Will the Synod Approve Women's Ordination?

[00:00:16] Proponents of women's ordination, both to the priesthood and to the diaconate, are hoping that the upcoming Synod will support their cause. [00:00:25] Are they delusional? [00:00:28] Is this realistic to hope for this? And can the Senate even approve of women's ordination? That's what we're going to talk about today on Cris Point. Hello, I'm Eric Sammons, your host and in chief of Crisis magazine. Before we get started, I just want to remind you because we're going to be talking about ladies today to gently touch that like button. Don't smash it, that's too masculine. Be very feminine about it and just tap that like button and subscribe to the channel. Also, I want to encourage people to follow us on social media at the various channels, twitter, X, whatever it's called, Facebook, what have you. We're at crisis mag. Also subscribe to our email newsletter at our website, Crisismagazine.com. You'll get a pop up or will be right there on the screen asking you to put in your email address. And you'll get an email every day. Just one. We're not going to spam you or anything like that, just one, letting you know what new articles are up for the day. Okay? So let's go ahead and get started. [00:01:29] So women's ordination is something that seems to crop up like a bad weed every few years. The discussion about it has been for decades now. Obviously outside the Catholic Church, for example, the Anglican churches and in Protestant denominations, they've mostly just gone ahead. And they have female ministers, female priestesses, whatever you want to call them, depending on their denomination. But the Catholic Church, of course, has resisted this. And it's coming up again because it seems like the Synod on Synodality, the main point of it is let's dredge up all the things that have already been rejected, all the progressive desires. It is interesting that they talk about the Synod being the Holy Spirit leading it. The Holy Spirit seems to be just fixated on 1970s progressive causes by this standard because that's what just gets drudged up, and women's ordination is one of them. But this is brought up. I saw it particularly because the website National Catholic Reporter, which of course is not Catholic and doesn't report it, had an article titled the Synod Could Change whether women can be ordained as deacons or priests. These women are hopeful. One thing to note is like the woman who's in charge of the women Priests movement in America, she's married to, I think, the editor of National Catholic Reporter or a high up person, National Catholic Reporter. So they get a lot of press here. [00:02:55] But the article is written by Heidi Schlump and it says, advocates for women's ordination to diaconate the priest. That are both interesting. They're not even bringing up being a bishop at this point. Say they're hopeful about the upcoming Synod in Rome, despite some high profile opposition to the possibility of expanded leadership opportunities for women in the church. [00:03:16] While they'd like to see concrete proposals that increase women's participation, those who spoke to NCR said they are also excited about the process of synodality itself and believe that the October 4 through 29th series of meetings will surface fruitful conversation and dialogue. My hope is in the commitment of all of us to be a synodal people, says Joanne Molina Lopez, director of faith formation at a not very Catholic parish in Toronto. [00:03:43] And so it goes on and on. It doesn't really matter that much what it says after that. But the point is that there's a push again for women's ordination. Hope that the synod would confirm this. And we also see it in some of the high ranking officials in the church today. For example, I know Cardinal McElroy of San Diego not that long ago brought up the idea, affirmed that he's open to the idea of at least a female diaconate. And so you see this a lot of the people that Pope Francis surrounds himself with and elevates, they seem to be open to it. They seem to leave the door open, so to speak. [00:04:23] So the question is, will the synod approve of women's ordination? Well, two answers. The short answer is no it won't. [00:04:36] I'll explain more detail later in this podcast. But essentially I don't think it's going to. [00:04:42] I think that's this wishful thinking on the part of NCR, Nashka Poor and the liberals who are supportive of this, I think it's just a way to try to push the issue some and attach it to the Senate. I don't think the Senate itself will actually approve of women's ordination to the diacon or the priest, obviously not the priesthood, but even the diaconate. I don't think that's going to happen. Not that I don't think some of the people there want that to happen. [00:05:04] I just don't think it's going to happen. But also I think the question becomes can it happen? Like can the synod, if the synod, for example, ruled that women could be ordained to the diaconate, what would that mean? [00:05:20] And the truth is, in one sense it'd mean a heck of a lot. In another sense it would mean nothing. It mean a heck of a lot because it would cause massive confusion, a massive crisis in the Church. But it would mean nothing because the synod just can't do that. The synod, for example, could release a statement that says we believe that God is a binary, it's only Father and Son, the Holy Spirit's, not part of the Godhead. [00:05:50] Would that change Catholic teaching? No, it would not. Would that cause massive confusion and scandal and lead souls astray? Absolutely. [00:05:58] Likewise, even if this synod because remember, first of all, the synod is a gathering of this synod particularly is again bishops plus like priests and laypeople. And there is nothing in canon law or the history of the church, more importantly traditional church, that has ever had laypeople voting on doctrine. And yes, ordination of men only is doctrine. It's not just a discipline. Married priesthood, for example, is a discipline. Celibate priesthood, that's a discipline. Male priesthood is not. It's a doctrine. So the Synod, no matter what it says or does, it cannot change perennial Catholic teaching. It cannot change any doctrines of the Church. Yeah, a bunch of people could get together and vote on something that contrary to it, that would not change Catholic teaching at all, like I said, cause huge confusion and scandal and lead souls astray, but it would not change. So no, it cannot, but I don't think they're actually going to. But let's break this down a little bit. The argument against women's ordination. I'm not going to go into super detail, but I just want to kind of bring up a few points here and then talk about why I think the sin won't actually end up doing this and what's going on here. So first we do have to distinguish between the ordination to the priesthood and diaconate. Like I said, they don't even mentioning the episcopate. I think they realize you're never going to get there until you get to the priesthood at the very least. But so we'll just break down the priesthood and the diaconate. Now, John Paul II, in 1994, he wrote that, I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful. [00:07:46] Now, a lot of people have debated whether or not this is an ex catharitist statement. It does seem to use the language of an infallible statement. He makes a declaration and he says that all the Church is faithful. That's part of an ex catheter statement only follows if it's for all the faithful, if it's a disciplinary measure for some of the faithful, for example, that can't be ex catheter, can't be infallible. And so you could argue that this is an ex catheter, a infallible statement of a Pope where he says, I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women, and that this judgment should be definitively held by all the Church's faithful. I would say, however, the debate about whether or not ex catheter is almost irrelevant. It's an interesting academic point, but it doesn't matter, because essentially what the Pope is doing and you see it in his own words, in the same letter in which he writes this, he says earlier that he goes the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium. In its more recent documents. In other words, we don't need the Pope to make an infallible statement on this because this is what's always been held everywhere by everyone. This is simply and by everyone, I mean everybody in the Catholic Church. You could even include the Orthodox churches with their valid sacraments. They don't have women priests either, and never have. And so therefore, this is an infallible teaching of the Church that only men can become priests. Not because J. P. Two declared it so, but because that's the constant, as he said, the constant universal tradition of the Church, something that is constant universal handed on to us from the time of the apostles. [00:09:33] That is infallible. [00:09:35] That is something that cannot be denied no matter what. A pope can't change that. A Pope just simply can't change that. As Vatican One itself says, the keys were given to Peter not for new doctrine, but the Holy Spirit might help them to guard and preserve the doctrine that's handed on to them. And so therefore, the teaching only men can be priests. Is this unbroken tradition dated the time of the apostles? It's a Dominical practice. What I mean by that is it's from the Lord Himself. [00:10:05] The Lord Himself made it clear he appointed twelve men to be apostles. Now, some people will argue, oh, he was somehow bound to the customs of his time, which is ridiculous if you consider everything else he did that threw the customs of his time out the window if it served his purpose. Our Lord had no he wasn't bound to anything, any human tradition. He wasn't bound to any customs or anything like that. If he wanted to break it, he would. I mean, just the very fact that the first witnesses to the, to the Resurrection are women in a time in which women could not be legal witnesses is one example of this. There's others as well. And likewise, it's not saying that women weren't worthy to be apostles. If you look at the Gospel records, the women come out looking a lot better, a lot better than the men do. Obviously. We have our Blessed Mother. We also have Mary Magdalene. She's at the foot of the cross. Other women are there. Yes, John the Evangelist does show up there, but he ran at a time when he could have gotten arrested. The women know they're there. They supported him. The women were frankly, in many ways better disciples of our Lord than the apostles were. Yet the Lord appointed only men. So, like I said, this is dominical practice. It's from the Lord himself. We cannot change it. Only men can become priests. So frankly, it's delusional, I mean, literally delusional for a Catholic to think that one day the Catholic Church will have women as priests. It's just simply not possible. And if you do think that's possible, you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how Catholicism works, of how we know what the Church teaches, how we know what our Lord has passed on. [00:11:59] No synod, no Pope, no bishop, no person can override what has been handed on to us by the Lord. This is very clear in Catholic teaching. And so women priestesses, it's just not happening. It can't happen now. [00:12:18] And I think because of the fact that Pope John Paul II, 1994 really did shut the door so strongly, there was a change in tactics by the women's ordination crowd instead of pushing for women's priestly ordination because again, he stated the church has no authority to confer priestly ordination on women. Note he did not say diaconal, he didn't just say ordination, he said priestly ordination. And so therefore they said, well, I know what we'll do, let's push for women deaconesses. [00:12:53] We can get in the door that way because there is in the Catholic tradition a history of women called deacons that dates back to the time of the New Testament. And so therefore the idea is if we can get women ordained as deacons today, because women cannot be ordained as deacons today, then we can move on from there. And so we need to recognize, first of all, that the point of the push for women deaconesses is not some theological, historical type of desire study like, oh, I've really studied the sources, the history, the theology. I really believe that women are supposed to be ordained deacons. No, that's ridiculous. It is a political move, a power move. Now then you read back on the sources and say, how can I support what I want? I want women to become deacons so that eventually women can become priests and bishops. [00:13:57] And if I push for women deacons now, eventually that'll move us closer to the goal, the actual end goal, which is women as bishops, even women as bishops, women as priestesses, women as deacons. So we have to recognize that the promoters of women deacons, they're not acting in good faith. And I don't usually say this about people, I usually try to accept what they say at face value, that they really do mean it. But I think in this case it really is just a way to enter into put your foot in the door so that eventually you can have women priests and women bishops. And I'm not going to give a full defense here of why women cannot be ordained deacons, but I do want to hit a few high points. The first thing note is the first thing you'll hear is like, for example, St. Paul in Romans, Romans 16 one, I believe, he calls Phoebe a deaconess, a deaconess of the church. And so people say, look, there we go, proof women deacons. What more do we need? Well, actually we need a lot more because the fact is, the word deacon, the translation in English to deacon, comes from the Greek word Diaconus, which means servant or an assistant in some servant type of role. So somebody who assists somebody else in the service of somebody else. In fact, in Romans 13 four, just a few chapters before, he calls Phoebe a deacon a deaconess, he calls the ruler that we're supposed to submit to the famous passage in Romans 13 where he talks about like be submissive to your rulers. He calls the ruler a servant of God. [00:15:39] The word he uses isn't servant, it's Diaconus, it's deacon again. So you could translate that theoretically it wouldn't be a good English translation, but you could translate that, that the ruler is God's deacon. Do you think that Paul, who's talking about secular rulers in this context, is saying that secular rulers are ordained deacons? Of course he isn't. He's talking about being servants. [00:16:04] Likewise, we can't then assume that when he refers to Phoebe as a deaconess, that he's talking about an ordained ministry. Now, there were in the early church women who were called deaconesses, but again, the word means servant, and there was never a sacramental character placed upon that role. Another thing to note is that the terms used like deacon, presbyter, priest, bishop, all those terms in the early Church, especially the first 100, 200 years, they were not fixed. You will see cases in early Church writings in New Testament where, for example, bishops are called predators, the predator, meaning the overriding predator, the overriding overseer, the bishop. And you'll see them talk about deacons, in some cases as part of the predator. It's not like today where we have a definitive meaning to each of those words and a role and an office for them. So the term deacon cannot be just automatically. We see the word deacon. We think ordained ministry like today, that's just simply not how it was back then. It wasn't established. So essentially what we do know is that some women were servants in the Church. And I think it's kind of funny if you think if you go let's go back real quick to that first line from that article in National Catholic Register where it talks about advocates for women's ordination say they're hopeful about the upcoming sin in Rome despite some high profile opposition to the possibility of expanded leadership opportunities for women in the church. Leadership opportunities for women in the Church. Yet deacon means servant. A deacon is not a leader in a sense, they are a servant. Their whole role is to serve mostly the priesthood, the bishop, the bishop directly in today's Church, that's still what it is. But even back then they were to be in service. For example, in the early Church, people were ordained essentially with no I'm sorry, people were baptized, immersion essentially with no clothes on. And so they would have women do the baptisms often would be of the women and men of the men. And so there are certain roles given to women that no longer are needed. But it's not saying they weren't roles, but they were not of a sacramental character. We have no evidence of a woman presiding over the Eucharist, for example, which a deacon, of course, would never preside over the Eucharist today, but a deacon would be at the altar. And we don't have evidence of women ever doing that. And so therefore today what we mean by deacon is an ordained ministry. An ordained ministry meaning a sacramental ministry, meaning only if you receive a specific sacrament can you do it. I can't go around calling myself Deacon Eric and acting like a deacon if I have not been ordained with holy orders as a deacon. [00:19:03] And here's where we get to the point of it being needing to be a man. The Church is always taught that to receive holy orders, to receive any sacrament, you have to have the proper matter form and minister and intention. [00:19:15] In the case of baptism, for example, the proper matter is water. In the case of Eucharist, the proper matter is bread and wine. Of course, in the case of ordination, the proper matter is a man. There's some other aspects but essentially has to be a man. A woman is not the proper matter. Therefore it's an invalid sacrament. It cannot be made valid with a woman as the recipient. [00:19:40] And so what we see there is we see basically the door is closed to a woman deaconate, a ordained diaconate. Now here's the thing. [00:19:53] I could see the see, when I said that I don't think that the Senate is going to ordain is going to declare an approval of women's ordinations deaconate. I could see where at some point there is some ministry they call a deaconess and at first they make it clear it's not an ordained ministry. I could see them doing like, oh, it's just a term deaconess. But we know again what that is, it's a foot in the door to get to the final step, which is full sacramental inclusion of women into holy orders. [00:20:30] And so ordaining women to the diaconate simply would violate church doctrine, not just discipline. And so it just cannot be done. The Senate cannot do that. Now here's something I want to bring I'm going to bring up again another something I'm going to bring up again like what I think will happen to Senate. But I want to bring up another point and here's something I'm going to call out maybe some of the people who are listening to this podcast and that's conservative Catholics who have basically folded, given in to the push to put women in leadership positions in the Church and positions at the altar, in the sanctuary. Okay? So first of all, in the ministry, like I said, the push for women's ordination is for a push for leadership roles because they see holy orders as power. [00:21:26] That's primarily what is and they believe women need power in the Church. [00:21:31] The fact of the matter is though, holy orders is not about power and it's not about even competence. Nobody's questioning that a girl, for example, can't serve at the altar as well as a boy. [00:21:44] Nobody's even questioning that a woman couldn't necessarily run a parish as well as some men. I mean, not necessarily. It depends on the woman depends on the man. Nobody's questioning that. But Holy Orders isn't about that. [00:21:58] But conservative Catholics who might be listening to this, who advocate for more leadership roles in the Church for women. Frankly, what you're doing is you're supporting the push for women's, our nation. You might not want to do that, you might be doing unknowingly, you might be doing it implicitly. But the fact is that you're caving into the push for women's ordination by granting that the only way the Church can be just would be if women were in positions of authority in the Church like men are. You see this with women basically running most parishes anymore. You see this with women being selected positions of authority of power at the Vatican. And I see so many conservative orthodox Catholics, oh, this is great. See, you don't need women's ordination. You can be given all these roles anyway. I feel like that is so condescending to women. Like the only way you can be important in this Church is if you have these roles that men do, these roles, these bureaucratic roles, then you're important in the Church. That's ridiculous. You know who are some of the most important, if not the most important people in the Church today? It's those cloistered nuns who are praying for us every day. They are not only some of the most important people, they're some of the most powerful people in the Church. Who has more power? [00:23:23] The Vatican bureaucrat who pushes some papers and makes some declarations that nobody cares about, or the Holy Nun who is speaking to God and begging for his mercy every day. I know which one I'd vote for. I know which I think has more power, more power to affect change, to help things in the Church. It's that cloister none. [00:23:46] And so when you give in as a conservative Catholic, as an orthodox Catholic, you give in and you say, oh yes, we need to have women in positions of authority in the Church. You are basically giving into the lies of the women's ordination movement, that the only way that somebody can have real meaning in the Church is through these positions of authority. And therefore eventually that's got to be women's ordination. The same thing is true about altar girls. And frankly, I would even argue for women up, doing the readings, things like that. [00:24:18] I know this is stepping on some toes. I know some people don't like this, don't agree with me on this. That's fine. [00:24:24] All I'm saying though, is that when we allowed women to serve at the altar girls, we were setting up lots and lots of women for disappointment and for a bait and switch. Because the fact is, everybody psychologically knew that altar boys, altar servers are geared towards the priesthood. Used to be it was only seminarians who could be altar servers. And so therefore, when you say a girl can be an altar server and we all know altar servers are basically geared towards becoming priests one day. Not that they all become priests, obviously, but it's to get them on that path to think about it. We're putting girls on a path to think about it. [00:25:12] And so altar girls, it was a terrible step that never should have been allowed because it essentially