At that gathering in Rome, Francis was asked during a question-and-answer session about the church’s exclusion of women as deacons.
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While Pope Francis might have a reputation for being a progressive beacon at the head of the Catholic Church, he seems to be having trouble living up to that position, according to Friendly Atheist.
“After intense prayer and mature reflection, Pope Francis has made a decision to institute the commission for the study of the diaconate of women”, the Vatican said in a statement.
The president of the Commission will be secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Archbishop Luis Ladaria Ferrer, S.J.
“God created man and woman; God created the world like this and we are doing the exact opposite”.
One of the appointees, Prof.
They praised the committee’s gender balance and its inclusion of laypeople, but pushed for further progress in female ordination. These days however, deacons are usually married men who are at least 35 years old.
Deacons can perform numerous same functions as priests, including preach, celebrate marriages, lead funeral services and run parishes.They cannot hear confessions or consecrate the Eucharist.
Francis and his predecessors have ruled out allowing women to become priests.
Pope Francis ended the talk by telling the Polish bishops he wanted them to reflect on the issue.
The Vatican announced Tuesday (Aug. 2) that the pontiff appointed seven men and six women to the panel, a move that quickly reignited the simmering debate about the role of women in the church.
Catholic scholars of varying stripes tend to agree that women did serve in some sort of deacon-like role in the early church.
“It is incredibly naïve Pope Francis believes the image of God is anything close to binary”, Cruz said. She said she hopes that their work will lead Francis to make a decision about whether women could be deacons once again. She wrote a twice-monthly column that was nationally syndicated by the Religion News Service until 2010; the column, “Just Catholic”, now appears in the National Catholic Reporter and other journals around the world.
But, the fact that the commission has Phyllis Zagano, an author and academic from Hofstra University, N.Y., is an encouraging sign, said Father Sean Dempsey, assistant professor of history at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
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“I think the only thing is family issues might interfere if they have children, young children, and it might interfere with their thing, but I think they can do it”, said Lynch.
