion on the admission of women to the ordained diaconate, and subsequent to the Synod on Synodality in October 2023 the question was entrusted for further investigation to one of the ten groups that were set up to report to the second session of the Synod in October 2024.
In the light of these ongoing commissions, discussions and investigations, Pope Francis’ blunt ‘No’ to Norah O’Donnell’s question about the prospect of female deacons comes as a shock. A variety of reasons have been advanced to explain the Pope’s volte-face. Perhaps both unpublished reports of the commissions established to examine the issue, and the evidence from the early Church which they have considered, have been too inconclusive to justify the Pope acting to ordain women deacons. Perhaps in any event he does not wish to ordain women as this would ‘clericalize’ them and introduce yet another clerical order in the Church. Perhaps the strong negative reaction in some parts of the Church that greeted his recent Apostolic Letter, ‘Fiducia Supplicans’, authorizing the blessing of members of gay unions make him unwilling to intervene again in a highly controverted discussion. Perhaps he thought that ordaining women as deacons would set at least an arguable precedent for re-igniting the debate over women priests, since both the priesthood and the diaconate are both Holy Orders. Or perhaps, finally, because of the model of male/female relations he has borrowed from Hans Urs von Balthasar, the Pope believes that in aspiring to ordination even as deacons women are denying their uniquely Marian role confined to women in the Church and intruding on the Petrine role reserved exclusively to men. Or perhaps it was a combination of these and other considerations.
One would be bold to dismiss the persuasiveness of these considerations or even the Pope’s sense of the untimeliness of such an intervention at present. What is surprising, however, is that the Pope has taken the unusual medium of a CBS 60 Minutes programme to express his negative judgment on women deacons. One would have expected such a judgment to be dignified by an Apostolic Letter, a Declaration or a Motu Proprio. But to do so on a television programme is at least highly unusual or even inappropriate. And to do so when a group of theologians has been specially commissioned between sessions of the Synod to investigate the issue further and to bring the results of their investigation to the second session of the Synod not only seems to be pre-empting their research but also acting in an authoritarian and distinctly unsynodal manner. There is no sign of deference to the deliberations of the Synod or to the possibility that new evidence or a new understanding of the existing evidence might render conclusive what has hitherto been interpreted as inconclusive.
One waits expectantly to see how this ongoing discussion plays out at the Synod in October and how it clarifies (or obscures) the relation between the official teaching organs in the Church (including the papacy) and the emerging deliberations and decisions agreed upon by the members of the Synod. Is the Synod window-dressing or a genuine sharing of authority?
Bill Uren, SJ, AO, is a Scholar-in-residence at Newman College at the University of Melbourne. A former Provincial Superior of the Australian and New Zealand Jesuits, he has lectured in moral philosophy and bioethics in universities in Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth and has served on the Australian Health Ethics Committee and many clinical and human research ethics committees in universities, hospitals and research centres.
Main image: Pope Francis during the 60 Minutes interview (OSV News/Adam Verdugo, courtesy, 60 minutes, CBS NEWS)