There has been swooning in the media over Pope Francis’s appointment of a French woman religious, Sr Nathalie Becquart, as one of two new undersecretaries of the Synod of Bishops, where she will enjoy both voice and vote. The surprise comes from the assumption – which Catholics share broadly though not quite generally – that synod membership is restricted to those who are male clerics.
That assumption deserves to die.
Most Catholics today do not know that the structures and procedures and lines of authority in the Church are of extremely recent invention, or that practically none of them must perforce exist in present form. There is no theological case at all to justify restricting most governance to men in Holy Orders.
