Women's Ordination Advocates Detained at Vatican

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 29, 2022

On August 29, as Pope Francis convened an extraordinary two-day meeting of the world’s cardinals, a delegation of Women’s Ordination Worldwide (WOW) processed towards the Vatican carrying red parasols with messages of inclusion and reform. Making their way toward the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the women welcomed the prelates with the message: “Remember your sisters who remain outside.” WOW is an international leader in creative, prayerful action bringing visibility to the urgent need for the full equality of women in the Catholic church.

After respectfully greeting several cardinals, the group was detained and later escorted across St. Peter’s Square to the local police station. The parasols, which in part read: “Sexism is a cardinal sin;” “Ordain women;” “Reform means women;” and “It’s reigning men,” were confiscated and the international group of seven women were detained for more than four hours, released “pending investigation.” 

Meanwhile, the male prelates met behind closed doors to discuss Pope Francis’ reorganization of the Vatican’s governing departments, which allows for the expansion of leadership roles to include women in positions once reserved for bishops and cardinals. Despite comprising more than half of the world’s 1.36 billion Catholics, no women were invited to be in dialogue with the cardinals about their own inclusion. 

WOW prays that today’s witness stirs the collective conscience of church leadership to open its doors to women who long to be heard and to serve their church as equals in Christ. 

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CONTACT: 

Kate McElwee, Executive Director, Women's Ordination Conference

 +1 607-725-1364 or +39 393 692 2100; kmcelwee@womensordination.org 

Miriam Duignan, Communications Director, Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research: +44 7970 926910;  miriam.duignan@wijngaardsinstitute.com  

Founded in 1975, the Women's Ordination Conference (WOC) is the oldest and largest organization working to ordain women as deacons, priests, and bishops into an inclusive and accountable Roman Catholic Church. A feminist voice for women in the church, WOC is a grassroots-driven movement that promotes activism, dialogue, and prayerful witness to call for women's full equality in the church.

Women’s Ordination Worldwide (WOW): Founded in 1996, WOW is an international network of groups whose current mission is the inclusion of Roman Catholic women in all ordained ministries. WOW currently includes representatives from Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Ireland, Poland, South Africa, and the United States.

Women’s Ordination Worldwide light up the Vatican: Campaigners shine a light on the Vatican’s exclusion of women ahead of historic meeting

For Immediate release: 27 August 2022 

On the eve of Pope Francis’ all-male consistory, Women’s Ordination Worldwide (WOW) shined a bright light on one of the greatest cons-in-history: the exclusion of women from ordained ministry. In a stealth operation on the night of Friday August 26, WOW assembled in the shadow of St. Peter’s to draw attention to those who were not invited to be present.

Following the creation of 20 new cardinals, Pope Francis has called an extraordinary consistory for the world’s cardinals to discuss his new Apostolic Constitution in a closed door session. The reforms significantly expand leadership roles once reserved for cardinals and bishops to laypeople, including women, who will ironically be left out of the meeting. Nevertheless, extraordinary women are making themselves present outside those doors.   

On the morning of Monday, August 29, WOW will welcome the male cardinals with some delicate reminders that the world is watching and will see that an all-male consistory is a shameful display of discrimination. 

The following quotes are from members of the WOW delegation in Rome: 

“The ever-moving Holy Spirit is calling us to be a more just, inclusive, and transparent church. The church cannot fly with one wing, cannot “journey together” behind closed doors, and cannot model Jesus by excluding women. Jesus counted women as partners in ministry. We ask church leaders to do the same.”  — Kate McElwee, Women’s Ordination Conference (USA) 

“We are lighting the way to a renewed model of priesthood and servant leadership in a church where all are welcome and all are equal. We stand outside with and for all women who have no voice and no vote, yet represent more than half the church.” — Kathleen Gibbons Schuck, Roman Catholic Women Priests (International)

