Women deacons are not to be allowed in the Catholic Church, it was announced on Thursday.
A Vatican Commission said in a report that it “rules out the possibility of moving in the direction of admitting women to the diaconate understood as a degree of the sacrament of Holy Orders”.
It continued that “in light of Sacred Scripture, Tradition, and the Church’s Magisterium, this assessment is strongly maintained, although it does not at present allow for a definitive judgment to be formulated, as is the case with priestly ordination”.
A deacon is an ordained member of the church who is deemed a cleric. A deacon cannot hear confessions or celebrate the Eucharist.
RM Block
In 2022, an island-wide consultation with practising Irish Catholics found that 96 per cent favoured the ordination of women as deacons and priests.
Former president Mary McAleese has described Thursday’s Vatican announcement as the decision of “an institution on its way to self-inflicted oblivion”.
The commission was the second set up by Pope Francis to make recommendations on the issue of women deacons. It concluded its work in February, submitting its report to Pope Leo XIV last September, who made it public on Thursday.
Quoting arguments for and against allowing women deacons, Thursday’s announcement noted how an argument against led to deadlock at the commission.
It argued women deacons could not be allowed as: “The masculinity of Christ, and therefore the masculinity of those who receive Holy Orders, is not accidental but is an integral part of sacramental identity, preserving the divine order of salvation in Christ. To alter this reality would not be a simple adjustment of ministry but a rupture of the nuptial meaning of salvation.”
Five commission members supported the argument, with five opposing it.
Ms McAleese described the commission’s decision as “the end of Rome rule, of obedience to a discredited Magisterium (teaching authority of the Church), of faith in an institution on its way to self-inflicted oblivion. The acceptance of gender equality could possibly have saved it, Nothing will now! Especially not Pope Leo!”.
She asked, “Who in the 21st century can take these people seriously? I refuse to. As the ordained priesthood disappears in the West and the Magisterium slides into global irrelevance, as infants baptised in their tens of thousands waken up as adults to their forced conscription into submissive life membership, and exercise their human rights to walk away.”
With baptism one becomes a permanent member of the Catholic Church.
In June 2022 a report by the Irish Catholic Church, which followed consultations with practising Catholics all over the island, found that 96 per cent favoured the ordination of women as deacons and as priests.
Part of the church’s worldwide “synodal pathway”, the report, along with some independent submissions, was sent to Rome in August 2022 as the contribution of Irish Catholics to the worldwide Synod on Synodality at the Vatican in October 2023.
