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Indeed, the step is laudable. But it’s time for Francis to evolve on another issue: his opposition to ordaining women.
The core arguments against ordination as deacon, priest or bishop of more than half of all Catholics are far from persuasive.
In her book, Zagano makes the case for the ordination of women deacons as the next obvious step toward full equality for women in the church. Deacons are ordained ministers who can preside at weddings, baptisms and funerals but cannot celebrate Mass.
The argument that comes in for the most vigorous challenge from Zagano is the idea that women can’t be icons of Christ. “Not only is [this] wrong,” Zagano writes, “It is a statement that redounds to the most serious and most dangerous views of women around the world,” including the belief that women are “unclean.”
Zagano called the denial of ordination of women as deacons a “scandal” that “goes [so] deeply against the teachings of the Catholic Church and Scripture that it is probably formally heretical.”
To suggest that women can’t “image Christ” because Jesus lived as a man is to completely miss the point. It bizarrely has not registered with the men who have developed the theology of the Catholic Church that Jesus could only have been a man. How would a woman in a culture that unapologetically treated women as inherently inferior become a spiritual leader of Jesus’s magnitude? It’s preposterous.
What ordained ministers are imaging is not anatomy, but essence. If a person cannot see the image of Christ in an ordained woman, but naturally confers that on an ordained person with male anatomy, then they have some deeper issues with which to wrestle. “To deny sacramental ordination for women as deacons is to deny their full humanity as created in the image and likeness of God,” notes Zagano.
“The Catholic Church is a huge superpower, and we believe that the church could restore its moral voice and credibility if it practiced gender equity. Equality for women and girls changes the world,” McElwee told me. “It’s easy for some of us in Western countries to opt out of the church’s powers, but in a lot of communities, the church runs the only hospital or the only school. The theology that teaches that girls are somehow subservient or the complements to men filters through, and that gets taught around the world.”
Even for those who could walk away, many don’t want to abandon their faith, which is a source of solace and support. They want a church that serves its people, behaves morally and operates according to the teachings of Jesus rather than patriarchal norms and a boys’ club ethos.
Having ordained women is the only hope of achieving this goal.
Correction: An earlier version of this piece misidentified the organization headed by Kate McElwee. It is the Women’s Ordination Conference.