Pope Francis and Post-Vatican II Catholicism:

Empowered Laity, Women Deacons, and Married Priests

James Laxa
De La Salle University

Rationale
Pope Francis’ controversial style of leadership and policies has placed him as the first pope to
interpret Vatican II in a positive light. His first encyclical, which he co-authored with Pope
Benedict XVI did not reveal the radical spirit of the man. Lumen Fidei had too much of
Benedict. His succeeding documents (Evangelii Gaudium, Laudato Si, Amoris Laetitia, and
Gaudete et Exultate) as well as other public pronouncements has clearly revealed his pastoral
stand on many sensitive issues affirmed by the conciliar documents which this paper would like
to develop. In effect, Pope Francis has reignited the fire of Vatican II to reframe the
understanding of Catholicism vis-a-vis the signs of the times which has been stalled in the
papacy of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

Statement of the Problem

Gaudete et Exsultate (GE) is the most recent exhortation of the Holy Father that attempts to
repropose holiness as something practical and doable in our times (GE 2). It was written like a
self-help book encouraging and speaking directly to the reader that holiness is something within
a person’s reach.

In this paper, I would like to explore how Vatican II has been received in the papacy of Pope
Francis. Looking specifically at Gaudete et Exsultate but alongside Evangelii Gaudium, Laudato
Si, and Amoris Laetitia, I would to argue that Pope Francis is giving the world, for the first time,
a post-Vatican II vision of the empowerment of the laity, admission of women deacons and
married priests contextualized in the post-secular and post-truth era.

Overview of Gaudete et Exsultate1

“Holiness is the most attractive face of the Church,” Pope Francis declares in a new apostolic
exhortation. In it, he reminds Christians, “The Lord asks everything of us, and in return he offers
us true life, the happiness for which we were created. He wants us to be saints and not to settle
for a bland and mediocre existence.”

1 This entire section (overview) lifted from https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2018/04/09/pope-

francis-new-exhortation-jesus-wants-us-be-saints

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Introducing the 104-page document, “Gaudete et Exsultate” (“Rejoice and Be Glad”), Francis
says his “modest goal” is “to re-propose the call to holiness in a practical way for our own time,
with all its risks, challenges and opportunities.” He reminds believers that “the Lord has chosen
each one of us ‘to be holy and blameless before him in love’” and that “the call to holiness is
present in various ways from the very first pages of the Bible.”
In the new exhortation, Francis emphasized that the following of Christ—the path to holiness—is
“a way of life,” not an intellectual exercise.

In the new exhortation, Francis emphasized that the following of Christ—the path to holiness—is
“a way of life,” not an intellectual exercise. This has been the consistent theme and spiritual
underpinning of his entire Petrine ministry. As priest, bishop and now pope, he has always
sought “to live the Gospel” as Jesus asked. From the first day of his pontificate he has
emphasized action over theological discussion; he has insisted that Jesus calls us “to live” the
Gospel, by putting into practice in daily life the beatitudes and the words of Jesus in the chapter
25 of Matthew that refer to feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger.

He stated this theme clearly in his first apostolic exhortation, “Evangelii Gaudium” (“The Joy of
the Gospel,” Nov. 2013), which is the programmatic document for his pontificate. He brought
this out powerfully in the encyclical “Laudato Si’” in 2015, which was a call to action to care for
our common home. He did so again in his second exhortation, “Amoris Laetitia” (“The Joy of
Love”), released in 2016 following the synod on the family, where in chapter 4 he spelled out
what “love in marriage” means by unpacking St. Paul’s hymn to love (1 Cor 13). He affirmed it
again strongly in the Jubilee Year of Mercy (2016-2017) when he taught that mercy “is the
beating heart of the Gospel” and showed how this can be put into practice in daily life through
the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. He asserts it forcefully again today in his third
exhortation, where in chapter 3 he unpacks, in a way that can be easily understood by all
believers, even without sophisticated theological education, what it means for a Christian to live
the Beatitudes and the demands of Matthew 25 in daily life.

His message is clear: Christ has explained in simple terms what it means to follow him, but “the
doctors of the law” have complicated it with their legalism and casuistry and have placed “heavy
burdens” on people’s shoulders with their closed theology and moral teaching. He wants to free
Christ’s teaching from these shackles, and this has upset not a few cardinals, bishops, priests, lay
intellectuals and faithful, who have claimed, especially following “Amoris Laetitia” and the
Jubilee of Mercy, that Francis’ approach creates confusion about church teaching, especially in
the field of morality.

