‘Could Men and Women Work Together in the Diaconate?’

That’s the question Rita Ferrone asks — and answers — in this piece from Le Croix: 

At a recent symposium on “The Future of Women Deacons” held at Fordham University, Fr. Bernard Pottier, SJ, made a comment that I found particularly refreshing.

He said that when men and women work together in the church it enriches the ministry of both. He said it is not a question of complementarity—”you can do something I can’t do, and I can do something you can’t do.”

Rather, the collaboration of women and men creates “a sort of promotion, a dialectical promotion” in which both (male and female) become more fully themselves through their interaction with the other.

“I am more a man when I work with women” he said.

It is perhaps the first time I have heard it proposed in a Catholic setting that women and men have a beneficial effect on one another that is neither confined to the marital relationship nor rooted in biological function.

The thought of John Paul II, which has dominated papal teaching on the subject of the sexes, relies heavily on the idea of complementarity.

In his “theology of the body,” he draws a straight line from biological differences between men and women to their distinct social roles and even their very being.

“Complementarity” expresses a conviction that many people share: “men and women are different” and this difference is a good thing, a manifestation of the order of creation that must be respected.

But what frequently happens in Catholic discussions is that those “differences,” whether real or imagined, end up being defined in such a way that traditional sex roles are reinforced: in order to “protect” woman’s “essential nature” she has to be kept “feminine”—mostly by being celebrated in the domestic sphere.

She concludes:

Could women and men work together in the diaconate? For societies like the present-day United States this is a no-brainer. Of course they can. If the idea of “dialectical promotion” is correct, they will be more themselves rather than less.

Read it all. 

The article was also published in Commonweal, which may be more accessible to some if you don’t have a subscription to Le Croix.