Why letting Catholic priests marry could be a huge setback for women

This week in Rome, change is in the air in the most unlikely place: the Vatican.

It is expected that at the end of a month-long meeting of leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, known as the Synod, there will be a recommendation to change the 1,200-old rule. years requiring compulsory celibacy for priests.

Since the election of Pope Francis in March 2013, these synods have met every October to discuss pressing issues in the church. This year’s gathering focuses on the Pan-Amazon region where the land is undergoing catastrophic environmental destruction and indigenous peoples are threatened with multiple forms of cultural genocide. Catholics in the region are also affected by a serious shortage of priests, to the point that some are forced to deny themselves access to the Eucharist for months, sometimes even years.

This particular synod, which began on October 6 and will end this Sunday, October 27, has been overdue for years, with speculation that Synod Fathers, as they are called, could open up the possibility of ordaining married men to the priesthood. Roman Catholic, at least in troubled regions like the Amazon.

After three weeks of meetings here in Rome, with 10 of 12 working groups discussing the ordination of married men, some Vatican observers speculate that the Synod may vote to recommend this major change in Church law.

Church doctrine experts say the change would be relatively easy since compulsory celibacy for Catholic priests is “church practice” and not “revealed dogma.”

This contrasts sharply with the ban on the ordination of women to the Catholic priesthood, a doctrine, Pope Francis has said more than once, which is immutable and not open to discussion.

While many view married priests as a moment of revolutionary progress in a church that has been backslid in its approach to all issues of gender and sexuality, it can cause serious setback for women.

The proof is evident in the works of this Synod.

There are nearly 230 male bishops, priests and a brother currently gathered in the Synod Hall, of which 180 will have a vote on the final decision of the group. There are 35 women in the room serving as listeners, including 20 nuns. None of these women have the right to vote.

Last year, Catholic activists made international headlines when they campaigned for women to have the right to vote at the Synod. (The New York Times dubbed them “modern day suffragettes”.) This protest led the Synod Fathers to declare that greater inclusion of women’s voices in church structures was a “duty of justice” that required “cultural conversation” courageous ”.

But they never managed to muster that courage. Women have been denied the right to vote again this year. If married men are allowed to be priests, it will not be because a woman has a say.

The treatment of women at this synod is in keeping with the way women have been treated by an all-male hierarchy for centuries: they are speechless, deprived of all decision-making power, prevented from developing the doctrine of the church, and have refused all opportunities to serve in sacramental roles. It is difficult to imagine how the addition of more men into the current all-male clerical structure would do anything other than strengthen the second-class status of women in the church.

A married clergy will simply empower more men. Women will be enslaved not only to single men, but also to married men.

The inner workings of this year’s Synod have been more secret and opaque than usual. However, during the event’s opening press conference on October 7, a striking revelation was made by Sister Teresa Cediel Castillo, who works with women in the Pan-Amazon region.

She said that women “know that they are baptized, and therefore, prophets and priests. The women baptize the children. If there is a marriage, the women are witnesses and celebrate the marriage. If anyone needs to go to confession, we listen to them from the bottom of our hearts. We may not be able to absolve according to the Church, but we listen with humility.

Pan-Amazonian women have empowered themselves and embraced the power of God working through them for the good of a people in desperate need.

What will happen to them and their ministries if married men suddenly receive sacramental power and authority over them? Will the people still look to women in their most crucial moments when a married man can offer them “the real thing”? What would prevent married priests from supplanting their roles?

The Synod Fathers have repeatedly deplored the degrading treatment of the Amazon and of women in the region. Yet they fail to see that at the root of all this suffering lies the fundamental idea that men and women are not equal – the very ideology they perpetuate in their rigid insistence that women cannot. to be priests.

The disproportionate levels at which women suffer from poverty, violence, abuse and lack of education are a direct consequence of this sexist ideology. The ravage of the life-giving resources provided by our earth is also a direct result of the patriarchal idea that men are entitled to complete domination over nature for their own satisfaction.

If the Catholic Church, with its global political influence and charismatic pope, granted women equal status with men in its priesthood, they could be a powerful force for economic, environmental and social justice. Allowing married men to access the priesthood while continuing to prohibit the ordination of women will only justify the patriarchal belief that men should rule over the family, church, and resources of the Earth.

In the Orthodox churches and the Mormon Church, a married male priesthood has done nothing to break the hallowed belief that men are superior to women. Why should things turn out differently in the Roman Catholic tradition with its millennia of marginalization of women?

If there is indeed a victory for married Catholic men this weekend, before we celebrate we should consider the ways in which a new moment of justice for married men will only exacerbate the injustices already suffered by women and our planet.