In today’s exhortation, Francis appears to respond to such critiques and concerns. He does so in
chapter 2 by exposing “two subtle enemies of holiness,” or ancient heresies, that many of them
appear to have fallen into: Gnosticism, which reduces Christ’s teaching to a cold and harsh logic

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that seeks to dominate everything; and Pelagianism, which tends to give the idea that all things
are possible to human will and downplays the grace of God. Francis responds to his critics again
in chapter 3 by pointing to “the ideologies” that strike at the heart of the Gospel and lead
Christians into “two harmful errors”: the first error is found in those Christians who “separate
these Gospel demands from their personal relationship with God,” the second is found in those
believers who “find suspect the social engagement of other Christians, seeing it as superficial,
worldly, secular, materialist, communist or populist,” or who “relativize it as if there are more
important matters” or assert that “the only thing that counts is one particular issue or cause that
they themselves defend.”

The Universal Call

Francis writes, “I would like to insist primarily on the call to holiness that the Lord addresses to
each of us, the call that he also addresses, personally, to you: ‘Be holy, for I am holy.’”
He recalled that the Second Vatican Council stated this clearly in the Dogmatic Constitution on
the Church when it taught that “all the faithful, whatever their condition or state, are called by
the Lord—each in his or her own way—to that perfect holiness by which the Father himself is
perfect.”

Francis insists that “each believer discerns his or her own path, that they bring out the very best
of themselves, the most personal gifts that God has placed in their hearts (cf. 1 Cor 12:7), rather
than hopelessly trying to imitate something not meant for them.”

We have to do, each in our own way, what Jesus told us in the Sermon on the Mount.”
Francis writes, “Jesus explained with great simplicity what it means to be holy when he gave us
the beatitudes,” which are “the Christian’s identity card.” He asserts that “If anyone asks: what
must one do to be a good Christian?” then “the answer is clear. We have to do, each in our own
way, what Jesus told us in the Sermon on the Mount.”
In addition to unpacking the meaning of each of the beatitudes, Francis also says that Jesus
expands on “blessed are the merciful” in chapter 25 of Matthew, which speaks about feeding the
hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger and visiting the imprisoned. This call,
Francis says, “offers us one clear criterion on which we will be judged.”
Francis seems to offer a response to his critics by highlighting two ideological errors of
contemporary believers. He points first to the error of separating the demands of Matthew 25
from “personal relationship with the Lord, from openness to his grace.”

By doing so, he says, they reduce Christianity to “a sort of N.G.O. stripped of the luminous
mysticism so evident in the lives of Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Vincent de Paul, Saint Teresa
of Calcutta and many others” for whom “mental prayer, the love of God and the reading of the
Gospel in no way detracted from their passionate and effective commitment to their neighbors.”

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Francis next addresses a “harmful ideological error” that is found in “those who find suspect the
social engagement of others, seeing it as superficial, worldly, secular, materialist, communist or
populist. Or they relativize it, as if there are other more important matters, or the only thing that
counts is one particular ethical issue or cause that they themselves defend.”

Francis emphasizes that “our defense of the innocent unborn, for example, needs to be clear, firm
and passionate, for at stake is the dignity of a human life, which is always sacred and demands
love for each person, regardless of his or her stage of development.”
“Equally sacred, however, are the lives of the poor, those already born, the destitute, the
abandoned and the underprivileged, the vulnerable infirm and elderly exposed to covert
euthanasia, the victims of human trafficking, new forms of slavery, and every form of rejection,”
he writes. “We cannot uphold an ideal of holiness that would ignore injustice in a world where
some revel, spend with abandon and live only for the latest consumer goods, even as others look
on from afar, living their entire lives in abject poverty.”

“The saints next door”

While the church recognizes through the processes of beatification and canonization “exemplary
imitations of Christ,” Francis urges believers “to be spurred on by the signs of holiness that the
Lord shows through the humblest members of God’s people,” what he calls “the saints next
door.”

Pope Francis highlights especially “feminine styles of holiness” as “an essential means of
reflecting God’s holiness in this world.” He notes that “in times when women tended to be most
ignored or overlooked, the Holy Spirit raised up saints whose attractiveness produced new
spiritual vigor and reforms in the church.” Francis, who has frequently emphasized the need to
give women a greater role in the church, has appointed women to some key positions in the
Vatican and has also set up a commission to study the diaconate for women.
We are all called to be holy by living our lives with love and by bearing witness in everything we
do, wherever we find ourselves.

He mentions Saints Hildegard of Bingen, Bridget, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila and
Thérèse of Lisieux, but adds that he was also thinking of “all those unknown or forgotten women
who, each in her own way, sustained and transformed families and communities by the power of
their witness.”

