One of the most dramatic moments of last month’s final meeting of the Synod on Synodality came on Oct. 18. That afternoon, synod delegates expected to meet with members of a special study group established by Pope Francis on women’s ministries—including the possibility of women deacons—and were instead met with two junior officials of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith who were unable to answer delegates’ questions. Synod delegates pushed back on the officials, insisting that the dicastery’s prefect, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, answer their questions about the makeup of “Study Group 5” and its procedures.
A transcript prepared by America Media sheds light on the subsequent meeting between Cardinal Fernández and synod participants held on Oct. 24. The transcript was prepared from a Vatican-published audio file of the meeting and reviewed for accuracy by America staff members.
In the 90-minute recording, the cardinal revealed for the first time the names of some of those the dicastery has consulted with on the question of women’s ministries and faced questions from participants on the group’s relative lack of diversity. Criticisms from participants included the perception that the question of the female diaconate is not moving forward and the dicastery’s lack of communication and transparency around this process.
How ‘Study Group 5’ works
As he had done in previous comments, Cardinal Fernández clarified at the Oct. 24 meeting that the work the synod had assigned to Study Group 5, one of its 10 study groups meant to handle controversial issues that arose during the last synod session, dovetailed with work the dicastery was already doing on women’s ministries. This is the work Cardinal Fernández described in his Oct. 2 update to the synod body, in which he said synod deliberations had excluded the question of women deacons.
“The conclusion was that instead of making two different groups, [the work] remained up to the dicastery, but listening to the synod and in dialogue with the synod secretariat. And so we did it [that way]. Every now and then we met with [Secretary General of the Synod] Cardinal Grech to listen to the concerns [from the synod secretariat],” Cardinal Fernández said on Oct. 24, adding, “In the case of the dicastery, it is not a group of five or six people; it is the whole dicastery that works.”
The cardinal explained that the dicastery’s usual way of preparing a document for the pope is to consult with its standard body of consultors. “When they respond, if we see that there is a sufficient base to work, we start working with that material. If we see that there is still something missing, we send a new letter [to the consultors] asking to develop some issues that are not well developed,” he said. After that, the dicastery will hold a meeting for further discussion with the consultors, usually on a Monday, and continue working on the material at the regular Wednesday meeting of the cardinals who are members of the dicastery. He said this latter group had already met twice on the issue of women’s ministry.
He clarified that the dicastery also intended to gather feedback from a wider group of women, in particular those involved in the synod, on the question of women’s ministries in the church. The cardinal explained, “When there is enough material, [the dicastery staff] make a summary with the most important topics, and they make the ‘congresses,’ which are meetings where they…make the votes to move forward.”
Who is involved?
A key question facing the cardinal was the composition of “Study Group 5” since it was the only group that did not reveal its members. After saying that “it is not a group of five or six people; it is the whole dicastery that works,” Cardinal Fernández read the names of 17 of the 28 consultors to the dicastery who have been involved in this work, nine of whom were appointed in September. Eight of the 17 were women, and most of those named were Italian.
Msgr. Alphonse Borras, a Belgian canon lawyer, asked Cardinal Fernández about the “huge majority of Italians,” saying he had noticed in the global synod “a strong Italian presence that does not favor, let’s say, the expressions….of other areas, not only linguistic but cultural.” Monsignor Borras also raised concern over whether the consultors named were experts in “these more specific questions of ordination, of the ordination to the diaconate or the priesthood and episcopate in relation to the questions of women.”
Immediately after Monsignor Borras, Agbonkhianmeghe Orobator, S.J., the dean of the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University, said, “I thought I heard that in terms of the composition of the group that works on this question, it is representative of the entire church, the global church. And yet when I look at the list of 28 consultants, most of them are Italian priests…. I don’t think I have seen anybody from Africa or Madagascar represented in this group of consultants. So the idea that it is consultative and representative leaves me a little bit concerned, given the fact that this was supposed to proceed synodally.”
Later in the meeting, Hervé Legrand, O.P., professor emeritus at the Institut Catholique de Paris, recommended that theology departments around the world be added to the consultation in order to avoid a perception that because “it is always the authority that chooses its experts,” the dicastery may be choosing experts who simply echo the dicastery’s own views.
Cardinal Fernández responded to Msgr. Borras and Father Orobator by saying that “the representation of the wider world is found in the ‘feria quarta’ [Wednesday assembly of bishops and cardinals who are members of the dicastery], where there are two African bishops, for example.” He repeated that the dicastery hoped to send the consultation to a wider group of people.
Cardinal Fernández distances himself from the pope
Responding to Father Legrand, who raised several other points related to theology, Cardinal Fernández said that while it is important to consult theologians, the church also needed to pay attention to the realities of Catholic communities led by women.
“If we talk about the diaconate, theological reflection is fundamental, and I agree that we must consult the faculties [departments] of theology, especially the women who are in the faculties of theology. When we talk about the broader issue of the position of women in the church, it is not enough for the theologians,” the cardinal said.