“Women, who constitute more than half the Catholic church and the world’s population, are barred from the sacramental life of and highest leadership roles in the church. We’re here to shed light on this injustice.”  — Rhiannon Parry Thompson and Pat Brown, Catholic Women’s Ordination (UK)   

“The church calls us to pray for more vocations to the priesthood, yet it chooses to ignore the vocations already here. The church wastes the gifts of women, who are called to sacramental ministries and ready to lead.”  — Alicja Baranowska, WOW individual member (Poland)

“The Vatican’s cover-up of the history of women’s founding role and leadership in the early centuries of the church is a con that must be challenged. Expert theologians, including those inside the Vatican, have concluded there is no scriptural justification for the banishing of women;  it is a choice and it can and must be changed.” — Miriam Duignan, Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research (International)

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Media contacts: 

Kate McElwee +1 607-725-1364 or +39 393 692 2100 kmcelwee@womensordination.org 

Miriam Duignan: +44 7970 926910; miriam.duignan@wijngaardsinstitute.com 

Women’s Ordination Worldwide (WOW): Founded in 1996, WOW is an international network of groups whose current mission is the inclusion of Roman Catholic women in all ordained ministries. WOW currently includes representatives from Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Ireland, Poland, South Africa, and the United States.

Catholic Campaigners call for solidarity on International Women’s Day

March 8th, 2022 

 Women’s Ordination Worldwide (WOW) is marking International Women’s Day by calling for the all-male leadership of the Catholic Church to show true solidarity with women by recognising them as equals. 

Yesterday Pope Francis appealed for peace in Ukraine and sent two representatives to the border saying: "The presence of the two cardinals is the presence not only of the pope, but of all the Christian people who want to get closer and say: 'War is madness!” We echo the Pope’s call for peace and would love to see women standing alongside those cardinals as spiritual leaders who would then truly represent all Christian people. 

While their presence and solidarity is significant, peace demands justice.  The exclusion of women from priesthood is an injustice that undermines the Church's moral authority in peace-making. So long as the Vatican refuses to embrace women as co-equals in leadership - in the world and at the altar - its diplomatic efforts are compromised. At this time of war and unimaginable loss and pain, we pray for more balance and harmony in the world and this must include the world’s largest organised religion whose capacity to do good continues to be severely compromised. 

#IWD2022 #OrdainWomen  

One vote for women - Women’s Ordination Worldwide responds to the breaking of a barrier

Women’s Ordination Worldwide (WOW) celebrates the news that Sister Nathalie Becquart has been appointed as one of two new undersecretaries of the Synod of Bishops. We are hopeful this means she will become the first, but not the last, woman to be able to vote in the Roman Catholic Church.

When Sister Becquart takes her place among hundreds of male Bishops in the next Synod, she will not be voting as someone recognised as their equal who has the authority to influence and change teaching. She will be the sole woman permitted to participate in the decision-making process but those decisions will have been made exclusively by men and her presence among them cannot change this fact.

We lament the fact that Sr Becquart’s new colleague and counterpart in this role will not be her peer. Father San Martin has, by virtue of his gender, been automatically elevated to the status of Bishop – something still unthinkable for a woman in today’s all-male hierarchical church. The first woman to ever be allowed to vote in a Vatican synod will only do so because she has been temporarily appointed to this position of responsibility as undersecretary. Sr Becquart can be removed at any time and, like all women in the Catholic Church, she will be at the mercy of her male supervisors at whose sole discretion she serves.

This small but visible step towards women’s inclusion is a result of decades of pressure being put on the Vatican to stop excluding women from their own church. And whilst we welcome every sign of progress, we refuse to accept as inevitable the slow drip of occasional solitary positions for individual women. Our work will only be done when women everywhere can fulfill their vocation to minister as priests alongside men and can take up roles in every institutional department based on their qualifications and commitment.