Francis emphasizes that “to be holy does not require being a bishop, a priest or a religious.”
Indeed, he says, “we are frequently tempted to think that holiness is only for those who can
withdraw from ordinary affairs to spend much time in prayer. That is not the case. We are all
called to be holy by living our lives with love and by bearing witness in everything we do,
wherever we find ourselves.”

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He reminds believers that the call to holiness comes with baptism and that “in the church, holy
yet made up of sinners, you will find everything you need to grow towards holiness.”

Avoiding two “false forms of holiness”

Pope Francis also addresses “false forms of holiness that can lead us astray: Gnosticism and
Pelagianism.” He says the “Gnostics think that their explanations can make the entirety of the
faith and the Gospel perfectly comprehensible. They absolutize their own theories and force
others to submit to their way of thinking.”
But “when somebody has an answer for every question, it is a sign that they are not on the right
road,” he says. Indeed, “someone who wants everything to be clear and sure presumes to control
God’s transcendence.”

Gnosticism gave way to another heresy that lives on today, he argues: Pelagianism. This holds
that “it is not knowledge that betters us or makes us saints, but the kind of life we lead.”
Pelagians speak warmly of God’s grace but “ultimately trust only in their own powers and feel
superior to others because they observe certain rules or remain intransigently faithful to a
particular Catholic style.”

But Pope Francis insists we cannot “claim to say where God is not, because God is mysteriously
present in the life of every person, in a way that he himself chooses, and we cannot exclude this
by our presumed certainties. Even when someone’s life appears completely wrecked, even when
we see it devastated by vices or addictions, God is present there. If we let ourselves be guided by
the Spirit rather than our own preconceptions, we can and must try to find the Lord in every
human life.

If we let ourselves be guided by the Spirit rather than our own preconceptions, we can and must
try to find the Lord in every human life.

“We cannot claim that our way of understanding this truth authorizes us to exercise a strict
supervision over others’ lives,” he writes, reminding believers that “in the Church there
legitimately coexist different ways of interpreting many aspects of doctrine and Christian life; in
their variety, they ‘help to express more clearly the immense riches of God’s word.’”
“For those who long for a monolithic body of doctrine guarded by all and leaving no room for
nuance,” he says, “this might appear as undesirable and leading to confusion.”

He insists, however, that “doctrine, or better, our understanding and expression of it, is not a
closed system, devoid of the dynamic capacity to pose questions, doubts, inquiries… The
questions of our people, their suffering, their struggles, their dreams, their trials, and their

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worries, all possess an interpretational value that we cannot ignore if we want to take the
principle of the incarnation seriously.”

As much of the debate over doctrine and church teaching has unfolded online, both in social
media and in more organized Catholic media, Francis sounds a note of concern for how
Christians engage in these spaces. He warns that “Christians too can be caught up in networks of
verbal violence through the internet and the various fora of digital communication.”
He notes that “even in Catholic media, limits can be overstepped, defamation and slander can
become commonplace and all ethical standards and respect for the good name of others can be
abandoned. The result is a dangerous dichotomy, since things can be said there that would be
unacceptable in public discourse, and people look to compensate for their own discontent by
lashing out at others.”

He writes, “It is striking that at times, in claiming to uphold the other commandments, they
completely ignore the eighth, which forbids bearing false witness or lying, and ruthlessly vilify
others.”

Signs of holiness in the world

In Chapter 4, Francis speaks of the “signs of holiness in the world.” He calls them “spiritual
attitudes” that he believes “are necessary if we are to understand the way of life to which the
Lord calls us.” One sign of holiness, Francis says, is “joy and a sense of humor.”
Another consists in “boldness and passion,” in an “impulse to evangelize and to leave a mark in
this world” and in not allowing oneself to be paralyzed by fear. He told believers that “God
impels us constantly to set out anew, to pass beyond what is familiar, to the fringes and beyond.
He takes us to where humanity is most wounded...God is not afraid! He is fearless! He is always
greater than our plans and schemes. Unafraid of the fringes, he himself became a fringe. So, if
we dare to go to the fringes, we will find him there; indeed, he is already there.”
One sign of holiness, Francis says, is “joy and a sense of humor.”

Another sign of holiness is “constant prayer,” the pope writes, describing holiness as “a habitual
openness to the transcendent, expressed in prayer and adoration.”

Francis devotes the fifth and final chapter of the exhortation to “spiritual combat, vigilance and
discernment.” He reminds Christians that we are not dealing merely with a battle against “the
world and a worldly mentality” or “our human weaknesses and proclivities,” we are also
engaged “in a constant struggle against the devil, the prince of evil” over whom Jesus was
victorious.

