The only surprise at the Vatican’s refusal to accept the gifts of women in the diaconate is that people were surprised.

Did anyone really expect anything different? Neither was it a surprise that the male/female nuptial imagery was invoked, making a fundamental mistake of literalising a metaphor.

Jesus was male — Christ is beyond gender. As Mary Daly long ago perceptively commented, “if God is male, then the male is God” (Beyond God the Father, p.19).

Women erased from ministry

In the early centuries of the Church women were systematically removed from sacramental and administrative roles.

Instead of being the successors of Mary of Magdala, bringing the good news of the resurrection to the world, they were carefully and determinedly portrayed as the daughters of Eve, a temptation for men and the cause of humanity’s fall into sin.

Then, in medieval times, the excuse was that their weak bodies and weaker intellects did not allow them to act in persona Christi.

Arguments that always fail

Usually, when the premises of an argument are false, the argument fails. Not so on the issue of the female diaconate.

There is a bit of regressive induction going on here. It starts with the answer the Church leadership wants, then works backwards to find any argument to justify it. Uncomfortable truths are persistently ignored.

A pattern of suppression

When the arguments about women as temptresses and as intellectually weak failed; when history showed that the women’s diaconate was an ordained order, the Vatican’s response was to study the topic.

Good procedure, you would think. Except there is a pattern of study results not being published and this tends to happen when such results do not align with the preconceived prejudice that women are less-than.

This happened in 1973 when the report concluding that women could be deacons was never published — shelved for “further study.” In 1992-97 the next report came to the same conclusion — women could be deacons. Joseph Ratzinger refused to sign off on this conclusion.

Then, in 2002, Cardinal Ratzinger appointed his former graduate student to the chair of the newly configured study commission. Its results were issued, stating that women deacons were different from male deacons, and that the Magisterium would have to decide the issue (The Tablet, 21-28 Dec 2024, p. 24).

There were Pope Francis’ commissions in 2016-18, and 2020-22, whose reports were not issued. And of course, at the 2025 Synod, the Study Group 5 was the only one of the 10 groups not to issue a report.

After much flurry about transparency, it was eventually made known that the final report of the study group saw no impediment to women’s service, but as far as diaconal ministry is concerned — the discernment needs to continue.

Two questions remain

The delaying tactics continue under the false flag of “further study” and “discernment,” together with suppressed reports and suitably configured study groups.

Two questions now need to be asked: why is it acceptable that the Church magisterium has made an idol of maleness?

And how long are women prepared to believe and hope and refuse to learn from experience, subordinating their vocation to that idolatrous obsession with the maleness of God?

• Angela Hanley studied theology as a mature student, graduating in 2010. In 2015 she completed a research MA on Catholic same-sex relationships. She is currently undertaking PhD studies. She has published many articles and two books, Whose a la Carte Menu?: Exploring Catholic Themes in Context and What happened to Fr Sean Fagan?