WOMEN’S ORDINATION WORLDWIDE MEDIA CONTACTS:

Kate McElwee (USA and Italy): +39 393 692 2100; kmcelwee@womensordination.org

Miriam Duignan (Ireland and UK): +44 7970 926910; miriam.duignan@wijngaardsinstitute.com

Therese Koturbash (Canada): +1 204 648 5720; t.m.koturbash@gmail.com

Alicja Baranowska(Belgium & Poland): +32 488 67 60 20  alicja.baranowska@wp.pl

Women's Ordination Worldwide (WOW): Founded in 1996, WOW is an international network of groups whose current mission is the inclusion of Roman Catholic women in all ordained ministries. Founded on the principle of equality, WOW opposes all discrimination. 'There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus'. (Galatians 3:28).

WOW stands in solidarity with Tony Flannery

For Immediate Release: Fr. Tony Flannery is long-time friend and ally of Women’s Ordination Worldwide (WOW) and today we stand in solidarity with him as he resists the Vatican's attempts to punish him for his advocacy for women's equality and ordination in the Catholic Church.    

In drawing attention to the tragic litmus test of obedience(*) from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), Tony Flannery does a great service in shining a light on the misogyny and homophobia that so preoccupies and taints the official Catholic church. His courageous commitment to upholding his conscience is a model of pastoral leadership the institutional Church so desperately needs more of. 

WOW calls on Pope Francis, the CDF and the rest of the male leadership in the Vatican to get a grip and free themselves from the demons of discrimination. In their pursuit of Tony Flannery, a popular and influential priest, they again show their fear of Catholics growing in awareness of the bogus theology that bans women from ordained ministry. We call on clergy everywhere to speak out with conviction for radical equality, the way that Tony Flannery has dared to do.  

* (1. Reservation of the sacred priesthood to men alone; 2. The moral liceity of homosexual practices; 3. The legal recognition of marriage between persons of the same sex; 4. ‘Gender Theory’) 

Press contacts: 

Kate McElwee: +39 393 692 2100; kmcelwee@womensordination.org 

Miriam Duignan: +44 7970 926910; miriam.duignan@wijngaardsinstitute.com  

Therese Koturbash: +1 204 648 5720; t.m.koturbash@gmail.com 

WOW Sounds the Alarm Over New Women Deacon Commission

Media Advisory: for immediate release – Thursday, April 9th

Women’s Ordination Worldwide (WOW) is sounding the alarm about this newly announced group who will study the question of women deacons yet again. 

The newly formed commission members represent an arch conservative, Vatican-approved line-up of theologians and scholars, some of whom have no obvious expertise and those who have published on the topic have overwhelmingly denied the possibility of women deacons. If one were to put together a commission to derail the discussion on the ordination of women deacons, or worse, this seems to be it. 

WOW is concerned not only by the lack of diversity of thought on the panel, but also the complete lack of representation from the global south or any representative for the Amazonian region, especially given the overwhelming outcry for women’s ordained ministries during the most recent Synod on the Amazon. 

Given how the decks are stacked against any recognition of the 1,000 years of evidence of women deacons, we fear these Curia approved scholars will soon be pronouncing that women should be shielded from "clericalism" and continue to champion yet more platitudes about our “special nature.”

At a time when the Church so urgently needs to reform its leadership structures and welcome women as equal and sacramental partners in ministry and decision making, the last thing we need is another commission.

WOW is calling on all Catholics who benefit and witness the ministerial and sacramental work of women around the world to protest this insulting step back in time. We refuse to support any commission whose mission is simply to arrive at a foregone conclusion, ignoring centuries of history, and the urgent pastoral needs around the world. We urge Pope Francis and these commission members to closely follow the work of the original commission, and listen to the cries of the people: ordain women now! 