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Historical Key2
The first Pope of the Americas Jorge Mario Bergoglio hails from Argentina. The 76-year-old
Jesuit Archbishop of Buenos Aires is a prominent figure throughout the continent yet remains a
simple pastor who is deeply loved by his diocese, throughout which he has travelled extensively
on the underground and by bus during the 15 years of his episcopal ministry.

“My people are poor and I am one of them”, he has said more than once, explaining his decision
to live in an apartment and cook his own supper. He has always advised his priests to show
mercy and apostolic courage and to keep their doors open to everyone. The worst thing that
could happen to the Church, he has said on various occasions, “is what de Lubac called spiritual
worldliness”, which means, “being self-centred”. And when he speaks of social justice, he calls
people first of all to pick up the Catechism, to rediscover the Ten Commandments and the
Beatitudes. His project is simple: if you follow Christ, you understand that “trampling upon a
person’s dignity is a serious sin”.

Despite his reserved character — his official biography consists of only a few lines, at least until
his appointment as Archbishop of Buenos Aires — he became a reference point because of the
strong stances he took during the dramatic financial crisis that overwhelmed the country in 2001.
He was born in Buenos Aires on 17 December 1936, the son of Italian immigrants. His father
Mario was an accountant employed by the railways and his mother Regina Sivori was a
committed wife dedicated to raising their five children. He graduated as a chemical technician
and then chose the path of the priesthood, entering the Diocesan Seminary of Villa Devoto. On
11 March 1958 he entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus. He completed his studies of the
humanities in Chile and returned to Argentina in 1963 to graduate with a degree in philosophy
from the Colegio de San José in San Miguel. From 1964 to 1965 he taught literature and
psychology at Immaculate Conception College in Santa Fé and in 1966 he taught the same
subject at the Colegio del Salvatore in Buenos Aires. From 1967-70 he studied theology and
obtained a degree from the Colegio of San José.

On 13 December 1969 he was ordained a priest by Archbishop Ramón José Castellano. He

continued his training between 1970 and 1971 at the University of Alcalá de Henares, Spain, and
on 22 April 1973 made his final profession with the Jesuits. Back in Argentina, he was novice
master at Villa Barilari, San Miguel; professor at the Faculty of Theology of San Miguel;
consultor to the Province of the Society of Jesus and also Rector of the Colegio Máximo of the
Faculty of Philosophy and Theology.

On 31 July 1973 he was appointed Provincial of the Jesuits in Argentina, an office he held for six
years. He then resumed his work in the university sector and from 1980 to 1986 served once

2This section lifted from http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/biography/documents/papa-francesco-

biografia-bergoglio.html

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again as Rector of the Colegio de San José, as well as parish priest, again in San Miguel. In
March 1986 he went to Germany to finish his doctoral thesis; his superiors then sent him to the
Colegio del Salvador in Buenos Aires and next to the Jesuit Church in the city of Córdoba as
spiritual director and confessor.

It was Cardinal Antonio Quarracino, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, who wanted him as a close
collaborator. So, on 20 May 1992 Pope John Paul II appointed him titular Bishop of Auca and
Auxiliary of Buenos Aires. On 27 May he received episcopal ordination from the Cardinal in the
cathedral. He chose as his episcopal motto, miserando atque eligendo, and on his coat of arms
inserted the ihs, the symbol of the Society of Jesus.

He gave his first interview as a bishop to a parish newsletter, Estrellita de Belém. He was
immediately appointed Episcopal Vicar of the Flores district and on 21 December 1993 was also
entrusted with the office of Vicar General of the Archdiocese. Thus it came as no surprise when,
on 3 June 1997, he was raised to the dignity of Coadjutor Archbishop of Buenos Aires. Not even
nine months had passed when, upon the death of Cardinal Quarracino, he succeeded him on 28
February 1998, as Archbishop, Primate of Argentina and Ordinary for Eastern-rite faithful in
Argentina who have no Ordinary of their own rite.

Three years later at the Consistory of 21 February 2001, John Paul ii created him Cardinal,
assigning him the title of San Roberto Bellarmino. He asked the faithful not to come to Rome to
celebrate his creation as Cardinal but rather to donate to the poor what they would have spent on
the journey. As Grand Chancellor of the Catholic University of Argentina, he is the author of the
books: Meditaciones para religiosos (1982), Reflexiones sobre la vida apostólica (1992)
and Reflexiones de esperanza (1992).

In October 2001 he was appointed General Relator to the 10th Ordinary General Assembly of the
Synod of Bishops on the Episcopal Ministry. This task was entrusted to him at the last minute to
replace Cardinal Edward Michael Egan, Archbishop of New York, who was obliged to stay in
his homeland because of the terrorist attacks on September 11th. At the Synod he placed
particular emphasis on “the prophetic mission of the bishop”, his being a “prophet of justice”, his
duty to “preach ceaselessly” the social doctrine of the Church and also “to express an authentic
judgement in matters of faith and morals”.

