The courageous young adults who took part in the 2018 Synod of Bishops on young people pushed the 267 voting bishops at that assembly to say together that it was a “duty of justice” for the church to better include women in its all-male decision-making structures.
By National Catholic Reporter Editorial Staff
“By all accounts, Pope Francis has had an eventful papacy.
“This first pope from the Americas has breathed new life into the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, refashioned the Vatican’s staid bureaucracy, and pushed the Catholic Church to focus on the needs of the environment and global peripheries.
“One especially interesting turn: Only 22 years after Pope John Paul II claimed the church had “no authority whatsoever” to ordain women as priests, Francis in 2016 created a first-of-its-kind papal commission to study the history of the ordination of women as Catholic deacons. Even more, in 2020, after that commission had wrapped up its work, the pope created another.
“For an institution known for thinking in terms of millennia, this is something akin to lightspeed. And Francis deserves special applause for listening to the voices of Catholic sisters, long neglected, or, worse, mistreated by the Vatican, who bravely asked him to create the first commission.
“What’s particularly frustrating, then, is the near-complete lack of transparency about the work of the commissions.”
By National Catholic Reporter Editorial Staff — Read more …