Press contacts:

Kate McElwee: +39 393 692 2100; kmcelwee@womensordination.org

Miriam Duignan: +44 7970 926910; miriam.duignan@wijngaardsinstitute.com

Therese Koturbash: +1 204 648 5720; t.m.koturbash@gmail.com

WOW RESPONDS ON WOMEN DEACONS DISCUSSED AT VATICAN SYNOD

WOMEN'S ORDINATION WORLDWIDE

For Immediate Release

6 October 2015

For Immediate Release

Response On Women Deacons Discussed at Vatican Synod

 Contact :

Miriam Duignan: UK (+44) 7970 926910 m_duignan@hotmail.com

Kate McElwee: Italy (+39) 393-692-2100 kmcelwee@womensordination.org

Erin Saiz Hanna: USA (+1) 401-588-0457 ehanna@womensordination.org

Rome, Italy: Recent statements made by Canadian Archbishop Paul-Andre Durocher of Gatineau, Quebec during the Vatican's Synod on the Family suggests an emergence of a discussion about including women in the ordained permanent diaconate. We applaud Archbishop Durocher for raising the suggestion to the exclusively male-voting body, and furthermore, for highlighting the relationship between the "degradation" of women in Church and society and violence against women around the world.

We call on our Church leaders to state clearly that "domination" over women is never acceptable, and until women are empowered as equals our Church perpetuates an inequality contrary to the Gospel. We pray that women's voices will not only be heard in forthcoming discussions, but given an equal vote.

Women's Ordination Worldwide (WOW) supports the restoration of the sacramentally ordained diaconate for women in its true form. Including women in the diaconate would not be something new. Instead the Church would be returning to its ancient roots when both women and men were deacons. While the women's diaconate continues in some parts of the Eastern Church even until today, we also now know that in the West, it was suppressed only on account of the prejudice against women.

Though restoration of an ordained women's diaconate would not alone be a satisfactory progression to including women in all realms of Church leadership, governance, and sacramental ministry - only ordination to the priesthood and episcopacy could begin to accomplish this - WOW supports restoration of the diaconate. It is long overdue. The so-called changing 'reasons' that have been used to try to justify the exclusion of women from ordained ministry rests quarely on the shoulders of prejudice alone.

The hierarchy deprives people of the pastors God calls for them and of the leadership gifts found in women who would serve the Church; upholding this discrimination, as though it were the will of God, is simply indefensible.

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#‎Synod15 #‎ordainwomen

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WOW's position statement on restoration of the ordained women's diaconate is found here: http://womensordinationworldwide.org/wow-position-statement-on-the-diaconate/

_____________________________________________________________

 Women's Ordination Worldwide (WOW): Founded in 1996, WOW is an international network of groups whose current mission is the inclusion of women in all ordained ministries in the Roman Catholic Church. Founded on the principle of equality,WOW opposes all discrimination.'There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is no longer slave or free,there is no longer male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus'. (Galatians 3:28) 

WOW currently includes representatives from Australia, Bangladesh,Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Malta, Poland, andthe United States. 

WOW's 3rd International Conference, 'Gender, Gospel, and Global Justice' was recently held in Philadelphia 18-20 September 2015. For more visit www.womensordinationworldwide.org 

WOW on the web:

• womensordinationworldwide.org

• Like us on Facebook!

Timeline of Work for Women’s Ordination

WOW responds to the Amazon Synod conclusion that women’s ministry requires further study

Women’s Ordination Worldwide (WOW) is disappointed but not altogether shocked to learn that the Amazon Synod has concluded some married men will get the green light to be ordained as priests while women’s ministry will remain marginalised and requiring of yet further study.

We are told that opening up the ordination of married men in the Amazon region is a recognition of sacramental leadership that emerges from the community. But the church community also includes women and it is women who are currently present in the majority of ministerial roles and are already recognized as leaders by the people they serve.

Why must the Church re-open a commission on women deacons when the historical evidence of women deacons is abundant and the call for women deacons, even within in the Synod Hall, is overwhelmingly clear. Why must the Church pursue the ‘creation of new ministries for women’ as if to treat women as a sub-group requiring exceptional paths and distinct categories for their work without confronting the fact that women live both priestly and diaconal vocations already and should be ordained. This blatant disparity in the treatment of male and female vocations and ministry is a reinforcement of age old prejudice and is a blow to the majority of Catholics who dared to hope that this time might be different.

