Award winning Catholic feminist writer expresses concern about synod in Rome
The award winning Catholic feminist writer, Debra Maria Flint, who left the Roman Catholic Church in order to be ordained a deacon within the independent Catholic movement, has expressed concern about the Roman Catholic Synod on Synodality in Rome and its refusal to restore the female diaconate.
Debra stated: ‘As I demonstrated in my recent book, ‘No Place for a Woman’ which received a 5-star review award in the US and was actually written in Barr, South Ayrshire in 2021; there is irrefutable evidence, not only in the New Testament (Romans 15: 1-2), but also in the writings of the Early Church Fathers that women were ordained as deacons in the early Church.
"The order of women deacons is mentioned in the Ignatian letter to the Antiochians; the Apostolic Constitutions of the Holy Apostles by Clement; and other early Christian sources. Women deacons are also mentioned outside of Christianity by the Roman lawyer and magistrate Pliny the Younger.
The eradication of women from ministries within the Roman Catholic Church was due to a Christianity which became increasingly patriarchal and thus increasingly distant from the original teachings of Jesus. There is clear evidence of this in the decrees of the Council of Epaone in 517 AD. This council abolished the consecration of deaconesses in its area (Canon 26) although women continued to be ordained in other regions. However, by the ninth century most female ordinations had ceased in all areas’.
The demise of women within Catholicism was further accelerated following the mandating of celibacy at the 12th century First Council of the Lateran. Up until then priests had been allowed to marry. However, at that time, marriage was outlawed by this council in a particularly cruel way.
"Priests were ordered to leave their wives and families, who were left destitute, and family homes were seized by the Church. This introduction of enforced celibacy for male priests also meant that then, not only were women unfit to be ordained, they were also unfit to marry the ordained. This remains the case’.
Debra believes that mandatory celibacy changed the culture of the Roman Catholic Church and over the last 800 years Catholic Canon Law and a series of ecumenical councils have increasingly elevated the status of an all-male sacerdotal priesthood while also demising women.
Unbiblical
She argues that this all-male celibate culture has isolated seminarians and priests from the real world and has also led to the dire process of popes producing encyclicals pronouncing on women’s issues from a male perspective due to the fact that there are no members of the Catholic clergy who understand what it is like to be a woman.
Debra added: ‘Women make up half of the human race and this refusal to restore the female diaconate is not only unbiblical; it is also spiritually abusive. In my view this decision has everything to do with power and nothing to do with Christianity.
"The Christian priesthood is about service to others and there are many Catholic women who aspire to serve as clergy. There are also many other Catholic lay women who, on occasions such as confession, would wish to be served by a woman.
"If the RC Church will not facilitate this it may be that the only way to bring about this kind of reform will be for all concerned women to leave the RC Church as I did. I currently serve as an independent Catholic deacon in the English and Scottish borders area and anyone who wishes to converse with a minister from the Independent Catholic Movement is welcome to contact me’.