Pope Francis has opened the doors to Church reform after his Amazon synod recommended the ordination of married men as priests, and re-opened the discussion about women deacons
In the final document, which focused on conversion inside the Church, the bishops back through a plan for a “missionary” Catholic community immersed among the suffering people of the Amazon.
For this to take place, the bishops propose "new ways" for Church ministries including the ordination of married deacons as priests, and ways to recognise the ministry of women who are leading or co-ordinating more than half of the communities in the Amazon. All of the proposals received a two-thirds majority vote by the synod fathers.
Among the recommendations is a proposal to ordain those who are “suitable and esteemed men of the community who have had a fruitful permanent diaconate and receive an adequate formation for the priesthood” and who have a “legitimately constituted and stable family”.
Their ministry would “sustain the life of the Christian community through the preaching of the Word, and the celebration of the Sacraments in the most remote areas of the Amazon region.”
In a section titled “a special time for women”, the document says that during consultations carried out in the Amazon, requests for female deacons were made. The synod document refers to a papal commission on the study of women deacons established by Pope Francis in 2016, and requests to “share our experiences and reflections with the commission”.
In May 2019, Francis reported that his commission was not able to agree on whether women had been ordained deacons in a sacramental sense. Francis emphasised that he could not propose a “decree of a sacramental nature without having the theological, historical foundation for it” but said that the study should continue. At that time, he hinted that a diaconate specifically for women could be considered.
After the voting had taken place, the Pope announced he would re-start a commission on women deacons with new members but said that bishops had still not “grasped the significance of women in the Church. Their role must go well beyond questions of function.”
Francis also urged Catholics to focus on the wider social and ecological “diagnosis” that the Amazon synod had made which he said had a message for society. The final document is an eloquent defence of the Amazon region which is described as a “wounded and deformed beauty”, where “attacks on nature have consequences for the lives of peoples”.
Quoting the French essayist and poet Charles Peguy, the Pope made a thinly veiled critique of those who have sought to undermine the synod by relentlessly focussing on intra-ecclesial squabbles, and miss the big picture.
Certain “Catholic elites”, he explained, "think they are with God but are not brave enough to understand humanity.”
Francis said they "love no-one" and that the Church “should not be prisoners of selective groups who will focus on just a tiny bit of the synod" and deny the wider diagnosis or message.
The Pope said that tradition is not something “old” but a safeguard for the future which should not become an "urn for ashes”. Tradition, Francis added, “is the root which helps the tree to grow”.
Speaking after the release of the document, the Jesuit Cardinal Michael Czerny, who was closely involved with drafting it, said: “Without conversions there are really no new paths” for the Church.
“We cannot keep repeating old responses to urgent problems,” he said. “We have to do better in bringing the Good News of Jesus Christ to everyone.”
The cardinal said that the ecological crisis demanded radical action, and “that if we don’t change we won’t make it”. He said that in Africa people talked about the "curse of oil", because of the exploitation it would lead to, and stressed that the Church does not want resources of the Amazon to become a curse.
The synod document ends with a proposal for an “Amazonian rite” sensitive to the “traditions, symbols and original rites” of the indigenous communities. The question it tackles is how to better insert the Gospel into the life of the Amazonian people.
There is an “urgent need,” the synod says, to set up committees for the “translation and writing of biblical and liturgical texts” in local languages and adaptation of the liturgy.
“This would add to the rites already present in the Church, enriching the work of evangelisation, the capacity to express the faith in a proper culture, and the sense of decentralisation and collegiality that the Catholic Church can express.”
The synod gathering, which only acts as an advisory body to the Pope, formally concludes tomorrow when Francis celebrates the final mass in St Peter’s Basilica.
Francis said he plans to write his post-synodal exhortation before the end of the year, in order to maintain the synod’s momentum for reform and while the topics discussed are still “fresh” in people’s minds.
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