Synod must bring women’s stories to the fore

This article appeared in The Irish Times on Tuesday. It is by Soline Humbert.

How do you respond to a call to “journey together” with people who, in Christ’s name, proclaim your non-existence? This is what I asked myself when I heard the Irish Catholic bishops calling for participation in a five-year synodal pathway.

Pope Francis has also launched a two-year worldwide synodal process, so we are now doubly exhorted to be a listening church where everyone can speak freely. I have heard that before.

My first experience of formal consultation in the church was three decades ago, as a member of the women in the church subcommittee, in the Dublin archdiocese.

The Dublin Council of Priests wanted to listen to women’s pain and set up a sub-committee of four priests and four women. Our subcommittee met for more than a year. Soon there was pressure to censor ourselves and not to mention women’s ordination for fear of episcopal anger.

On February 23rd, 1994, we gathered in a large room in Clonliffe College, with the archbishop, the auxiliary bishops and all the priests on the council. It took me all the courage I could muster to be vulnerable and share the very deep spiritual pain I felt about the sense of calling to the presbyterate/priesthood I had experienced since my teens.

The response was mostly silence and no further contact.

Physically sick Months later, I was contacted by a journalist from the Tablet, in London. Margaret Hebblethwaite was puzzled at seeing my name among the women’s names attached to a report ruling out women’s ordination.

The report of the council on women in the church had been written up, approved by the archbishop and press releases sent far and wide. I had never seen it.

As Hebblethwaite read out the content of the report to me over the phone, I felt physically sick. It stated: “The fact that the priesthood was given only to men did not prevent women from taking their full part in the life of the church.’’

I wrote to the chairman of the council who replied that this was a report of the council, of which I was not a member. I was only on the subcommittee, I had no grounds for complaint. The women’s names were attached to it because we had been consulted. I felt betrayed, my trust violated.

A month later, the pope shut the door to women’s ordination. Gagging all discussion, it was designed to crush any hope in women like me. Buried alive with a vocation that would not die.

We are now invited “to trust that this synodal pathway is a sincere effort to bring about real transformation and renewal in the church guided by the Spirit”, and at the same time we are warned by the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference that “Pope Francis has been clear that synods are not instruments to change church teachings but rather help to apply church teaching more pastorally”.

I do not believe this much-needed renewal can happen while insisting all church teachings (of various degrees of authority) remain in place. Many render the gospel message inaudible.

Dr Nicola Brady, the chairwoman of the steering committee of the Irish Synodal Pathway, has said that “we are seeking to acknowledge the hurts that exist within our church community and work to heal those relationships”. The stark reality is that male dominance in the church has been sacralised for centuries and distorts relationships. Women must be under the control of men, who alone can represent Christ.

Gender-apartheid The structures and theology, including papal teachings, which underpin the church version of gender-apartheid perpetuate the violence of inequality and exclusion.

They are truly a scandalous counter-witness to the foundational baptismal affirmation that, “In Christ there is no longer male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”(Galatians 3:28) and Christ’s prayer “that all may be one” (John 17).

In his recent blog post, entitled The Taliban Within, Gerry O’Hanlon SJ starts with a letter published in the Tablet on September 11th, 2021, from Dr Anne Inman: “What does the Catholic Church have to say about the Taliban announcement that women can work for the government, since almost half of the workers are women, but ‘in the top posts . . . there may not be a woman?’’’

O’Hanlon doesn’t answer directly but concludes : “. . . when women in the Catholic Church are now so conscious of not being taken seriously for so long, their feelings and thoughts not given equal value, then there is a real crisis, a time of discernment”.

Can the pope open himself to an encounter with women with a calling like mine and listen to our stories, something his predecessors have never done? What if the vocations we bear are of the Spirit?

The first-century church could dispense with male circumcision; can we dispense with a male-only priesthood? With the help of that same Spirit.

Soline Humbert is a spiritual guide and an advocate for women’s ordination