Adding married men to sacramental ministry in the Amazon will further push aside the women the Synod recognised are currently doing the work. This reinforces prejudice and signals the supplanting of women whose spiritual leadership will be sacrificed in the name of God but is for the sake of men.

Press contacts:

Kate McElwee: +39 393 692 2100; kmcelwee@womensordination.org

Miriam Duignan: +44 7970 926910; miriam.duignan@wijngaardsinstitute.com

Therese Koturbash: +1 204 648 5720; t.m.koturbash@gmail.com

Timeline of Work for Women’s Ordination

WOW at the Amazon Synod to demand that women are finally recognized as equal church leaders

Date & time: Tuesday, October 22nd at 15.00

Location: Prayer vigil @ Piazza Adriana (corner via Triboniano) followed by procession to St Peter’s

A group of international delegates from the Women’s Ordination Worldwide campaign group (WOW) are gathered in Rome to remind the hierarchy that women are already serving in priestly roles and to demand that they too are recognized as equal leaders of the Church.

Whilst the all-male voting delegates behind the Synod Gate discuss the priest shortage in the Amazon region, we will process to the closed gate to remind them that women are already leading sacramental ministry across Amazonia and around the world. Their vocations are recognized by the communities they serve. Why does the institutional church continue to discredit their ministry? As momentum to ordain married men increases, WOW cautions against adding yet more men to an already imbalanced church without addressing the injustice of excluding women.

WOW is encouraged by the new Pact of the Catacombs, signed by 40 Bishops from the Synod on October 20, demanding that the church: ‘Recognize the services and real diakonia of a great number of women who today direct communities’ and for ‘an adequate ministry of women leaders of the community’.  Without women, the Catholic Church would not exist in the Amazon and it is a matter of justice that they too are finally empowered as equals rather than being supplanted by local men whilst women continue to do the work of serving the communities.

WOW calls on Pope Francis to publicly acknowledge that a majority of attendees of the Synod support women deacons and witness their ministries daily in the Amazon region. We are calling on the church to open their eyes to the reality that women live both priestly and diaconal vocations already. WOW asks that the Synod take a first step towards equality and justice by restoring women deacons in the same rite as men. The church and the environment are in crisis. It is time to stop quibbling over technicalities and man-made medieval rules when women and sacraments are at stake.

We are joining the call for ecological justice which cannot be separated from the call for spiritual and sacramental equality. Our message to the Synod is:

 "Empowered women will save the Earth, Empowered women will save the Church"

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Press contacts:

Pat Brown: +44 7950048628; pat@patbrown-at.co.uk
Kate McElwee: +39 393 692 2100; kmcelwee@womensordination.org

Miriam Duignan: +44 7970 926910; miriam.duignan@wijngaardsinstitute.com

Therese Koturbash: +1 204 648 5720; t.m.koturbash@gmail.com

Timeline of Work for Women’s Ordination

Le pape François et le diaconat pour les femmes

Publié le 17 mai 2019 par WOW Women’s Ordination Worldwide

Réponse de la Women’s Ordination Worldwide [WOW] au retard du pape François
concernant le diaconat pour les femmes

La Women’s Ordination Worldwide [WOW] s’étonne que le pape François ait une fois de plus retardé le rétablissement du diaconat ordonné pour les femmes et ce, en raison de ce qu’il dit être un manque de clarté quant aux racines historiques du rite sacramentel.

Théologiquement et historiquement, il n’y a pas de raison valable pour une prêtrise exclusivement masculine ou un diaconat qui ne soit que masculin. Non seulement la diacre Phoebée est-elle évoquée dans l’Écriture majoritairement androcentrique, mais nous savons, par le travail de nombreux spécialistes et des manuscrits anciens qui ont conservé les rites d’ordination au diaconat, qu’ils étaient identiques pour les hommes et pour les femmes.

