I spent my first weekend in Rome tracking down sources to confirm something I’d heard Friday night: that on Friday afternoon, at a meeting where synod delegates thought they would finally get some answers about the secretive study group that was examining, among other things, the subject of women deacons, delegates were instead met by two officials of the Vatican’s doctrine office who were not part of the study group and could provide no answers.
In fact, I confirmed with three independent sources, the officials had come with little slips of paper that they planned to hand out to each participant individually. The papers included an email address where synod delegates could send written feedback.
There was a great deal of interest in this meeting, in particular, because the proceedings of this study group—study group five—have been opaque. When the members of other groups were announced in July, the members of group five were not. When the members of other groups were identified with individual photos and names on the second day of the synod, group five showed only a group photo of the staff of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and another of its top officials. When participants thought they would get to meet with Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, the prefect of that dicastery, to ask questions on Friday, Cardinal Fernández was not there, and those he sent had no answers to give.
[‘Palpable outrage’: Synod delegates react to women deacons study group meeting]
On Friday night, Cardinal Fernández sent a statement to synod delegates apologizing for the “misunderstanding,” saying he had said in a communiqué on Oct. 9 that he would send two representatives to gather feedback. It seems few delegates took that to mean he would not be present, and on Monday, he justified his absence by saying that the Rev. Armando Matteo, the secretary of the dicastery’s doctrine section charged with coordinating the study into the role of women, was having a medical procedure. (It’s unclear why that would affect Cardinal Fernández’s presence.)
Confused by the entire situation, and uncertain whether study group five even existed or if its work had simply been taken up by the full body of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, I spent Monday morning looking through everything the synod office and the dicastery had said thus far about the study group.
The dicastery, it seems, had already been working on a document on women’s ministries in the church when the synod requested that they undertake this study. So the dicastery continued its study, according to its standard way of preparing any document for the pope—consulting experts, some of whom were appointed just last month and then bringing it to a “congress” of bishops and cardinals for approval. Cardinal Fernández revealed yesterday that additional women were being consulted for this document.
He also announced that the Vatican’s previous study group on women deacons, established in 2020, would resume its work and that their partial conclusions would be published “when the time is right.” What isn’t clear is whether this is the only place the issue of women deacons is being addressed—that is, completely outside the synod structure.
Reviewing the past statements also revealed an alarming lack of transparency: For example, the doctrine dicastery announced it was drafting a document on women’s ministries the same day the Vatican announced the names of the members of other study groups—but only after the press conference on study groups had ended, giving journalists no opportunity to ask questions about it. The Oct. 9 communiqué Cardinal Fernández pointed to as having given synod delegates a heads-up about the Oct. 18 meeting was only read aloud at a press conference and never released in print, meaning the only way it could circulate afterward was by tracking it down on YouTube.
In the Oct. 18 meeting, synod delegates made clear that they would not stand for this lack of transparency. When asked to stand in line to receive paper slips, one theologian stood up and began to pass the papers out, while synod delegates took control of the meeting, posing question after question to the dicastery officials. When it became clear that no answers were forthcoming, the officials began writing each question down and thanking participants for their questions, and delegates expressed to them “intense disappointment” at the way the meeting had operated.
At yesterday’s press conference, I asked the synod representatives whether they thought study group five was operating in a synodal way. Sister Nathalie Becquart, the undersecretary for the synod secretariat, replied that the Roman Curia (of which the synod secretariat is not part) is still learning to be synodal. Others have told me that Cardinal Fernández’s decision to face the delegates is a sign that his dicastery is shifting toward synodality.
Time will tell. Thursday’s meeting will bring further clues, but it will be the dicastery’s operations after this synod gathering ends that will tell us whether it has embraced a synodal conversion or simply embraced a “synodal” conformity while the pressure from delegates is on.
