A “lesson” from women. In four different meetings the Pope wanted the Council of nine cardinals established by him to assist him in the governance of the Church to enter into dialogue with theologians, nuns, an Anglican bishop, professors at the Papal faculties, to examine the key issues of the role of the feminine in ecclesial community, of the relationship with power, of ordained ministries, of the necessary cultural change to recognize women’s role. Those dialogues became books. Four volumes, published by Pauline editions and with a preface by the Pontiff, with the eloquent title “Demasculizing the Church?”
From the limits of von Balthasar’s Marian-Petrine principle to the role that cultures play in recognizing the role of women in different latitudes up to the economy and the theme of the diaconate and the priesthood, the cardinals listened and asked questions. Sister Linda Pocher, Lucia Vantini, Sister Regina da Costa Pedro, Stella Morra, Valentina Rotondi, Giuliva Di Berardino, the Anglican Jo B. Wells, Donata Horak, focused on the main questions to be explored. Questions which, explains the theologian Don Mario Antonelli, on the evening which presented the last of the four texts, “were collected in volumes for transparency and information of believers on the topics discussed”. There was talk of the role of women exalted as “symbolic capital”, but then “marginalized in the governance structures of the Church”, of the “participation of women in the body of the Church. The head is Christ”, it has been said, “and all those baptized by virtue of baptism participate in his kingship, prophecy and priesthood”. But then also, with Bishop Jo Wells present, of “ecclesial discernment around the episcopal ordination of women in the Anglican Church”, of “gender dynamics as part of God’s creation”. And again of the importance of “authentic debate and the guidance of the Holy Spirit towards the truth”. On the level of canon law, which accepted the Pope’s request by deleting the words “male” for the ministry of the acolyte which “lay people” can now access. However, it has been said, there is still “in the context of canon law the need for a more radical and less formal approach, which puts people and their vocations at the centre”. Women are tired “of being invisible and not listened to”, they want to “walk together with men”. They have the ability, as demonstrated by the experience of Irma Regina da Costa Pedro, the first woman in Brazil to direct the Pontifical Missionary Works, but they are not always appreciated (out of 130 directors of the PMS in the world, just six are women). They criticize “power and the management of power” and ask to participate in ecclesial ministries. Questions that need to be explored further and on which the discussion must continue. It is necessary to “clarify how the code of canon law can be reformed to resolve internal contradictions and promote greater participation of women in the Church” and “try to separate the ministry from the structures of power and authority in the Church to improve the participation of women”. Finally, “deepen the process of discernment and communion, with particular attention to the guidance of the Holy Spirit”. The work has just begun.