“If [Henrik] Ibsen was a feminist, then I am a bishop,” James Joyce quipped in regard to what some contended were the social messages of Henrik Ibsen plays like A Doll’s House and Hedda Gabler. I wonder what Joyce might say today about the Catholics (bishops and the pope among them) attempting to strike feminist positions on the role of women in the Church as the second assembly of the Synod gets underway.
The Church’s official teaching on women is something that keeps Catholicism stuck in what John O’Malley, SJ, called “the long nineteenth century.” The specific matter of women in the diaconate has been removed from the agenda of the Synod in Rome this month and is being handled by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. But it’s hard to imagine the issue of the role of women and ministry won’t be at the center of synodal discernment the next few weeks, judging at least from articles appearing in the October 2024 issue of Donne Chiesa Mondo, the supplement to the official newspaper of the Vatican, L’Osservatore Romano.
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