letter to synod working group 5

Working Group 5 was commissioned by Pope Francis to study women as part of the Synod on Synodality. This project was assigned to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. They solicited feedback from the Church from November 2024 to April 1, 2025. Below is the letter I submitted. 

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March 31, 2025
 
Dear Cardinals Fernandez, Grech, Hollerich, Sr. Becquart, & Working Group 5:
 
Thank you for your sincere devotion to the Church. You work extremely hard and sacrifice greatly to serve God and God’s people. I pray for you and for the Synod process, that the Holy Spirit may knit the Church together more closely and guide us to renewed richness of Church life.
 
I followed the Synod closely. While I appreciate the enormity of shifts taking place in the Church’s way of proceeding, the Synod leadership must honestly acknowledge that when it came to the topic of women, the synod process and values were repeatedly violated. (See the list below.) While the process began in good faith, it became increasingly clear that Pope Francis lacks interior freedom on the topic of the ordination of women as deacons and priests. As a result, he obstructed the Holy Spirit, determining the outcome on these topics before a proper discernment could be made. No other topic was treated in this manner.
 
This very working group is an example of the lack of freedom involved in the Church’s approach to the topic of women. It seems designed to study those special instances when the Holy Spirit overcomes institutional and theological barriers to lift women into positions of leadership. The point seems to be for Working Group 5 to study this phenomenon so that the Church can implement processes to duplicate the exception. I have a better idea: how about just removing the barriers instead?
 
This study is upside down. It is trying to “trickle up” women’s participation in leadership rather than address the root causes of the problem—most especially, a problematic theological anthropology and a structure that sidelines women (as evidenced by the violations in the synod itself). Don’t start at the bottom, start at the top: if the Church opens priesthood and the diaconate to women, then participation of women in all leadership positions will naturally increase. However, as long as women are excluded from true co-partnership, male bishops and priests will continue to keep women sidelined, seeing women as somehow defective, somehow less than fully human (no matter what spin John Paul II’s complementarity puts on things).
 
The first step is to deal with reality, as Pope Francis recommends. It is time for the Church to stop pretending. Priesthood is NOT settled doctrine. It has not been for decades. Catholics at every level all around the world—including religious brothers and sisters, deacons, priests, bishops and cardinals—believe God calls women to be priests. This support will only continue to increase with time. Furthermore, the bishops are not in communion on the issue, which means the doctrine of a male-only priesthood cannot be definitively held. These are indisputable facts. The best time to admit reality is RIGHT NOW: a question for discernment has arisen and the Church must have the freedom to engage it if we are to discover where God is leading us. The longer the Church waits, the harder it will be. The Church must face the issue.
 
While I know you are sincere in your service, I also believe that you know in your heart that what the Church is doing to women is wrong. When will you stand up to Pope Francis and say so? As Catholics, a condition of fidelity to Jesus and to the covenant is to stand up to power structures that betray God’s project of salvation.  You are the ones who have been given the power to transform. All women everywhere are counting on you to embrace it.
 
Sincerely,
 
 
Father Anne, MDiv, MA
[email protected]
www.ordinationjustice.org


APPENDIX | VIOLATIONS OF SYNOD PROCESS AND VALUES REGARDING TOPIC OF THE ORDINATION OF WOMEN AS PRIESTS  

• Calls for women in preaching, women in governance and women in the diaconate surfaced from around the world. Calls for ordination of women as priests also surfaced, though not universal. (paragraph #64, Enlarge the Space of Your Tent)
  
  
• Under the Pope's direction, the process immediately narrowed the acceptable topics for conversation down to the diaconate. Priesthood for women was notably absent from Instrumentum Laboris, the document used to prepare delegates for the October 2023 assembly.
  
  
• Though eliminated from the preparatory document, delegates anecdotally shared that priesthood for women came up on the Synod floor during the October 2023 assembly. However, again, it was scrubbed from the final synthesis report.  
  
  
• In March 2024, Francis created ten working groups to study the significant issues that arose early in the Synod, appointing Working Group 5 to investigate the role of women in the Church. He excluded priesthood from the scope of its work. 
  
  
• Nine of these ten working groups are made up of a group of appointed experts, however, the study on women has been assigned to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. This decision was not explained to the Church for months. The reason eventually given was that before the Synod was conceived, Pope Francis tasked the DDF to study the role of women in the Church. Rather than have two separate studies, the Pope asked the DDF to take on the work of Working Group 5. 
  
  
• While the names of those participating on the nine other working groups were released, there was no transparency for months regarding who is participating on the DDF's Working Group 5. This changed on Thursday, October 24 after delegate outcry (see below). 
  
  
• Before the October assembly, Pope Francis violated the process of prayerful listening and freedom to be led by the Spirit by going onto 60 Minutes and answering "no" to the question of ordaining women as deacons.  
  
  
• On day one of the October 2024 assembly, Cardinal Fernandez of the DDF announced that no serious consideration would be given to ordaining women as deacons though this issue arose consistently at all levels of the Church throughout the three-year process. He has doubled down on this position.
  
  
• While priesthood for women continued to be taken off of agendas and scrubbed from synod documents, the topic of priesthood for women came up multiple times on the Synod floor during  the October 2024 assembly.
  
  
• After synod delegates voted to have input in the work of the working groups, Cardinal Fernandez did not show up to the October 18th meeting with delegates, sparking outrage. Fr. Amando Matteo, who is leading the study, was tasked to attend, but had a medical appointment. He failed to communicate his absence ahead of the meeting. No arrangements were made for other members of the DDF's Working Group 5 to the meeting. While it is clear this debacle was not malicious in intent, it clearly revealed the deep lack of awareness regarding the immense significance of the issue and the respect it demanded at this historic moment. 
  
  
• Under pressure from the fallout of this gaff, Cardinal Fernandez agreed to release the names of the working group. The 2020 Commission on the study of the diaconate for women was also restarted. Priesthood, though repeatedly surfacing through all phases of the process is still being left out of the study on women.