UNITED STATES
Questions from a Ewe
It’s snowing today although it’s Spring so people are talking excitedly. But in a few days, the typical warmth of Spring will return and people will forget about it. This kind of reminds me of last week’s brief flurry around Pope Francis’ desire to form a commission to study women deacons in the early church. However, instead of blowing snow on a Spring day, it seemed to be a chinook wind bringing warmth in the deep of winter. It seemed a remarkably rapid thaw after about 1,200 years of winter. But, within days, the Vatican weather vane twisted again and the climate resume its typical frigidity.
I hope people are not too disappointed or disheartened. The pope’s statement contained weasel wording a la a marketing pitch. He merely said he wanted to study women deacons in the early church. He didn’t say he wanted to ordain women. People jumped to that conclusion, because it’s justified and logical…but justice and logic are not strong suits amongst many churchmen.
My guess was Francis suggested the study either to relegate women to some non-ordained sub-deacon status (oh, we already have that….), declare women were never ordained (though neither were any men originally…) and so we must continue marginalizing women and ignoring the Spirit, or offer women deacons as a small, picked over bone to women in hopes people will stop talking about women priests.
If the commission happens, rest assured, it likely wouldn’t contain any women with a vote anyway. And after recently discussing female biology with a soon-to-be-ordained seminarian who thought all birth control pills aborted conceived children rather than prevented conception, I don’t hold a lot of hope for a commission of ordained men coming to any reasonable conclusions about women in the church. So, I’m not sure I care if they hold this commission or not and I’m quite sure I care even less about their conclusions.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.