In December last year, a Study Commission on the Women’s Diaconate, convened by Pope Francis, finally voted against endorsing the ordination of women as deacons, either for the ministry specifically, or as part of priesthood—in no small part foundering on the question of whether a diaconate apart from Holy Orders is even possible.
At the heart of this episode lies an issue that, despite the best efforts of previous popes, seems unable to die down: the possibility of women’s ordination. But one of the reasons this issue is so intractable is because it raises another, equally intractable but potentially even more pressing one.
The Church is a hierarchical organisation, with some members having authority—which is to say, power—over others. Among other things, it is the power to determine how people can exercise their agency specifically as members of the Church or of a body within it. These authorities are empowered to police activities and beliefs, and to punish or exclude individuals—who are frequently spiritually and materially dependent upon the Church, and therein profoundly vulnerable—when they violate those boundaries. Philosophers would call this power relation domination, and it is integral to the Church as it exists today.
This power is also officially gendered. It is wielded by a specifically male clerical class that occupies the top position at every level of the organisation. The result is that there is no place in the Church where a woman is not under the dominion of a man. That is to say, while authority is tied to clerical status in this way and clerical status is restricted to men, the domination of women is integral to the Church.
Many people are dismayed by the commission’s decision, and indeed the Church’s wider inertia on clerical status for women, because granting us that status would be a partial step towards equality.
Allowing women to serve as deacons would enable at least some women to enjoy at least similar (depending on the ordination question) power to at least some of the men who currently wield authority over us. As a result, some women who are currently dominated by some men would not be dominated by them. These women, in a spirit of solidarity, could then hopefully champion the causes of others similarly dominated under the status quo.
After the Commission’s decision, the Church is no closer to making this step. And of course, a women’s diaconate would only address some aspects of the issue: so long as there are echelons of clerical authority inaccessible to women, this domination will persist—a fact that these sorts of episodes continually highlight.
The Commission itself did not rule conclusively on the possibility of a women’s diaconate itself, although the Church currently seems more settled on women’s ordination in general. But either way, the sociopolitical fact of this domination is independent of the theology of ordination, and still demands a response. So what options for doing so remain? In the second part of this article, I will argue that they are significantly more difficult than the Church might like to accept.
No women clergy means a difficult choice