The role of women in the Catholic Church is high on the agenda as Pope Francis launches the second phase of a major reform project

ROME – Pope Francis opened the second phase of his major Catholic reform project on Wednesday. The agenda included widespread calls for women to take on more responsible positions in the church, but an ordained parish was still excluded.

Francis led an opening Mass in St. Peter’s Square with the 368 bishops and laypeople who will meet behind closed doors over the next three weeks to discuss the future of the church and how it can better respond to the needs of today’s Catholics.

Some of the most contentious issues are officially off the table after they were met with resistance and objections at the synod’s first meeting last year. This includes caring for LGBTQ+ Catholics and allowing women to serve as deacons.

Francis has entrusted these issues to ten study groups working in parallel with the synod, raising the question of what exactly will emerge from the gathering when it closes on October 26 with a set of final proposals for Francis’ consideration.

Francis launched the reform process in 2021 to put into action his goal of creating a church that is more inclusive, humble and welcoming, and in which ordinary Catholics have a greater say in decision-making than the all-male priestly hierarchy.

The trial and the two-year survey of ordinary Catholics who informed it raised both hopes and fears that real change was afoot.

In his marching orders on Wednesday, Francis urged delegates to abandon their long-held and self-serving positions and truly listen to one another in order to “bring something new to life.”

“Otherwise we will find ourselves engaging in dialogues among deaf people in which participants try to advance their own concerns or agendas without listening to others and, above all, without listening to the voice of the Lord,” he said in his homily.

The first phase of the synod process ended last year with the conclusion that it was “urgent” to ensure greater participation of women in church leadership positions and with a call to continue theological and pastoral research to enable women to serve as deacons .

Deacons perform many of the same functions as priests, such as presiding at baptisms, weddings and funerals, but cannot celebrate Mass.

Proponents say allowing women as deacons would help address the shortage of Catholic priests and address long-standing complaints that women have a second-class status in the church: excluded from the priesthood but responsible for the lion’s share of the work, who educates the youth and takes care of them to make them sick and to pass on the faith to the next generations.

Opponents say that ordination of women to the diaconate would mark the beginning of a wavering trend toward the ordination of women to the priesthood. The Catholic Church reserves the priesthood for men and says Christ chose only men to be his 12 apostles.

Francis has repeatedly affirmed the exclusively male priesthood and, just this weekend, sharply criticized “dull-witted” agitators who advocate for a female diaconate. After a controversial visit to Belgium where he was challenged by female students, Francis said such calls were an attempt to “masculine women.”

His arguments have outraged advocates for women’s ordination, who have organized a series of events outside the synod in Rome this month to press their case.

“It is so insulting to keep saying that the only valid role that receives this pope’s approval is to be caring, namely being a mother, when you can be caring and mothering and be a priest,” Miriam said Duignan, a priestess trustee at the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research.

“It gives a spiritual stamp of recognition to sexism,” she said this week at a prayer event co-organized by the Women’s Ordination Conference. “It is so irresponsible and dangerous for him to constantly criticize, belittle, reject and demonize women who just say, ‘Stop lying.'” Stop hiding and stop trying to us to be demoted to second-class citizenship.’”

While ordained ministry for women is out of the question, numerous other proposals are being discussed, including requiring women to assume greater positions of responsibility in seminaries and serve as judges in canon courts, ruling on everything from the annulment of a marriage to Priest disciplinary proceedings.

The synod has 368 members, including 272 bishops and 96 non-bishops. A total of 85 women are taking part, including 54 women who are eligible to vote.

In addition to the delegates chosen by the respective bishops’ conferences, Francis himself named several members to participate, including two bishops from mainland China, many of his closest cardinal advisers and exiled Nicaraguan Bishop Rolando Jose Alvarez.

The list of papally nominated members also includes the retired prefect of the Vatican Magisterium, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, who has made critical comments about the synod process and Francis’ pontificate as a whole.

In an essay this week on the German Catholic website kath.net, Müller focused in particular on the penitential liturgy that Francis celebrated on Tuesday, in which he asked for forgiveness for a variety of sins before the meeting began in order to acknowledge the church’s transgressions atone.

Mueller criticized what he called “newly invented sins” — including sins against the synod itself and the sin of “using doctrine as stones to hurl,” a reference to how conservatives see Francis’ reform efforts as undermining of traditional church teaching.

Mueller said such a long list of made-up sins “reads like a checklist of vigilantism and gender ideology, somewhat laboriously disguised as Christianity.”

The non-episcopal members named by the pope include the Rev. James Martin, an American Jesuit who leads an LGBTQ+ outreach ministry. Martin has a sympathetic ear for both Francis, who unilaterally approved same-sex blessings after the end of the synod’s first session, and the Rev. Timothy Radcliffe, who is one of the synod’s “spiritual assistants.”

In an essay this week in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, Radcliffe made a strong case for even doubters in the church to see the good in LGBTQ+ Catholics and their relationships and why the church should welcome them.

“The acceptance of gay people is seen in some parts of the church as evidence of Western decadence,” he wrote. “But the church must fight for the lives and dignity of gay people, who still face the death penalty in 10 countries and criminal prosecution in 70. You have the right to live,” he said.

At the same time, those who oppose pastoral treatment of gays have gifts that the Western church should value, including a deep sense of divine life in all of creation, he said.

“The body of Christ needs all of our gifts,” he concluded.