Written by During Christmas, The Tablet covered the debate on women’s ordination to the diaconate, publishing two letters from our members. The NBCW represents diverse member opinions and does not endorse a specific stance, however these letters do get to the heart of the debate and are worth reading.
I’m disappointed but not surprised at the outcome of the latest Vatican commission on women and the diaconate (Letters, 13 and 20 December 2024), but I think that we have to stop ordination becoming an obsession.
This has two consequences: first, it devalues all the work that women already do, as if the work is of no value unless it is affirmed by the hierarchical laying on of hands; and second, it diverts energy away from developing women’s ministries outside the hierarchical structure, where they have great freedom to be creative, into trying to climb on to the clerical bandwagon, with all the limitations that would impose.
Patricia Stoat
Nottingham
Today, lay women and men teach, counsel, coordinate parishes, lead communities in liturgical events and social action, administer some sacraments and, with a mere adjustment to canon law, could preach at Mass.
They are carrying out their roles as lay people living out their baptismal calling. They act from an ontological sameness with those they serve. Ordaining women as deacons would separate women providing pastoral services out from their peers and set them apart.
It would clericalise what are legitimate roles in our lay vocation and relegate lay people once again to being passive members who pay, pray and obey. It would reduce the voice of women within the Church, confining it to the lowest ranks of clergy.
A synodal Church calls for the institutional framework to be shattered and remade to create permanent empowered spaces for all the faithful – as called for by Hal St John (Letters, 6 December) – which would include replacing the clericalised diaconate with a universally recognised pastoral ministry that commissions lay women and men to walk on the synodal path of shared mission.
Only then will we get recognition of the roles proper to lay ministries. Only then will we stop ordaining men to be altar servers in the liturgy. This is the rigorous re-examination I and others call for and which our synodal Church demands.
Ann Smith
Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire