Title: Roman Catholicism - Gender and Sexuality
Headings: Roman Catholicism
RELIGION LIBRARY
Roman Catholicism
Ethics and Community
Gender and Sexuality
Get Patheos Newsletters

Content: With Vatican II's restoration of a diaconate that does not lead to the priesthood, women's ability to fulfill this role has become more of an open question. In fact, Pope Paul VI commissioned a study to determine whether women could serve in the diaconate, but it was never published and the whole issue has been effectively tabled. The Church has not definitively stated that women will never be restored to the diaconate, a role that was open to them in New Testament times and for many centuries thereafter, but such a restoration does not appear to be on the immediate horizon. Beyond the realm of ordination, though, the modern Church strongly affirms the dignity and worth of women. The same Pope John Paul II who definitively excluded women from the priesthood had written a few years earlier in Mulieris Dignitatem (1988) of women's vital role in the Church, their importance in the family and in society, their equal worth before God, and the need to break down societal barriers such as unequal pay that have kept them in secondary status. He repeatedly taught that the highest role any human has ever been granted by God belonged to the Blessed Virgin Mary, whom he referred to as Co-Redemptrix with her Son. In fact, in the apostolic letter barring women from the priesthood John Paul points out that this cannot indicate a lack of dignity or worth in women because Mary herself was not included among Christ's closest disciples. Despite their exclusion from the priesthood and the diaconate, women are allowed to serve the Church in many capacities. They are the backbone of the Church, performing some 85% of all parish work. Women take on roles of particular holiness as nuns who commit their lives to Christ through service in the Church, and there are now women serving on many Vatican commissions and councils, although their numbers are not large.