At the head of the Lutheran World Federation, which brings together 148 churches spread over all continents, there has been, since last June, a pastor, Anne Burghardt, 46, a theologian, originally from Estonia. It is the first time that a woman has assumed the leadership of the federation, but on the other hand several national Lutheran churches are already led by women, from Canada to the United States, and the same happens for the Canadian Anglican church. We are therefore light years away from the situation in the Catholic Church in which the patriarchal model is not in fact questioned and every request for change and reform in this sense seems destined to be wrecked. Not even the opening to the female diaconate (a service which even married laity can access) has not found space so far, and not even Pope Francis on the question of women has managed to produce the change that many expected. But if we broaden our gaze to other Christian confessions, in particular to the Reformed churches, the situation is different.
Anne Burghardt, elected last June and took office in November, said during her first meeting with journalists, among other things: “We need a balance between autonomy and responsibility. This is as true for us as it is for the Anglican churches and for the Reformed churches. What is needed is the will to dialogue, to be ready to listen to the arguments of the different positions. I think that as a Lutheran World Federation, together with the other churches, we can make a great contribution in the methodology of conflict resolution, through the methods of consensus and other methods that we must explore ”. An open research, in short, to cultivate a willingness to overcome disputes by trying to understand the reasons of the other, the opposing points of view; the latter emerge clearly, Burghardt noted, “for example on issues such as the ordination of women, marriage and sexuality”; these are oppositions that can be overcome through “theological education. This is what allows us to overcome black and white visions. In particular, in the Lutheran context, with the dialectical approach we can hold together different visions that seem contradictory, training ourselves to integrate points of view. This is important not only to increase cooperation, but also for the formation of future pastoral generations ”. In short, Christianity is changing, on the other hand the ordination of women in historical Protestant churches began more than fifty years ago and in the Anglican one it has been in force for about thirty years.
In 2020 Anne Soupa, a French Catholic feminist and activist, who has long proposed a participatory ecclesial model open to laymen and lay people as opposed to the clerical one, ran for the post of archbishop of Lyon after the resignation of Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, involved in a story of child abuse coverage. The gesture, provocative or prophetic depending on how you want to interpret it, caused a sensation. “The choice of Lyon”, he explained at the time in an interview, “was completely natural. The seat is vacant and it is the French diocese that has suffered most from child abuse. I have been saying this for some time: when more women are in positions of responsibility in the church, the abuses will be reduced because the system of abuse is kept in place by clerical self-segregation ”.
More recently, returning to the same issues, he wrote: “What is lacking is equality. Since women cannot occupy any decision-making position, they cannot be priests and the priest is the central figure of the whole institution ”, they end up doing jobs that the priest does not want to do. Since Vatican II, which opened its doors to the laity, a male and patriarchal institution has managed to create a female underclass in its service. First of all ”, he added,“ Rome should stop assigning to women an already written destiny, that of helping men as wives and mothers ”. Instead, it is necessary “that they become true subjects, recognized in the ecclesial public space”. So it is the same model of church built around the totem figure of the priest, or even more of the bishop, that is being questioned, that clericalism denounced on several occasions by Pope Francis himself as one of the evils of the church.
Good allies
On the other hand, even in the Protestant world the path has not been taken for granted or all downhill, explains Lidia Maggi, pastor and Baptist theologian: “There have been long assembly debates, clearly our structures are different from Catholic ones, we have discussed for decades and then the change was also thanks to men who have brought forward this request in the churches “. Two were therefore the decisive factors: “The struggle of women and the contribution of men who stood aside, who shared and carried out certain theological approaches. Yes, on this front we have had good male allies ”.