gave the message that, okay, this is step one. Step two will be the diaconate, step three will be the priesthood, and step four will be the episcopacy, and step five will be the complete collapse of the Catholic Church. And so, as orthodox, faithful Catholics, we should not support altar girls at all. We should not be advocating for women to be put in positions of power at the Vatican. [00:25:50] This is something that makes us feel good. [00:25:53] It pacifies certain people who are complaining. Ultimately, it does not really pacify them, because all it does is it emboldens them to complain more about women's ordination. [00:26:04] And ultimately it does not help the Church any. It's not spreading the Gospel any. It's not proclaiming the truths of the Catholic faith any better. It's simply just pacifying the spirit of the age. That's all it's doing. And so as faithful Catholics, we should really oppose even that. [00:26:22] So let me get back to the Synod. Will the Synod approve women's ordination? I really don't think so. Francis himself, Pope Francis, has shown that he's really not a fan of this. He's not a fan of women priestesses or women deacons or anything like that. Now, here's the thing about Francis, though. You never know exactly what he's thinking because he's surrounded himself by people who are very supportive of women's ordination. So the fact that he says he's against it, but then he supports people who are for it, you never know. But I do think actually he is against it. I don't think under his pontificate it would be even attempted. Again. I think there's this possibility that they will attempt something where they create a new ministry called deaconesses that is not at first an attempt even to be an ordained ministry. It's just a role in the Church, just like the early Church. But we all know what it's going towards, and so I think that it won't happen. But what we see, though, is this is the whole problem of cinnadality. [00:27:28] The whole problem of Synodality is it makes us think that church dogma, church doctrine is up for Democratic vote. That essentially, if enough people today want to change something, it can be changed. Everything comes up for debate. The only reason we're not debating at this upcoming Senate, the Trinity, is because the Trinity isn't a progressive woke talking point. If for some reason the woke activists one day decided that the Trinity was obviously too patriarchal, we need to have a matriarchy declared Mother, Son and Holy Spirit or something like that. I guarantee you that at the next Synod they would be talking about it, they'd be pushing for it. [00:28:12] And so that is ultimately the problem of the Synodality is it raises issues that are completely settled, as if they're up for a debate, but they are not up for a debate at all. They are not at all up for a debate now. [00:28:28] So if the Synod did approve it, it's frankly meaningless. It really is meaningless because it has no authority. Sin has no authority to change church doctrine. Not even the Pope can change church doctrine. [00:28:41] Bishop Athanasius Schneider was recently asked how the faithful should respond if a local bishop allow female deacons. It's a good question. Like, what happens if it does happen, if we really do have female deacons that are allowed? [00:28:57] And so here's what he said. I hope this will not be done. I think this is impossible that a pope would approve a sacramental ordination of female deacons. [00:29:08] But if in hypothesis this happened, then of course we cannot participate in such worship. That is blasphemous and highly sacrilegious. In other words, if your local bishop decide to ordain women to the diaconate, you simply cannot attend any parish where they are stationed, any Mass where they are serving as part of the Mass. It's simply not something you can go, you'd have to walk out. You cannot be part of. If you've said, you can say, well, it's the only Mass I can get today. I have an obligation to attend Mass. No, that's not a mass. [00:29:43] As Bishop Schneider says, it's blasphemous and highly sacrilegious. It would be a sin to attend a Mass in which a quote unquote ordained female deacon was participating. And so you'd have to just leave. So what we need to do is we need you just to stick to the traditional Catholic teaching, attend a parish where it's practiced and preached and really understand. [00:30:06] I see so many people getting upset about like, oh, if they declared deacons, what is it, female deacon? What does this mean? [00:30:13] Like I said, I'm not saying it's not scandalous, wouldn't cause a lot of controversy and lead to loss of souls. But ultimately, what does it mean? It means nothing because the Synod cannot make such declarations. And if we understand our Catholic faith, we know this, we know no Synod can all of a sudden change perennial church teaching. So we don't have to worry about that. And we just stick to the traditional teaching of the church, read the Good Catechisms and practice our faith. And that's what we do. And we make sure we send a parish where the faith is truly preached and truly practiced. Okay, I think I'm going to end it there. Be at peace. Everybody pray. Pray for the Synod that it wouldn't happen. [00:30:59] Pray for those who are participating, that they would have a conversion of spirit to Christ and would only proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And pray for your pastor, pray for your bishop. I really. Feel like we don't pray for our local bishop enough. We talk a lot about praying for the pope, but we really need to be praying for our local bishop. That's who we are under directly. And so pray for your pastor. Pray for your local bishop. Okay, everybody, until next time. God love.