TP O’Mahony: Can Francis still marry tradition and reform?

TP O’Mahony questions whether Pope Francis’ apparent U-turn over female deacons and the ordination of married men is his final word or merely an interim statement.

WAS it a U-turn, a concession to his predecessor, or a failure of nerve?

Not since Humanae Vitae (the anti-contraception encyclical from Pope Paul VI) in 1968 has a Vatican document caused such widespread disappointment as the apostolic exhortation issued by Pope Francis last week.

In a 32-page document entitled Querida Amazonia (Beloved Amazon), he declined to approve the ordination of married men to the priesthood, and women deacons. This failure, given the expectations that had been building up since the end of a special Synod of Bishops in Rome last October, is now seen as a U-turn, and one that raises new questions about the Pope’s commitment to reform.

At the October Synod, the bishops (all from Latin America) voted by 128 to 41 in support of the ordination of suitably qualified married men as priests, in a region where there is a chronic shortage of clergy.

The bishops also recommended the establishment of criteria for women deacons. Yet the apostolic exhortation did not even mention the possibility of married men, and has only a very brief section on the role of women.

Here the Pope warns that the clericalisation of women “must be rejected”. Instead, he ask for the acceptance of a feminine contribution that allows “the tender strength of Mary” to be present.

Just what this might mean in terms of women’s functions in the Church is left undefined. Little wonder that the initial reaction of women to the papal document was one of dismay and anger.

The outcome of the Synod meant the apostolic exhortation was one of the most eagerly-awaited publications of recent times. It has become customary after a meeting of the Synod of Bishops (the first took place in 1967) for the Pope to reflect on and summarise its deliberations and use them to point the way forward.

Given that the bishops, at the Synod on the Amazon, had very clearly stated their preferences for the admission of some married men to the priesthood and a role for women deacons, theexpectation was — especially with Francis’ growing reputation as a reformer — that the apostolic exhortation (a very fancy name for a letter, albeit a long one, to Catholics worldwide) would reflect and endorse these preferences.

Instead, Francis urged bishops to pray for an increase in priestly vocations and suggested that more missionaries be sent to remote communities where the scarcity of priests means that Catholics can go for long periods without Mass or access to the Eucharist.

“This urgent need leads me to urge all bishops, especially those in Latin America... to be more generous in encouraging those who display a missionary vocation to opt for the Amazon region,” the Pope wrote.

The Amazon Synod brought together bishops, indigenous people, and activists from nine countries. Its final document called for the ordination of “viri probati” — married men of good standing — and for an increased role for women in the Church.

These hopes have now been dashed, though the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, told the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 that while the ordination of married men would not happen now, “it hasn’t gone away”.

As one American commentator said, the Pope has just “kicked the can down the road”.

French Catholic daily newspaper La Croix said the fact that the Pope pretty much ignored these two issues altogether provoked predictable responses throughout the Catholic world.

“Traditionalists and doctrinal conservatives, for the most part, are breathing a sigh of relief. Some are even jumping for joy,” it wrote.

They are satisfied, it said, that the Pope “did not open the door to what, in their minds, would be a slippery slope towards the total unravelling of the Church as we know it”.

Most progressives, reformers and Vatican II types, on the other hand, “are deeply disappointed. Some, especially women, are extremely hurt and angry.”

Those anxious for reform now believe Francis missed what La Croix called “a golden opportunity to take a decisive step towards eradicating the misogynist and clericalist attitudes and practices that have conditioned the Church’s internal life and structures for centuries”.

According to the US-based National Catholic Reporter, “many women were especially outraged over the document’s language of complementarity”.

The Women’s Ordination Conference said: “The Pope is wilfully turning his back on the calls of women for recognition of the sacramental ministries they offer the people of the Amazon and the global Church.”

But it is the failure to act on the admission of married men to the priesthood that is most puzzling. In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI himself took the initiative — set out in an apostolic constitution — in allowing married Anglican clergy, disaffected over the Church of England’s decision to ordain women to the priesthood, to convert to Catholicism while also allowing them to be re-ordained as Catholic priests, waiving the requirement of celibacy. In other words, they could continue priestly duties while remaining married.

The reality is the Catholic Church already has married clergy — particularly English priests who have transferred from the Church of England, but also in Greek Catholic Churches. Against this background, it was shocking, therefore, that Benedict XVI — Pope Emeritus since his resignation in 2013 — should allow himself to be associated with a book published in January in which he publicly urged Pope Francis not to open the Catholic priesthood up to married men.

The book, From the Depths of Our Hearts, co-authored with arch-conservative Cardinal Robert Sarah, contained this statement from the former pope: “I cannot keep silent” in an essay that was a vigorous defence of clerical celibacy.

The book appeared while Pope Francis was preparing his apostolic exhortation. Since its publication, stories have circulated that Benedict asked the publishers to remove his name from it, amid speculation that the retired pope, 92, may have been manipulated.

Some substance was lent to this by the recent news from Rome that Pope Francis has removed Archbishop Georg Gänswein, private secretary to Benedict, from important Vatican duties.

Much more than his predecessors John Paul II and Benedict XVI, Francis has enhanced the status of the Synod of Bishops. Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI had effectively emasculated it, since neither had much time for allowing bishops to be agenda-setters.

Francis, on the other hand, saw the institution as a model for how the Church should evolve. He wanted the Synod to have a real share in the government of the Church.

In November 2019, just after the Synod on the Amazon finished, English Catholic weekly The Tablet said the Synod had revealed how powerful the radical theology of Pope Francis can be, highlighting his commitment to a synodal form of governance for the Church.

“The summons to synodality is becoming irresistible. The Amazon synod is a striking fulfilment of the Second Vatican Council’s vision for a new way of being Church”.

Prior to that, in 2018, one of Ireland’s leading theologians, Fr Gerry O’Hanlon of Milltown Park, published a book, The Quiet Revolution of Pope Francis, subtitled ‘A Synodal Church inIreland?’.

He highlighted the importance of the emergence of “collegiality” as a key concept during the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), and how Pope Francis had drawn on this to promote a synodal form of governance.

“It is precisely this path of synodality which God expects of the Church in the third millennium,” Pope Francis said in an address in 2015 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the institution of the Synod of Bishops.

The difficulty now — especially for progressives who continued to see Francis as “the great reformer” — is that the latest apostolic exhortation revives uncomfortable echoes of an early profile of the Argentine Pope as “Francis the Enigma”.

The hope must be, with Francis having set his face (for now) against the reforms recommended by the Synod on the Amazon, that he has not spoken the final word — that his 32-page letter is just an interim statement.There is a hint of this at the beginning of the Pope’s letter where he explained that his exhortation was “a brief framework for reflection . . . that can guide us to a harmonious, creative and fruitful reception of the entire synodal process”.

More to follow? We’ll see.