All the while Cardinal Bergoglio was becoming ever more popular in Latin America. Despite
this, he never relaxed his sober approach or his strict lifestyle, which some have defined as
almost “ascetic”. In this spirit of poverty, he declined to be appointed as President of the
Argentine Bishops’ Conference in 2002, but three years later he was elected and then, in 2008,
reconfirmed for a further three-year mandate. Meanwhile in April 2005 he took part in the
Conclave in which Pope Benedict XVI was elected.

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As Archbishop of Buenos Aires — a diocese with more than three million inhabitants — he
conceived of a missionary project based on communion and evangelization. He had four main
goals: open and brotherly communities, an informed laity playing a lead role, evangelization
efforts addressed to every inhabitant of the city, and assistance to the poor and the sick. He
aimed to reevangelize Buenos Aires, “taking into account those who live there, its structure and
its history”. He asked priests and lay people to work together. In September 2009 he launched
the solidarity campaign for the bicentenary of the Independence of the country. Two hundred
charitable agencies are to be set up by 2016. And on a continental scale, he expected much from
the impact of the message of the Aparecida Conference in 2007, to the point of describing it as
the “Evangelii Nuntiandi of Latin America”.
Until the beginning of the recent sede vacante, he was a member of the Congregation for Divine
Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, the Congregation for the Clergy, the
Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, the Pontifical
Council for the Family and the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.

He was elected Supreme Pontiff on 13 March 2013.

Epistemological Key
Pope Francis looks at holiness as the quality of a person in his fullness. This means that the more
alive and human a person is, the holier he or she becomes (GE 32). If a person continues to treat
others as “throwaways”3, invisibles4, disturbances5, the farther is that person from God and from
his personal fullness. The pope’s exposure to poverty and suffering in Buenos Aires developed
this deep compassion in him. These ideas are largely expressed in the theology of the people.

Walter Kasper points out that in line with the paradigm shift of Vatican II, Pope Francis's method
"is not deductive but rather inductive in that it proceeds from the concrete human situation. ...
The neighbor is for you the exposition of the concrete will of God" 6.This is in accord with the
Jesuit practice of "discernment", whereby one begins with the concrete situation, what Vatican II
called discerning the "signs of the times" interpreted in the light of the gospel, rather
than beginning with church doctrine. This also appears in the method of "see, judge, and act" that
is characteristic of liberation theology and is reflected in the report of the Latin America bishops'
conference at Aparecida, where Bergoglio chaired the editorial committee7.

3 https://www.rappler.com/world/61175-pope-throwaway-culture-threatens-future
4 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-religion-easter-pope-palmsunday/keep-shouting-dont-become-
anesthetized-pope-tells-young-people-idUSKBN1H10E3
5 https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2017/09/05/pope-francis-young-get-elderly-closet/
6
Austen,, Ivereigh, (2015). The great reformer : Francis and the making of a radical pope
(https://www.worldcat.org/ocl
c/889324005) (First ed.). New York. ISBN 1250074991. OCLC 889324005
(https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/889324005).
7 Ibid.

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Ecclesiological Key
This call for holiness is in reality a call for the laity to step-up and claim their rightful spot in the
Church as a co-equal member. By emphatically stating that one does not need to be a clergy or
religious to be holy, the Pope has effectively affirmed once again the Church as primarily as the
people of God and less of the hierarchy.