The change, then, if on a theoretical level it seems sensational compared to secular traditions, once it has matured in experience it assumes the connotations of a normality in which it is a church without women that quickly becomes anachronistic: “I can say that when I started doing the shepherdess we were still in an experimentation phase for which there was some resistance ”, observes Lidia Maggi. “I knew that in some churches, even if they were Baptists, I would not be very well received; however, my youngest son who is 22, grew up in a world where there are women shepherds. For him, a church where there are no women is inconceivable. I understood how in a few decades this presence of women has changed the imagination, and this is already an interesting fact: that is to say that one must experiment in order to overcome prejudices, resistances and change a situation; now our boys and girls can’t even imagine a time when there were no women in the church ”. In this perspective, Maggi affirms, “I carry out a job, a service, very similar to that of priests. Clearly I do it from another posture, that of a woman who in any case claims her secularism and also claims her being a woman for which I make a specific contribution and I realize that this necessarily makes a difference because there is a different sensitivity and gaze about things “.
There is still a long way to go in Rome
On the other hand, the path in the Catholic Church on this front is still long, although at the academic level and at the top of organizations and movements, female figures have long since broken through the glass roof. What does not change, however, is the institutional form of the church, its structures, which then correspond to a more general cultural and theological vision. Francis introduced some news in the Vatican, he sent out signals, but still distributed with a dropper. You have to look at certain appointments to understand the pope’s strategy of the small steps; like that of Sister Nathalie Becquart, a French nun, undersecretary of the synod of bishops, a position that will automatically give her the right to vote at the next synodal assembly – dedicated precisely to participation in the life of the church – scheduled for 2023, after two years of discussion in the local churches where everyone, lay people and clerics, have been called, at least formally, to make their own contribution. It will be the first time that a woman will vote on the resolutions decided by the synod, but the novelty, while significant, still appears too timid.
Then there is Sister Alessandra Smerilli, who was appointed in a short time, first councilor of state of the Vatican City and then secretary of the department for integral human development (the “ministry” that is responsible for promoting the social doctrine of the church in world). Other undersecretaries, lay and religious, are also found in various Vatican dicasteries, including the secretariat of state. Steps and obstacles overcome slowly: a tiring ascent which, however, has not yet reached the heights of curial power (just think that in Italy, at the head of a reality like the Waldensian Table, a body that represents the Methodist and Waldensian churches, there is is a moderator, Alessandra Trotta).
On the other hand, modifying structures that have long been considered unassailable, built around a strongly hierarchical structure and entirely male, is not easy; for this reason, too, the pope followed a path that is perhaps a bit tortuous but capable of offering a possibility for change: first by reforming the very institution of the synod, that is, transforming it from a purely consultative body into an organism capable of making decisions for the whole the church, thus trying to involve all “the people of God” in the synodal method; perhaps by passing through this door left open some signs of renewal may arrive.
For Lidia Maggi, an important difference from the Catholic Church in the Protestant tradition “is the fact that all offices are elective, they are not for life. This is very important so I shouldn’t say ‘I am a shepherdess’ but ‘I am a shepherdess’. I know it may sound strange but it is to always remind us that if this is a charism recognized by the church and it is not said that you have it all your life, you may at some point no longer be suitable for the role you have; our churches have protected themselves like this: no pastor has a life-time office in a church but there is a necessary rotation. In the Baptist case you cannot stay in a community for more than 15 years, in the Waldensian case they are two terms of seven years “.
Exercise of power, ways of accessing roles of spiritual guide of a community, openness to lay men and women: all key issues also at the center of the debate within the Catholic Church, once again topical with the pontificate of Francis thanks to which, however put it, a real discussion has begun again within Catholicism. As in the case of Germany, which has launched its own synodal path to address the consequences of the child abuse scandal and redesign a church more in tune with the times. Indeed, the president of the German bishops, Monsignor Georg Bätzing in a recent interview with Stern, raised an alarm that should not be underestimated: the distrust of the people in the church is causing a catastrophic situation, it is the believers who are excommunicating the institution: “We must prevent abuse, share power. We have to rethink the sexual morality of the church, celibacy, the role of women, up to female ordination “, because John Paul II’s teaching on the subject is out of date and” the arguments for rejecting the priesthood of women do not seem to be really accepted still today by the people of God ”.
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