Women's Ordination Worldwide Responds to Voting Rights for a Handful of Women

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Women’s Ordination Worldwide Responds to Handful of Voting Rights for Women

Press Release For Immediate Release
28 April 2023:

The Vatican has taken a step in the right direction with its decision to grant a small group of non-ordained people, including women, voting rights in the October 2023 Synod General Assembly,

This breakthrough is the result of decades of unrelenting advocacy by people who believe in the teachings and leadership modelled by Jesus. The shift signals rising awareness in Church leadership that our all-male priesthood amounts to a rejection of women’s baptismal equality. The exclusively male priesthood and hierarchy continue to stand today as an exemplar to the world of an international bastion of sexism.

If our Church is to become the discipleship of equals that we are called to be, we must go much further. While Pope Francis' decision to appoint a small number of women to the voting ranks contributes to the painfully slow grinding down of anti-woman practices that corrupt the official Church, it is not enough. The continuing exclusion of women from priesthood is an injustice that undermines our Church’s moral authority around the world.

We note how eager Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich was to stress this announcement constituted an important change but 'not a revolution.' He sought to reassure his clerical colleagues that the synod itself would continue to have a majority of bishops making decisions: 'Change is normal in life and history. Sometimes there are revolutions in history, but revolutions have victims. We don't want to have victims.'

We urge caution in expecting radical inclusivity anytime soon without putting further pressure on the Vatican to recognise that it is Catholic women who suffer the consequences of institutional sexism and not the priests and Bishops who fear becoming ‘victims’ by virtue of a handful of women sharing in decision making.

Women's Ordination Worldwide will continue to work for the day when the conscience of Church leadership is moved to open doors to women, as it has to men, who long to be heard and to serve their church as equals in Christ.

Until then, we will carry on.

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Women’s Ordination Worldwide Media Contacts:

Women's Ordination Worldwide (WOW): Founded in 1996, WOW is an international network of groups whose current mission is the inclusion of Roman Catholic women in all ordained ministries. Founded on the principle of equality, WOW opposes all discrimination. 'There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus'. (Galatians 3:28)

WOW currently includes representatives from Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Ireland, Poland, South Africa, and the United States.