Women hopeful of change in Church

FOR decades, women have been waiting for a change in the Catholic Church’s attitude towards them, and now once again with the election of a new pope many are harbouring similar hopes.

Some are taking a more militant stance than in the past, with the international Women’s Ordination Conference planning to release pink smoke in Rome and at least five US cities tomorrow to mark the start of the conclave.

But many others are not as militant and thought that they would have an opportunity to play a greater role because faced with the drastic reduction in the number of priests a pragmatic Church would ordain women.

In this and in other matters, such as contraception, their hopes for change have been dashed time and time again.

New rules issued by the Vatican classified attempts to ordain women. Women who try to become priests and anybody involved in trying to ordain them are automatically excommunicated.

For some the end of the rein of Pope Benedict XVI does not offer much hope of change as they believe he has in fact copper-fastened the role that women are allowed to play in the Church — that of praying for their male priests and bishops, only having sex to have children, and accepting their role as the root of original sin.

Once a friend and classmate of Joseph Ratzinger, Uta Ranke-Heinemann, is now an outspoken critic of the man she worked alongside at the University in Munich.

She sees no hope of the new pope being different from his predecessor, or from John Paul II. “He has cloned himself,” she says, appointing only cardinals that agree with his point of view.

All of the electoral college of 115 cardinals who will meet in conclave have been either directly chosen by him, or by his predecessor who he deeply influenced.

And there is even less chance that they will hear a dissenting voice in the Vatican, as so many of the theologians that disagreed with the increasingly conservative popes were silenced and removed from their positions.

Prof Ranke-Heinemann lost her seat in the University of Essen when she clashed with the Church’s teaching over Mary’s immaculate conception, saying she accepted it as theology but not as a physical fact.

So too did another German Catholic theologian, Hans Küng, who rejected the doctrine of papal infallibility.

John Paul II almost 20 years ago set out a list of why women could never be ordained, including that Jesus chose only men to be his apostles. In this he is going by a version of history that would be challenged by many, including Prof Ranke-Heinemann. She says women were written out of the story early on, reflecting the dominant Roman culture of the time.

In 1994, John Paul II said the Church’s ban on women priests was part of the Church’s “divine constitution”. This was set in stone the following year by the then Cardinal Ratzinger as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

When Benedict announced his decision to step down Women’s Ordination Worldwide (WOW) called on him to urge the future leadership to “end the shameful sin of sexism in the Church and open the doors to equal partnership with women and dialogue”.

They pray that his successor would not be chosen with a mandate to continue this creed of exclusion and maintain the “old boys’ club”.

“The shameful culture of silence surrounding women’s leadership highlights the Vatican’s persistent failure to uphold the Church’s own teaching on the primacy of conscience”.

Founded in 1996 to work for women to be ordained in all ministries, they have members in 10 countries, including Ireland. They quote Galatians 3:28 — “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” — in support of their cause.

Their members are not just female but include men and clerics. One of their members, John Fitzgerald, said: “Sexism is a sin, and it’s time to repent. My experience as a human and a Catholic is degraded by that sexism. We can have a fuller Church by including women in the priesthood.”

They are not alone. Two dozen Catholic groups looking for reform in the US last week also called for change, not just on ordaining women but on allowing priests to marry and on contraception, and they communicated their list to the 11 American cardinals who will be in Rome for the conclave.

But the US organisation representing more than 52,000 nuns in the US got a sharp belt of the crosier last year when an investigation Benedict ordered into their practices found they were not adequately promoting Rome’s line on abortion, sexuality, ordination of women, or women’s place in the organisation.

Despite the fact that their male counterparts, brothers and monks, are now almost extinct, and that the average age of the American nuns is now 72, the Vatican took a very tough line with them.

During his papacy, Benedict made it clear that he would not tolerate any disagreement. Just over a year ago when a group of Austrian priests and faithful called for change on celibacy and the ordination of women he warned them during a Mass in St Peter’s that “disobedience was not a path for renewal for the Church”.

This was despite the fact the Austrian demands had large public support, and the reaction to paedophilia, the ban on women priests, and on married clergy had seen a record 87,000 people leave the Church in 2010.

While some believe that the Church authorities will ultimately see the light and make the changes, others like Prof Ranke-Heinemann is not very optimistic.

“Not in a thousand years,” she says.