“On the other hand, I agree that there are many issues connected to the issue. In this sense, they asked about the existing structures because even if decisions are made, the existing structures, the clerical style, prevent us from moving forward,” he said, pointing to the example of the bishops who had not instituted catechists. He pointed out that despite the decision of an “authority”—Pope Francis—to allow bishops to officially institute women as catechists, few had done so.
He added that there were other cultural issues in the church to be overcome: “For example, to dismantle what is often said in the church about the feminine nature, that women have their own genius, and that this genius is sweetness, closeness, and these characteristics, these stereotypes of women. This [idea] is really very strong in the church, and we must dismantle it.”
This comment and the one that immediately followed it seemed to distance Cardinal Fernández from Pope Francis, who has often employed an idea of feminine “sweetness” in his speeches, most notably when he referred to female theologians on the International Theological Commission as “the strawberries on the cake.”
Then, speaking about Swiss theologian Hans Urs Von Balthasar’s idea of the “Marian” and “Petrine” dimensions of the church, which Pope Francis has often used to refute arguments for women’s ordination, Cardinal Fernández said: “There are many theologians who still insist [on this identification of women with the ‘Marian dimension’ and men with the ‘Petrine dimension’ of the church]. Now they have changed the name and they say the ‘charismatic dimension’ of the church. This reflection has gone forward toward a direction that makes it impossible to take concrete steps [on women’s ministries], right?”
He concluded: “We must be careful about this…so as not to create a structure that in the end continues to depend on [hierarchical] authority. I only give these examples because I think that the issue of women in the church requires [us] to develop different ways, to choose and to reflect.”
When will the fruit be ripe?
In a comment that garnered applause from the other synod participants, Father Orobator challenged Cardinal Fernández on the idea that the theme of the women’s diaconate was not “mature” enough.
Father Orobator said: “I like fruits. I eat a lot of fruits. And when I keep fruits to ripen and mature, I look for signs, the change in color, maybe the aroma, maybe the texture. So my question is, what are those signs, those norms, those principles that we should be looking for, that you are looking for, to really judge that, yes, now is the time that we can say this is mature? Because if we don't have those principles, norms and signs, we could be doing this for the rest of our lives.”
Father Orobator also asked Cardinal Fernández what evidence he had for judging, as he had said on the first full day of the synod, “that there is still no room for a positive decision by the magisterium regarding the access of women to the diaconate”—and whether that was based on the confidential reports from the two previous study commissions on women deacons.
Cardinal Fernández announced on Oct. 18 that the second study commission would resume its work studying the female diaconate, while the dicastery would handle the broader question of women’s ministries.
The cardinal responded:
This expression, that “the theme of the dicastery for women is not mature to make a decision today,” is a phrase of the pope, not mine. That is why he does not want to close the issue of the diaconate. He says that we can still study with patience, without obsession, without haste. We can continue to study, and this is very important. But he thinks that things are not yet mature.
He certainly has received some material from the [previous study] commissions [on women deacons], the commissions that have been there and that continue. And the conclusions we will then make public, perhaps by giving some votes, some details. But the conclusions are more or less these: That things are not absolutely clear, that they cannot now conclude, more or less that is the partial conclusion.
He added that he had “seen something of this material” and that there were “different opinions” on the history of the female diaconate.
He said: “If you ask me my personal opinion, I can give it as a theologian, not as a prefect.… I believe that the foundations for the ‘no’ to the female diaconate are reasonable, but they are not sufficient…. The reasons for the ‘yes’ are not enough to respond to negative opinions. With this sincere opinion, no one is happy, right?”
He concluded, “I am very convinced that we cannot wait to take clear steps forward for an empowerment of women in the church, distinguishing what is absolutely inseparable in Holy Orders from what is not.”
Only three women took to the microphone to comment at the 90-minute meeting, two of them at the very end. The most critical was María Cristina Inogés Sanz, a Spanish theologian and member of the synod’s methodology commission, who raised several points about the myopia she saw in the consultors’ areas of expertise, including that none were experts in the female diaconate and that no women who had discerned a vocation to the diaconate had been consulted.
She also critiqued Cardinal Fernández’s list of women that he said were being studied by the dicastery as examples of non-ordained ministry, saying: “I do not know who has written the text, but it manifests a deep ignorance of what these women have done in the history of the church. And it is very sad because, once again, it is the manipulation of women through other female figures.”
She then turned her focus to the opacity of communication that had frustrated many synod delegates, from the secrecy around the group’s membership to Cardinal Fernández’s categorical “no” to women deacons on Oct. 2 to his failure to appear at the Oct. 18 meeting. “When you communicate—sorry, but you communicate very badly,” Dr. Inogés Sanz said. “This problem has been created by the dicastery, with that way of explaining [things].”
