Vatican synod is opening the door a bit wider for Catholic women − but they’ve been knocking for more than 100 years
Posted on October 11, 2024, by Loretto Community
Published by The Conversation Oct 11, 2024
In 2021, Sister Nathalie Becquart became the first woman to vote at any Vatican meeting when Pope Francis appointed her undersecretary to the synod, a gathering of bishops whose second session opened on Oct. 2, 2024.
…
At the current synod, whose purpose is to address “communion, participation, and mission” in the church, women’s role is on the agenda. But Catholic women have historically found ways to speak to and about their church leadership, even when they have been excluded from its proceedings.
…
The documents produced by Vatican II say relatively little about women, which was, arguably, a victory for female auditors. Many of them mistrusted the council fathers’ view of women as a separate, even foreign, species.
…
“Women are not ‘a category’ in the church,” Sister Mary Luke Tobin, an American, maintained: “Men and women are the church.”
Read the entire article on The Conversation’s web post.
Posted in
