How to respond when you are admonished for “lobbying” during the synod
Cardinal Hollerich, who I respect very much, recently gave an interview to Crux calling on “women’s groups” to stop “lobbying” on the issue of women. This is my response to him, offered with respect and sincerity to someone who has stood up for women in public and private ways.
Dear Cardinal Hollerich,
Thank you for the constant care and concern you show for the People of God as we journey together through the historic Synod on Synodality. You have been boldly supportive of women, even using the media at times to offer new ways to consider the topic of women’s ordination. There are not many cardinals or bishops who take on this work, and I want you to know that I and many others sincerely appreciate you for it.
This being said, I was surprised at your recent interview with Crux and want to take you up on your offer to dialogue. You used the term “lobbying” to describe the movement’s work of calling for the ordination of women. I have been trained by Jesuits and am quite competent in discernment, and I understand and support the methodology of conversation in the Spirit that Pope Francis has instituted in the Synod. While I respect your warning to the movement not to push for a particular outcome in the process, I want to offer you another way to understand the dynamics at play when it comes to this issue.
First, I refute the label of “lobbying” to describe the specific effort the movement is undertaking to hold the Church accountable to the very values and process that Pope Francis has laid out for the Synod. The Synod is supposed to be rooted in values of prayerful dialogue, the willingness to encounter reality in the other, humility to be truly open to the Spirit, and the prioritizing of voices on the margins. Yet, these values have not been fully embraced when it comes to the topic of women in the Church. For example, calls for the ordination of women as priests came from all around the world early in the Synod as noted in Enlarge the Space of Your Tent (paragraph 64), yet this topic was notably absent from the detailed worksheets in Instrumentum Laboris that were used to prepare delegates for the Synod assembly in October 2023. In addition, my understanding is that the topic of priesthood for women still arose and was debated at those meetings, yet again the topic was omitted from the synthesis report released after the assembly.
In addition to removing the topic of priesthood for women from synodal documents and meeting agendas, Pope Francis recently created a working group to study the role of women in the Church; however, he excluded priesthood from the scope of its work. He subsequently assigned the study to the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith, but there are no details about who will carry out the study and what the study will actually entail. While I understand Pope Francis’ impetus to focus only on “issues of convergence,” it seems to me the point of these study groups is to delve fully into their complex topics. How can the DDF do its work with integrity if it is cutting out a central issue to its subject of study? Practically speaking, there is no difference between issues of convergence versus those of divergence: God’s Spirit is present in both, and the point of discernment is to honestly discover the invitation from God. There is no greater issue of significance for the Church than the ordination of women as priests.
The omission of priesthood from documents, meeting agendas, and the upcoming study on the role of women point to the stark reality that the institutional Church is attempting to pre-determine the outcome of the discernment before it even takes place. As you well know, this is a deathblow to a valid discernment. The bedrock value of the Synod is having the freedom to allow God the ability to move as God desires, but when it comes to the role of women in the Church, instead of removing the barriers to God’s communication, the Church keeps putting them up. The movement for women’s ordination responds by pointing out these violations and calling the Church to greater integrity, honesty and transparency in the very process that it has set up. When this work of accountability is labeled as “lobbying,” not only does it insult our intelligence, it poisons the Church against us, insinuating we have a nefarious desire to sabotage the Synod process when we are doing exactly the opposite — calling for a proper discernment that is fully inline with Synodal values. Put bluntly, y’all set up the process, so y’all need to use it — and allow it to take its course.
But there is more. There are, indeed, many times when the movement calls for a specific outcome — like when I asked you to go on record in the media in favor of including priesthood in the upcoming study on the role of women in the Church as a matter of synodal integrity. But to label this work “lobbying” is to participate what is called “structural projection.” Structural projection occurs when institutions ascribe to individuals behaviors or outcomes that are actually caused by the failures or prejudices of the institution. Such projection shifts the blame for those behaviors and outcomes on individuals while absolving the institution from its role in creating the situation in the first place. In this case, structural projection is labeling spirit-filled advocacy for a deeply oppressed group in the Church as “lobbying” instead of asking the question, why do people feel the need to “lobby” on this issue to begin with?
I fully agree with your assessment that the ordination of women is a difficult issue, but the reason why it is difficult is because the institutional Church makes it so. The Church makes it difficult by, for example, going on 60 Minutes and declaring women cannot be ordained as deacons regardless of the fact that the Church is up to its eyeballs in a process that is supposed to be rooted in interior freedom and listening; by harshly punishing priests and theologians who have spoken out on behalf of justice for women as a matter of conscience; by publishing an apostolic letter that says the issue is closed when it was clearly open even back then (otherwise there was no need to publish the letter!); by later proclaiming this same letter as infallible, which it clearly is not; by stacking the deck with men who must promise to uphold the doctrine of a male-only priesthood if they want to advance in their career as bishop; and by refusing to admit that even with the episcopal deck stacked in this way, the bishops still are not in communion on this issue — and have not been for decades — which means the teaching cannot be definitively held.
I ask you with all sincerity and respect, Cardinal Hollerich, who in this situation is doing the real “lobbying?”
There is still more. The most pernicious way the Church makes the issue of women’s ordination difficult is by pretending that the Church already has all the answers, that it doesn’t change with time, and that it can never be wrong. Such a posture of certainty produces poorly formed Catholics who are unable to accept the growth in the Spirit that naturally occurs when we authentically engage in a love relationship with a teaching God who constantly calls us to deeper understanding of what it means to be human. In other words, we have to ask: how would this situation be different if the Church simply stopped clinging and just admitted that sometimes it is wrong?
The institutional Church behaves as if admitting this truth undermines its credibility when the polar opposite is true. People are not fooled by a narrative that proclaims the Church is always right — especially now, after teaching for 1900 years that slavery was not against God’s desires, even itself forcing black people into bondage; after tearing indigenous children away from their families and forcing them into boarding schools with a mission to obliterate their culture and identity; after centuries of truly appalling antisemitism; after thousands of children have been sexually abused by male priests sick with pedophilia, who were then hidden and protected by male bishops. Can we just get over ourselves, please? Church doctrine is not always right. In fact, many times it has been dead(ly) wrong, and this is a simple fact.
While it is easy to admonish us for “lobbying,” the truth of the matter is that the institutional Church has created the situation where those calling for the full participation of women must advocate to be heard. There is no more long-standing, entrenched, maligned issue in the Church than the ordination of women as priests, and there is no more silenced group than the women themselves who are called by God to serve as priests. To this day, Pope Francis has not had an audience with us, nor has the Synod taken seriously our voices. Instead, the institutional Church continues to erase us, pretending we do not exist.
All this is to say, Cardinal Hollerich, that #TimesUp. The Church has finally reached the moment where it must, as Pope Francis says, deal with reality rather than “sacrifice it on the altar of the idea.” If the Church fails to confront the God’s honest truth that the topic of priesthood for women is open for discernment — and therefore must be studied — it will be 100 years or more before another opportunity for true engagement on this issue arises. By that time, women everywhere in the world will be long gone, and they will have taken their families with them. If this happens, history will look back on this moment and ask, how could this treatment of women have been allowed to go on? My prayer is that you never have to answer this question.
Sincerely,
Father Anne +