Non seulement l’histoire montre que, au coeur de la révélation, des femmes étaient là, des femmes étaient des leaders et des femmes étaient ordonnées, mais elle montre aussi que:

• le ministère sacramentel pour les hommes s’est développé progressivement et a eu la porte ouverte à travers l’histoire de l’Église;

et inversement,

• la misogynie et les préjugés non chrétiens ont fermé cette porte aux femmes de sorte que leurs responsabilités ont été diminuées et sont restées figées depuis.

Au lieu d’une évolution pour les femmes, comme cela fut le cas pour les hommes, le patriacat a choisi, comme on pouvait s’y attendre, de réprimer le développement naturel de la collaborationsacramentelle des femmes. La phobie des menstruations et la croyance erronée que les femmes étaient impures, inférieures, qu’elles étaient des hommes défectueux ne font pas partie de la révélation divine, mais des preuves montrent que c’est pour cela que les hommes ont finalement exclu les femmes du sacrement de l’ordre.

L’Église catholique est capable de développer et de transformer un grand nombre de ses enseignements et de ses pratiques, mais quand il s’agit des femmes, le Vatican trouve toutes les excuses pour gagner du temps. Ceux et celles qui se tournent les pouces quand l’égalité des femmes est en jeu nuisent à toute l’Église.

Les structures humaines défectueuses ne sont pas du Christ et ne sont pas des raisons acceptables de refuser à l’Église les prêtres et les diacres que Dieu appelle pour nous. Pourquoi les catholiques devraient-ils se voir refuser les pasteurs que Dieu appelle pour nous juste parce qu’elles arrivent dans un corps de femmes?

Nous sommes une Église vivante capable de favoriser la croissance des femmes tout autant que celle des hommes. Nous devons rouvrir les portes et accueillir les dons et les vocations des femmes comme on l’a fait si facilement pour les hommes.

Si la volonté du pape François est d’encourager la discussion, nous lui demandons de rendre publiques les résultats complets de la Commission pour l’étude du diaconat féminin afin que les gens puissent voir les raisons non valables qui font hésiter les hommes.

Le 11 mai 2019

Contacts :
Miriam Duignan: (UK & Ireland) +44 7970 926910 miriam.duignan@wijngaardsinstitute.com
Therese Koturbash: Canada (+1) 204 648 5720 t.m.koturbash@gmail.com
Kate McElwee: (USA & Italy): +39 393 692 2100 kmcelwee@womensordination.org

Source :
http://womensordinationcampaign.org/press-releases/2019/5/11/womens-ordination-worldwide-responds-to-pope-francis-delay-of-women-deacons

Traduction : Pauline Jacob

Timeline of Work for Women’s Ordination

Women's Ordination Worldwide responds to Pope Francis' delay of women deacons

For Immediate Release: 11 May 2019

WOW is astonished that Pope Francis has again delayed restoration of the ordained women’s diaconate, now on account of what he says is a lack of clarity as to historical roots of the sacramental rite.  

Theologically and historically, there is no valid reason for an exclusively male priesthood or a male only diaconate. Not only is woman deacon Phoebe commemorated in the predominantly androcentric scripture, we know from the work of many scholars and ancient manuscripts preserving the ordination rites to the diaconate, that they were identical for men and women. 

Not only does history show that, in the kernel of revelation, women were there, women led, and women were ordained, it also shows that:

• Sacramental ministry for men developed progressively with an open door through Church history; and conversely,

• Un-Christian misogyny and prejudice closed that door to women so that their roles were diminished and it has remained bolted shut ever since.

Instead of growth for women, as has been the acceptable standard for men, patriarchy has unsurprisingly opted to suppress the natural development of women’s sacramental partnership. Phobia against menstruation and the wrong belief that women were unclean, inferior, misbegotten men are not part of divine revelation yet evidence shows that this is why men eventually excluded women from the sacrament of ordination.

While the Catholic Church is able to develop and transform many of its teachings and practices, when it comes to women, the Vatican finds every excuse to stall. Those who twiddle thumbs when women’s equality is at stake harm the whole Church.