Faggioli introduces the the phenomenon of “new Catholic movements” and employs a number of
typologies that further explain the differences between the movements he describes in greater
detail later in the book. He does, however, explain the fundamentals of the movements: “a group
of Catholics with a charismatic founder, a specific charism, some form of expression of
communal life or frequent and regular meetings, predominantly lay membership, radical
commitment to the gospel, some form of teaching or formation closely linked to it charism, with
special attention and commitment paid to bringing its particular charism into the life of the
Church” (3, 88). Even with the typologies that describe these movements, it is clear that they are
not easily put into one group or another, and so these movements may not easily be differentiated
from one another. Faggioli does a fine job in the text of introducing the reader to a number of
movements, including Catholic Action, Communion and Liberation, the Community of
Sant’Egidio, the associations of Catholic Boy Scouts and Catholic Girl Scouts, Focolare, the
Neocatechumenal Way, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, and Opus Dei. In each case, the
reader learns something of the heritage of the movement, who its founder was, and a general
understanding of its ecclesiology. Throughout the remainder of the book, Faggioli makes it clear
that some of these movements had better fortune with the popes than others. A significant chunk
of the book is devoted to historical examination of the movements and theological descriptions
of them. On the historical side, Faggioli first examines the 1968 student protests that occurred in
the wake of the conciliar years and were crucial in bringing about a “new Catholic elite.”
Faggioli also makes it clear that each post-conciliar pontificate is important in the life of these
new movements. The history of ecclesial movements surely reached a high point (in their own
self-understanding, at least) during the pontificate of Pope John Paul ii (1978–2005). For John
Paul, the movements took pride of place in his ecclesiology. As he stated in 1981, “the Church
herself is a movement” (20). This papal support was also returned in kind by the movements
themselves, most of which felt intense loyalty to the successor of Saint Peter. From the
theological perspective, Faggioli describes the movements in chapters five and six especially in
the light of Vatican ii. In my estimation, these are the most interesting chapters in the book.
Faggioli writes, “Vatican ii represents, in the official biography of the new Catholic movements,
a crucial moment: the movements’ ‘birth certificate,’ evidence of their orthodoxy, and shield
from every possible criticism against them” (97). He explains that historically, however, the
relationship between Vatican ii and movements is not as obvious. From a historical point of
view, the new Catholic movements are actually much more like the mendicant orders or the
Jesuits. As Faggioli explains it, even though the movements had different political ideologies,

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“their success comes at the expense of the ecclesiology of the local church, thus helping to
undermine the quest for a new balance between center and periphery in modern-world
Catholicism” (100). In other words, the movements expressed absolute obedience to the pope,
which sometimes meant that they would ignore or disrespect the authority of their local ordinary
(bishop). Therefore, in the longstanding debate on whether the local or universal church held
primacy, the opinion of the movements, regardless of their ecclesiology, was in favor of the
universal church. Scholars of Jesuit Studies will find a number of interesting tidbits in these
pages. In addition to the parallel that Faggioli draws between the founding of the Society of
Jesus and these movements (their common strong devotion to the pope), two of the most
fascinating Jesuits of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries play a role in this volume. A lesser
role belongs to the late Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, S.J., who served as archbishop of Milan
from 1980 to 2002, and was often considered a favorite “liberal” possibility as pope. Faggioli
reminds the reader that Martini often spoke negatively, especially at the 1987 synod of bishops,
against the role of movements, considering them to be “parallel churches” (22). In one of the
great understatements of the text, Faggioli explains that had Martini been elected pope in 2005
instead of Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict xvi), things would have been much more challenging
for the leaders of the movements (27). A starring role, however, went to another Jesuit who
serves as the subject of the final chapter of the text. Since his election in 2013, Pope Francis has
taken the church by storm in many areas, not least of which has been his dealings with the
movements. While he is not an opponent of the movements per se, Francis certainly paints a
much more sober outlook than either of his two immediate predecessors. While Faggioli is clear
that Francis’s membership in the Society of Jesus is of secondary importance to his own
experience of these movements, it is worthwhile to note Faggioli’s point: “Identified sometimes
as the model par excellence of a movement within the Catholic Church, the Society of Jesus is
undoubtedly part of the long history of the quest for new ways of living in the Church” (132)8

Turning Point on the role of women in the Church9

While tensions over women in the Church have been a constant in Catholic life for a long time,
recent signs suggest a turning point may be looming, with conferences, assemblies and media
outlets both within and outside the Vatican speaking up in a new way about perceived injustices.
Women meeting at a Voices of Faith conference this week in Rome, for instance, are saying the
“Church is at a very important crossroads,” while the editor of a Vatican magazine focusing on
women says she sees an “internal cultural revolution” brewing.
At the same time, a general assembly of bishops from Latin America taking place inside the
Vatican walls has invited forty women to take part in a conversation on the female role in the
Church, amounting to another recognition that it’s a subject that can’t be avoided.

8 Cosacchi, Daniel. (2017). The Rising Laity: Ecclesial Movements since Vatican II , written by Massimo
Faggioli. Journal of Jesuit Studies. 4. 342-344. 10.1163/22141332-00402008-16.
9 https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2018/03/08/signs-suggest-turning-point-role-women-church/

