The Bible offers tantalising glimpses of the influential role played by women in the early Christian church. In Romans 16, for example, St Paul vouches for the credentials of “our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church of Cenchreae”, who appears to have travelled from Greece to Rome on some kind of mission. Elsewhere, the names of Priscilla, Chloe, Lydia and Apphia are noted as leaders of the house churches that were scattered throughout the Roman empire. Women, themselves excluded from the public square in a patriarchal culture, were pivotal to the development of a persecuted faith which also had to keep a low profile.
Such equality did not last, of course, as women were sidelined from the ecclesiastical roles and formal hierarchies that became established over the centuries. But fascinating scholarship, much of it driven by a wave of feminist historians and theologians from the 1960s onwards, has succeeded in writing this dimension of Christianity’s beginnings back into history. Sadly, even faced with the contemporary crisis of emptying pews and a dearth of male vocations, the world’s largest Christian body still refuses to contemplate the prospect of a modern Phoebe.
The ordination of female priests was never going to feature in the great debate on the Catholic church that was initiated by Pope Francis in 2021, and concludes this month. But confirmation that even the ordination of female deacons has been ruled out is deeply dispiriting. Given the huge hopes of reform raised by the “synod on synodality” project – in which the views of believers around the world were canvassed on an unprecedented scale – the unceremonious parking of one of its hot topics is a huge letdown for millions of Catholics.
Despairing campaigners have been making their voices heard. One planned piece of agit-prop featured a “Sister Pope” discussing the problem of male ordination with her female bishops. But any laughter will have rung hollow.
As a sop, a series of Vatican study groups has been set up “to give proper attention to the pressing issue of women’s participation in the life and leadership of the church”. That will not give great hope to anyone who has followed the progress of a series of similar initiatives in past decades. Widespread hopes that Pope Francis would deliver a breakthrough, following the traditionalist papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, are proving misplaced.
Looking in from the outside, non-Christians might feel themselves without a dog in this fight. But at its best and most inclusive – for example, in the defence of the rights and dignity of migrants at a time when both are being stripped away – Pope Francis’s papacy has embodied a universalist ethos with which secular liberalism can make common cause. The refusal to extend this principle of equality to women within its own ranks is undermining the pope’s mission to modernise the church.
Having been warned off the subject of holy orders for women, the synod will at least be able to discuss giving them greater powers in the governance of the church. When that debate takes place, it needs to send an unequivocal message to the forces of conservatism in the Vatican. Women played a pivotal role in the development of the first-century church. Two millennia on, the Catholic church needs to empower and respect the Phoebes and Priscillas of today.
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