Faulty, man-made structures are not of Christ, and not acceptable reasons to refuse the Church the priests and deacons God calls for us.  Why should Catholics be denied the pastors God calls for us just because they happen to come packaged as women?

We are a living Church capable of growth for women just as much as men. We must re-open doors and welcome the gifts and vocations of women that have been so readily welcomed for men. 

If Pope Francis's will is to encourage discussion, we call on him to make public the complete findings of the Commission on Women Deacons so that the people can see the frivolous nonsense it is that causes these men to dither.

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Contact: Miriam Duignan: (UK & Ireland) +44 7970 926910 miriam.duignan@wijngaardsinstitute.com

Therese Koturbash: Canada (+1) 204 648 5720 t.m.koturbash@gmail.com

Kate McElwee: (USA & Italy): +39 393 692 2100 kmcelwee@womensordination.org

Women’s Ordination Worldwide (WOW): Founded in 1996, WOW is an international network of groups whose current mission is the inclusion of women in all ordained ministries in the Roman Catholic Church. Founded on the principle of equality, WOW opposes all discrimination. ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus’. (Galatians 3:28)

Timeline of Work for Women’s Ordination

Women’s Ordination Advocates Call for Votes for Catholic Women

For Immediate Release 21 September 2018

Women’s Ordination Worldwide (WOW) acknowledges the Vatican took a significant step toward building a more synodal church by replacing the 1965 Synod of Bishops’ constitution, "Episcopalis Communio,” to officially allow non-ordained persons to participate as voting members. Yet, even when the letter of the law is changed to be more inclusive, the culture and practice of gender inequality maddingly persists.

First in 2015, and again at the upcoming Synod on Youth, Faith, and Vocational Discernment, religious brothers (non-ordained men) are named as voting members of the Synod. While theologically and canonically “equal” to their brothers, women religious are still denied a voting role. Why are women still excluded from voting? Why are the laity, including young people, sidelined and voiceless?

The reason? Bishop Fabio Fabene, undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops, offered this explanation: “For now, that is how it is."

“It is how it is,” is the logic of a frightened patriarchy. The practice of sacralized gender discrimination within the Catholic Church not only erodes its credibility, it sends a clear message to women: stay silent, stay invisible, stay in your place.

With new revelations of sexual abuse in the Church, we are facing the deep failures and sins of the current clerical system, a structure that risked the safety, faith, and trust of children and vulnerable people to protect itself. This kind of “boy’s club” clericalism cannot be trusted to lead a global discussion on Youth, Faith, and Vocational Discernment, where only 10% of participants (“observers,” “consultors,”) will be women.

We refuse to accept “it is how it is” in cases of sexual abuse, and we refuse to accept “it is how it is” in cases of gender discrimination. These crimes must be stopped. Catholic women must vote.

WOW stands with survivors of sexual abuse and harassment by clergy, and all those who are silenced, dismissed or rejected for sharing their stories, or daring to advocate for equality. We believe that only when women have equal opportunity to make decisions, respond to their vocations, and hold meaningful leadership positions, can our Church begin to heal from its sins.

In the current climate of increased oppression against women and other marginalized groups, Catholics need justice, action, and transparency. A closed-door session of bishops and clerics discussing young people is not the solution we need, rather, it is the root of the problem.

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Kate McElwee: (Italy & USA) +39 393 692 2100 / +1 607-725-1364 kmcelwee@womensordination.org

Alicja Baranowska: (Belgium & Poland)  +32 488 67 60 20  alicja.baranowska@wp.pl

Pat Brown: (UK) +44 7950048628 pat@patbrown-at.co.uk

Colm Holmes: (Ireland)  +353 86 606 3636 colmholmes2020@gmail.com

Kathleen Gibbons Schuck (USA) +1 215-872-1096 kschuck55@gmail.com

Timeline of Work for Women’s Ordination