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While these female perspectives may differ in tone and focus, one common thread emerges:
“The Times they are a Changin’.”
Today, the Church increasingly faces not only newfound feminist zeal expressed in the #metoo
movement throughout the world, but also profound changes from within.
Voices of Faith
For the last four years, the annual Voices of Faith conference, featuring prominent female voices
in the Church and representing many of the most progressive positions concerning women, has
met within the Vatican walls. But when Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the head of the Vatican’s
Dicastery for Laity, Family, and Life, did not approve three of the eleven speakers proposed by
the conference, the group moved beyond Rome’s Tiber river to the Jesuit headquarters.
Former Irish president Mary McAleese was persona non grata in light of her vocal support for
gay rights, among other issues, and at a press conference Wednesday, she challenged the Church
to allow women to have greater roles and to “be there when the sausage is made.”
“We, the unheard voices, are trying to speak in a system that does not give us conduits for
speaking,” she said, stressing that after years of promise, including the Second Vatican Council,
the International Declaration of Human Rights and “patronizing platitudes of the popes,” little
has been done to give women the necessary space to make their voices heard.
The activist and canon law expert said that the “Catholic Church is at a very important
crossroads,” where it can choose to become either a “large, and largely irrelevant sect” bound to
become a relic of the past, or to “flood the world with the capacity for healing.”
In her opinion, the Catholic hierarchy is not only a “clerical and elitist government,” but also
“largely mediocre,” and women are demanding more accountability for priests as well as more
agency.
“We are not the strawberries on the cake!” McAleese said, referring to a quip by Pope Francis
about women in 2014 remarks to the Vatican’s International Theological Commission.
“We are the leaven in the bread,” McAleese said, adding that right now, in her view, “the bread
of the Church is flattening.”
According to Chantal Götz, managing director of Voices of Faith, the feminist movement of
2018, with women increasingly speaking up against abuse, harassment and inequality, is “saying
clearly that change is urgent” and that “we have reached a crisis point.”
This crisis, she added, is made apparent by a consistent drop in female vocations and an
“exodus” led by young women, calling it a consequence of the Church’s inability to provide
appropriate female roles.

The Revolt of the Nuns

In the preface of a new Spanish book called “Ten Things Pope Francis Proposes to Women,” the
Argentine pope expresses concerns for the “persistence within societies of a certain male
chauvinist mentality,” which extends also within the Church, where “the service to which each is
called, for women, is sometimes transformed into slavery.”

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The March edition of the Women Church World magazine, published by the Vatican
newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, lent detail to the pope’s observation, running an article
addressing the mistreatment and indifference sometimes reserved for nuns throughout the world,
who end up often performing housekeeping duties in a position of servitude with male clergy
with no pension plans or meaningful pay.
A nun identified only as Sister Marie, for instance, describes how sisters serve clergy but “are
rarely invited to sit at the tables they serve.”
“The issue of women in the Church has existed for a long time,” said Lucetta Scaraffia, the
magazine’s editor, in an interview with Crux. “Now it’s becoming stronger and more evident,
because the nuns are less passive and more aware of what’s happening, and they are asking for
change.” Scaraffia said these concerns don’t only interest young women, who’ve had a different
generational formation and experience of life, but also older nuns.
“I’ve met 80-90-year-old nuns who are furious,” she said. “The real feminism right now I find in
nuns,” she said.
The journalist and intellectual said she “hears these things all the time,” and reported a
“voluntary exile” on behalf of religious women who are quietly stepping away from engaging
with male clergy.
“I think it’s very wrong to interpret a ‘revolt of religious women’ as being influenced by the
outside,” Scaraffia said, adding that unlike most lay women who are influenced by the #metoo
movement, nuns are creating their own revolution by drawing from the exegetical and
theological writings of female scholars.
“By returning to a reading of the Gospels as they are, they feel the injustice of how they are
treated. This is the reality,” she said.
The bottom line, according to Scaraffia: “It’s an internal cultural revolution.”

Women in the Vatican

While Catholic feminists at the Voices of Faith Conference promised to break open the Vatican’s
“hermetic shield,” and the disenfranchising of religious sisters is featured in the New York Times,
the Vatican itself quietly continues along with Pope Francis’s directive of dialogue.
The Pontifical Commission for Latin America (CAL), for instance, is holding a general assembly
meeting March 6-9, titled “Latin American Women, Column in the Working of the Church,”
which includes women in discussion of major female concerns in societies.
This comes after Francis condemned machismo, meaning chauvinistic attitudes towards women,
while speaking to 60 Latin American bishops in Bogotá, Colombia.
Forty women from different religious and lay backgrounds are taking part in the discussion and
will attend an audience with the pope on March 9. Today, which happens to be the International
Day of Women, the CAL is holding a supper with assembly participants as well as a number of
female Vatican employees.
The CAL assembly builds on recent cases where the pontificate has acted in order to foster
further female inclusion.

