Fear and misunderstanding continues to cloud discussions of women in Church leadership

If you gather three people to discuss a single topic, you will often end up with six opinions. By all accounts, members of the Irish Catholic Synod learned this the hard way when they met at Gormanston in Meath for their National Assembly last month.

At least that is what you might glean from news reports. Synod members are sworn to secrecy, which makes sense if the objective is to have a private, prayerful meeting, following the Vatican-dictated processes for “conversation in the Spirit.” We will never know how much of the Meath meeting was process and how much was politics, but it seems that, once again, women in leadership and ministry was a divisive topic. We may never know why, but we can guess.

The Meath meeting had 294 synod delegates (150 men and 144 women), with five guests and observers representing other Christian denominations. The delegates assembled included 23 bishops, 50 priests, eight deacons, 17 female religious, 127 other women and 69 other men.

The guests – four women and one man – included an ordained Presbyterian minister, Rev Dr Karen Campbell; and general secretary of the Irish Council of Churches and archdeacon Katharine Poulton, the first woman ordained deacon in the Church of Ireland. The lone man in the group of guests was Prof Ty Monroe of Assumption University in the US.

Some of those present, including Waterford and Lismore bishop Alphonsus Cullinan, have opposed restoring women to the ordained diaconate. Others, who have a fairer view of women in ministry, include archbishops Eamon Martin (Armagh) and Dermot Farrell (Dublin).

The differences must have divided the room. News reports gave two distinct versions of the discussion regarding restoration of women to the ordained diaconate: (1) it is open; (2) it is closed.

[ No female deacons in the Catholic Church, Vatican Commission decidesOpens in new window ]

The Catholic Herald reported that the question “refuses to be silenced … despite the church already offering a wide range of teaching prohibiting it”, while The Irish Times reported that 54 per cent of the assembly recommended ongoing exploration of women in ministry, including in the diaconate.

If there was a divide within the Meath Assembly, it could have stemmed from several roots. First, a tremendous amount of bad information has been shared in the women’s ordination debate.

There is significant documented evidence historically that women were ordained as deacons through the same liturgies as those used to ordain men.

There are the anthropological truths that men and women are equally human and share an equal Baptism.. Even so, people who oppose women deacons say no woman was ever ordained and often argue that a woman cannot represent the risen Christ. But this is falling into a trap of naive physicalism. Jesus, one must recall, was both fully human and fully divine, and all people are made in the image and likeness of God.

Are these truths found in the synodal process? One problem with synodality is some of the people involved in the process chosen by their bishops may have fixed views and may think there is settled teaching against female deacons, but there is none.

In many countries, as the process has evolved from parish to diocese to episcopal conference to continental assembly, the more “liberal” agenda is weeded out and synodality fails. The point ought to be to see what the church needs now, not to debate history, theology or anthropology.

Nothing in the synodal process is designed to change teachings, and there is law but no defined teaching against ordaining women as deacons.

Within discussion of women in leadership and ministry, fear combines with bad information to cloud the discernment. The question is not whether women can be ordained as deacons, but whether they should be ordained as deacons.

Confusing the two orders is at the root of the difficulties. The diaconate is not part of priesthood. Pope Benedict XVI clarified the distinction in 2009 with the document Omnium in Mentem, and he wrote nothing against including women.

[ Women are a problem for the Catholic Church, an institution with ingrained misogynyOpens in new window ]

Lately, several church renewal organisations, including We Are Church International and the Association of Catholic Priests, wrote asking Synod secretary general Cardinal Mario Grech to repeal canon laws restricting the place of women in the church. Each law eliminates women – 129:1 states that those in sacred orders are qualified for governance; 274:1 states that only clerics can exercise governance; 1024 says only males may be ordained.

Will synodality work in Ireland? It presents the opportunity for the people of God to prayerfully consider a question and present a recommendation to their parish priest or bishop.

Discernment is open to all; decisions are restricted to the clergy.

Dr Phyllis Zagano, of Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York, was a member of Pope Francis’s first commission on the study of women in the diaconate (2016-18). Her most recent book is The Vatican and Women Deacons (Orbis, 2026)