We Are Church International (WAC) is very disappointed that women deacons are not to be on the official agenda for the Second Session of the Synod.

WAC is very disappointed that so many important issues have been taken out of the Synod agenda and given to 16 Study Groups (made up 74% of clerics) which will only report after the Synod has ended in 2025.

WAC welcomes the statement that the most effective way to promote a Synodal Church is the participation of all in decision making and taking processes. But we fear that ignoring the fact that most people around the world did not participate in the Synodal process due to clericalism will remain a major stumbling block.

WAC welcomes the statement that adopting a Synodal style enables us to overcome the idea that all churches must necessarily move at the same pace on every issue.

WAC calls on the Synod participants to formulate strong proposals for the full equality of women.

WAC calls on the Synod participants to formulate strong proposals to allow local churches the freedom to reform issues of great importance to their local cultural and social situations.

Synodality will only be credible if it leads to real reforms in 2025.

Colm Holmes, Chair We are Church International  
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Dr Martha Heizer,  Vice-Chair We are Church International
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Dear Brother Francis,

The exclusion of women from Church ordination (canon 1024); Church governance (cc.129 and 274§1), and from preaching the homily (c.767§1) are discriminatory, contrary to Jesus’ inclusion of all, and deprives the Church of the benefits of gender diversity and balance in leadership.

All have received the same Baptism, the Same Spirit, and the Same Calling. The exclusion of women to respond to that Calling is hurtful to women’s dignity and unacceptable in the 21 st century.

You have rightly called the Church to Walk together in Communion, Participation and Mission However if women continue to be kept in an infantile position, then women can never hope to be part of a synodal Church where they are in communion, participating equally in mission. A synodal Church requires change in the structures where women participate equally in decision taking, not just in decision making processes.

We understand that the topic ‘women deacons’ has been assigned to one of the 10 study groups reporting in 2025. We call for transparency about the synod working groups, their members, and their mandates. We are aware of the abundance of study, research, history etc., that supports the restoration of women deacons, and therefore wonder why you continue to stall on this issue.

The role of women is key to the synodal process and should be discussed as a whole and not portioned out into women deacons, women in decision making, women needing care, etc. To ignore the question of women’s equality which means their access to ordination to the priesthood, is to exclude women from synodality and ignore the voice of the ‘sensus fidei’ of the people of God.

Why do we ask this?

• Jesus treated women as equals and had many women disciples
• The “natural inferiority” of women is today totally unacceptable
• There is worldwide support for women to be ordained
• The Pontifical Biblical Commission (1976) found nothing in scripture preventing the ordination of women
• The blunt “No” in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (1994) is based on power and not on scripture

We place our request before you, Pope Francis as it is you who has set out a synodal church which "walks together", listens and dialogues; and therefore, invites everyone to "speak with courage and candour" (preparatory document p. 20). It is in this spirit that we place our appeal for due consideration of women’s position of full equality in the Church to be kept on the table for the Synod of 2024.

Colm Holmes,
Chair We are Church International
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Dr Martha Heizer,
Vice-Chair We are Church International
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Followed by Q & A

ZOOM 20.00 – 21.30hrs CET

Tuesday 11th of June 2024

Her talk will be followed by Q & A

Helena Jeppesen-Spuhler is a Voting participant from Switzerland of the Synod 2023 & 2024. For more than 20 years she has worked for the Swiss International Charity Fastenaktion. With responsibility for the Laos and Philippines country programs her understanding of development work cooperation is marked by her genuine interest in people, in interreligious and intercultural dialog, in gender equality and for indigenous and human rights. She has a special talent for working in networks. She is a member of the Swiss Catholic Alliance for Equal Dignity. In 2019 she accompanied the Amazon Synod. In February 2023 she was a delegate for Switzerland at the European Continental Synodal in Prague. And in October 2023 she was among the select group of 54 women who were the first ever Voting Women Members of the Global Bishops Synod!

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Response to the Vatican letter Dignitas Infinita

We Are Church International welcome the fact that the Vatican, in its declaration Dignitas Infinita, recalls the fundamental and absolute dignity of all human beings, which is threatened and violated in many ways in our world today.

However, the question arises as to whether a document like this, which the Vatican claims to have worked on for five years, would not also have offered the opportunity to research human dignity within the Church itself. There are many occasions in history when the Church has acted quite differently, for example in the fight against heretics, killed to save their souls . The sexual abuse by clerics and other church employees has not yet been forgotten and, particularly from a systemic point of view, is far from being sufficiently addressed, so it is very surprising how little the declaration has to say about these ecclesiastical crimes against human dignity.

A similar inability for critical self-reflection can be seen in the statements on violence against women: with reference to Pope John Paul II, the actual equality of the rights of the human person is demanded and thus, among other things, equal pay for equal work and fair advancement in professionalcareers , but not a syllable is mentioned that precisely this does not exist in the Catholic Church and that the Church marginalises and discriminates against women by excluding them from ordained ministry and thus from the highest offices of leadership.

The Vatican’s approach is to define gender as based solely on a person’s physical appearance. The document’s attempt to uphold and defend human dignity is weakened by its stunning lack of awareness of the actual lives of transgender and nonbinary people. Far from being an individual’s choice, gender identity is based on a discovery of who God created each of us to be accounting for factors other than the physical appearance of one’s body. There is an urgent need to approach the subject with less ideological prejudice and more modern openness and scholarship.