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Late last year, Francis appointed two lay, female undersecretaries of the Dicastery for Laity,
Family and Life, while also creating a commission composed of both women and men to study
the viability of female deacons.
But unresolved issues remain, according to Scaraffia, including the need for female voices in the
“C9” council, the pope’s group of cardinal advisers, as well as making religious and missionary
women more relevant and heard when it comes to the appointment of bishops. Unless questions
such as these are addressed, the Church will soon have to deal with the consequences, she added.
“The silent complacency is ending, and priests are not even aware of it,” Scaraffia said. “They
don’t know that everything is about to blow up in their hands.”
Pope Francis and Women
When it comes to Francis’s role in increasing the participation of women in the Church, opinions
vary from hope to disappointment. Götz praised the pope’s openness to dialogue and expressed
optimism toward Francis’s concern for further female inclusion.
“I continue to hope that the pope will listen and provide leadership to overcome the Church’s
outdated fear of women,” she said.
McAleese, however, said that “Francis has been a journey that has dwindled into
disappointment,” and pointed to what she perceives as failures in the fight against sexual abuse
and in his exhortation on the family, Amoris Laetitia, which in her opinion “changed nothing.”
Yet, according to Scaraffia, two major actions by Francis have had a deep impact concerning the
role of women in the Church: the first being a concession that any priest can forgive the sin of
abortion, not simply a bishop or priest specially designated by the bishop, while the second is the
elevation of the feast of St. Mary Magdalene to the same level as those of the male apostles.
“The rest is words,” she said. “What’s really missing, and that the pope hasn’t gotten to yet, is
listening to women, what women have to say.”

Married Priests10
Pope Francis greets a new priest during an ordination Mass in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican
in April 2015. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)
The church needs to discuss the ordination of proven married men (viri probati) as the lack of
vocations has become an "enormous" problem, Pope Francis told the German weekly Die Zeit in
his first extensive interview with a German newspaper, published March 8.
"The problem is the lack of vocations, a problem the church must solve," Francis said. "We must
think about whether viri probati are one possibility, but that also means discussing what tasks
they could take on in remote communities. In many communities at the moment, committed
women are preserving Sunday as a day of worship by holding services of the Word. But a church
without the Eucharist has no strength."
The interview, conducted in Italian by the editor of Die Zeit, Giovanni di Lorenzo, was only
published in German.

10https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican/pope-francis-discusses-married-priests-women-deacons-
german-newspaper

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Di Lorenzo asked Francis about a recent interview that Italian Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi,
president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, had with German Catholic news agency KNA, in
which the cardinal said he thought the diaconate for women was possible. Di Lorenzo asked
whether Ravasi had coordinated with Francis about this statement beforehand.
"With all due respect," information is often "filtered" by journalists, Francis said, adding that he
would like to go into what had happened in detail.
One of the questions Francis had been asked at his meeting with the International Union of
Superiors General in May 2016 was why a commission was not set up to study the diaconate for
women in the early church in order to find out whether women deacons were ordained or not and
what sort of work they did, Francis said.
"My answer was, 'Yes, why not? That would be a good opportunity to research the subject.'
There was, however, one condition, the superiors said, namely that I would speak to
[Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith prefect] Cardinal [Gerhard] Müller," Francis said. "I
rang up the superior concerned and Cardinal Müller and told them to send me a list of roughly 10
women and men they thought should be on this study commission. I then chose those people
from the two lists who I thought were the most open and the most competent for the new
commission. It was a matter of studying the topic and not of opening a door."
Asked what conclusions the women's diaconate commission had arrived at, Francis said a Syrian
professor had told him that it was not a matter of whether there were women deacons in the early
church but what it was that they actually did. Women deacons had helped at baptisms, at the
anointment of women who were sick, and "if a woman complained to her bishop that she had
been beaten by her husband, the bishop had sent a woman deacon to examine the woman's
bruises," the professor had told him, Francis said. The commission is meeting again for the third
time in March, and Francis said he planned to find out himself how matters stood.
Asked whether the recent posters in the Vatican accusing him of being unmerciful and not
listening to his cardinals had upset him, Francis said he thought they were "simply great." They
had obviously been written by someone very intelligent, he said, adding that it was essential to
always keep one's sense of humor.
Di Lorenzo asked Francis if there was a limit to the criticism and was it time for the pope to say,
"Basta! Enough is enough!" Francis answered that he has said "basta" on so many occasions, and
those calls had been accepted. Di Lorenzo asked, "Even by [U.S. Cardinal Raymond] Burke?"
"I do not consider Burke an adversary," Francis said, explaining that the problem with
the conflict in the Order of Malta had been that Burke "could not cope as he did not act alone. I
did not take away the title of patron from him. He is still patron, but it is a matter of clearing up
matters a little within the order and that was why I sent a delegate there who has a different
charism to Burke."

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