The key to understanding Pope Francis’ recognition of women’s ministry and the institution of female lectors and acolytes is how the Catholic theology of ministry and priesthood which has developed over the last 50 years.
Two points are worth bearing in mind.
The first is how Francis’ inclusion of women points to the ending of the idea that it is only the ordained who are the Church’s ministers. Instead, the Pope is seeking to restore a vision of ministry which extends to all its members, in many different forms. That one ministry is Christ’s ministry.
Crucial to this is developing the concept of “minor orders”, which were the different functions of ministry dating as far back as the fourth century. The first of these was “tonsure”, which was the mark of a servant and slave. After this, you had the following: porter, lector, exorcist, acolyte, subdeacon, deacon and then priest. In some respects, it echoed the cursus honorum in ancient Rome, the system where politicians held different offices one after the other as they rose up the ranks.
Although the system of minor orders was intended to show different features of ministerial service, there was a danger they could create a model of formation which saw the priesthood as processing up the rungs of a clerical ladder.
In its efforts to reconnect the Church to the early Christian and the Gospels, the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council adopted a different approach. It stressed a common priesthood rooted in baptism. The Church is, after all, the Body of Christ with its members not part of a club, but limbs.
“In the context of renewal outlined by the Second Vatican Council, there is an increasing sense of urgency today to rediscover the co-responsibility of all the baptised in the Church,” the Pope, who has pledged to implement the council, wrote in a letter outlining his latest changes.
Following Vatican II, Pope Paul VI abolished the “minor orders” renaming them “ministries” although keeping the role of lector (a reader of the scriptures) and acolyte (altars server and minister of communion).
Two decades later Pope John Paul II ruled that men and women can serve at the altar and the sight of women reading during Mass is normal. Only men, however, could be formally “instituted” into the roles.
The change that Francis has initiated, therefore, continues what his predecessors started, and brings to fulfilment what could be seen as Paul VI’s intention. Soon after Pope Montini converting the minor orders into ministries, the Church saw the development of “extraordinary ministers” of communion, which included women, to distribute communion.
Yet it goes deeper. In the pre-Vatican II era, the ordained minister sometimes ended up as the cultic leader of a congregation, set apart from the rest and with significant power and influence. In that model, the Church was a pyramid with priests and bishops at the top and laity below. It is also a breeding ground for clericalism. Francis, however, wants to restore the sense of a servant Church with different ministries of service.
“Jesus founded the Church by setting at her head the Apostolic College, in which the Apostle Peter is the ‘rock’,” the Pope explained in one of his most important addresses.
“But in this Church, as in an inverted pyramid, the top is located beneath the base. Consequently, those who exercise authority are called ‘ministers’, because, in the original meaning of the word, they are the least of all.” Ministry, in other words, is not defined by where you sit on the hierarchical ladder but on authentic service.
Although some argue the post-conciliar period confused the identity of the priest turning him into a social worker figure, the counter-argument is that under the Francis-schema the priest has a distinctive Christ-like identity because he intends to replicate the kenosis (self-emptying) of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. A problem is that ordained ministry is so often equated with “being in charge”. However, leadership is only one form of ministry.
The second point to consider is how shifts in ministry have been influenced by the local church, and in this case the Amazon. It was in the final document following the 2019 synod on the Amazon region that the bishops “new paths for ecclesial ministry,” including for women to become lectors and acolytes. Here, we see once again that in the Francis pontificate the internal Church renewal is driven by Catholic communities on the ground.
“Recognition of women’s role in the Church is crucial. There is no future for the Church in the Amazon without it,” Mauricio Lopez, the Executive Secretary of Repam (the Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network) and a participant in the 2019 synod, told The Tablet.
“This announcement is very important in that sense. They [women] are the ones ensuring the presence of the Church in the more isolated and inaccessible places [in the Amazon].”
Women serving in the Amazon will now be formally recognised, and have authority conferred on them through the rite installing them as lectors and acolytes. Lopez argues that the latest change shows how the Church at the peripheries can reform the centre. It is also something Francis told Lopez in the preparation for the Amazon synod.
At the end of that synod, participants also called for female deacons, and to “promote and confer ministries for men and women in an equitable manner”. However, the Pope veered away from agreeing to deaconesses after the debate about the topic became polarised.
Lopez pointed out that discernment as a tool for “irreversible change” needs to avoid falling into a battle “which might produce a structural rupture.” In other words, reform comes incrementally and organically but needs consensus. For Francis, it also needs direction.
On female deacons – a feature of the early Church – Francis has established another commission to examine the topic, although it seems their re-introduction is unlikely to happen in the short term. Nevertheless, the formal recognition in Canon Law of female liturgical ministry will keep the discussion alive and sets a precedent.
More than the specifics of changes, however, it is the overall shift in the theology of ministry which has taken place in the Church – often slowly – which is most noticeable. Like the mustard seed, it is sometimes the smallest of shifts which can eventually grow into the largest of the trees, and make the biggest difference.
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