We may be comforted by the title of the document: Dignitas infinita is a reference to the fact that human dignity is infinite, but could also be understood to mean that the Church's teaching on human dignity has not yet been thought through to the end.

Colm Holmes, Chair We are Church International
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Phone: +353 86606 3636

Dr Martha Heizer, Vice-Chair We are Church International
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Phone: +43 650 4168500

Critical comments from Wir sind Kirche - DE  https://www.wir-sind-kirche.de/?id=125&id_entry=10117

Comment by Wir sind Kirche - AT https://wir-sind-kirche.at/presseaussendung/unfaehig-zur-kritischen-selbstreflexion

Dear Cardinal Mario Grech,

We welcome and embrace ‘Synodality’ as a way of ‘being Church’ that is at once both ancient and new in our tradition. We support the three key themes of the Synodal Process: Communion, Participation and Mission.

We understand that it is “how” we relate to one another in the Church, our capacity to ‘be together’ in harmony and unity (i.e. Communion), that will help us fulfil our various responsibilities and roles (i.e. Participation) and by doing so empower us as “Church” to bear witness to the love of God in the world and to the unity of all humankind in God (i.e Mission).

We are a network of Catholics who treasure our faith tradition and love the Church because, as our name states; we are all the Church. We wish to contribute constructively to its renewal and reform and have good relations with all. It is because we care so deeply about the Church and its mission that we have felt compelled over the years to speak up and question the injustice of structures, practices and teachings that have blocked, rather than channelled, God’s grace in the world. Combined with a lack of accountability and a culture of secrecy, these unjust structures, practices and teachings have contributed (among other egregious wrongs) to the clerical abuse of children and vulnerable adults, and the institutionalised discrimination of half the world’s population, women.

Since the Second Vatican Council, it is understood that all the baptised regardless of the different ministries and responsibilities they hold, share a foundational equality by virtue of their common baptism.

Contrary to popular perception, the Church (in theory at least) is neither a democracy nor a dictatorship but an ordered community where power and authority are exercised as Christian service and not power over anyone, in accord with the Gospel message.

Vatican II has been crucial in reshaping our understanding of “Church” and highlighting the co-responsibility of the laity, along with the hierarchy, in working for its renewal and reform. By highlighting the baptismal dignity and equality of every baptised person, the Council has helped us to more fully appreciate that the Holy Spirit works and speaks through each lay woman and man in the Church, as much as it does through each member of the male hierarchy.

The significance of this insight is that the sensus fidelium (i.e the sense of faith in all the faithful) is now regarded to be as vital a part of the teaching authority of the church (i.e the magisterium) as that of the hierarchy. Pope Francis is the first Pope to promote the sensus fidelium in the Church and his global Synodal Process explicitly gives expression to it.

It is regrettable however that this shift in the internal dynamics of the Church’s magisterium has not been communicated better or explained clearly to the majority of Catholics. Many remain unaware that the teaching authority of the Church is no longer the exclusive preserve of the hierarchy. They do not know that the bishops and the Pope are obliged to engage in meaningful consultation with all the People of God before making key decisions.

Significantly, the change does not diminish the role of discernment assigned to the bishops by the Council, but it does oblige them to anchor their discernment in an authentic and faithful listening to the People of God.

And this is where we have a problem.

It is one thing to be told “We are all the Church together” and another to experience the reality of such declarations. The most glaring example of this incoherence is the way women are treated. While we acknowledge the inclusion of 54 Women amongst 70 non-bishops voting at the Synod, we must also express deep disappointment and concern at the lack of progress so far.

Although the ordination of women priests was mentioned in many countries, it was not included on the agenda for the Global Synod in Rome and most reports on the female diaconate have never been published.

This is simply not good enough. It is not in the spirit of synodality to ignore the concerns of women who make up half of the world’s population. We call on the bishops to renew their commitment to the Synodal Process; to authentically listen (i.e. listen from the heart) to their sisters in the Church, to relinquish all attachments to power and privilege and to stop clinging to an out-dated model of church.

The Church can not be a credible or effective sign of God’s love and justice in the world as long as its own structures and processes lack transparency and discriminate against half the membership of the baptised faithful (i.e. women, half the population of the world).

Instead of criticising society to change and act differently, it is time for the Church (i.e the whole church, the ordained and the laity) to become the change it proclaims about God’s peace and justice in the world and to lead by example in the way it organises itself at every level.

We Are Church International calls for the following steps representing concrete signs of synodality to be endorsed by the Synod in October 2024:

1. Shared decision making with equal numbers of laity and clerics at all Synods, Assemblies and Councils.

2. Opening all Ministries to women and to married persons, regardless of their sexual orientation.

3. Appointment of bishops to be overseen by committees of lay and clerics.

4. Unity in Diversity allowing countries to deal with their respective important concerns such as the ones mentioned in 1. - 3. above in accordance with their culture and the legitimate concerns of the believers in these countries

5. Draw up a Church Constitution setting out the rights and responsibilities of all the people of God and a new governance structure. WICR have prepared a very good draft: 

Colm Holmes, Chair We are Church International
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Phone: +353 86606 3636

Dr Martha Heizer, Vice-Chair We are Church International
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Phone: +43 650 4168500