Margit ECKHOLT, Dorothea SATTLER, Ulrike LINK-WIECZOREK, Andrea STRȔBIND, EDS., Women in Church Ministries: Reform Movements in Ecumenism. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press Academic, 2021. Pp. 238. $34.95 pb. ISBN 978-0-8146-8513-6. (First  published in 2018 under the title Frauen in kirchlichen Ämtern: Reformbewegungen in der Ökumene. This English-language publication includes “central contributions” from that initial book.) Reviewed by Carol STANTON, 4051 Shorecrest Dr., Orlando, FL.

In December, 2017, one-hundred and twenty people gathered at the University of Osnabrück, Germany, for the Congress on Women in Church Ministries: Reform Movements in Ecumenism. After four days of presentations and discussion they agreed eleven points, The Osnabrück Theses. The first thesis states the gathering’s raison d’ȇtre: “The declared goal of the ecumenical movement, the visible unity of the churches, cannot be achieved without an agreement on the presence of women in all ecclesiastical ministries.”

This English publication includes “central contributions” from the Osnabrück meeting and is organized into five major sections:  I. Tradition and Innovation; II. Biblical and Historical Perspectives; III. Women’s Diaconate: Ecumenical Perspectives; IV. Systematic Theology and Canon Law Perspectives; V. Pastoral Perspective. This offers some framework to what at times feels like a fragmented read, with each presentation being interesting in its own right but in a stand-alone way.

The four women organizers of the Congress—two Roman Catholic and two Protestant theologians—adopted a methodology of scientific theological critique. They wanted to critically examine what theologian Massimo Faggioli has called “the intellectual ecosystem, in which theology is grounded in conversation with Church history and the history of theology, not just social sciences.” (Commonweal, “The Remains of Vatican II”, Mar.2, 2021). Mostly they wanted to create a safe place for the ecumenical discussion of an unsettled question which carries fears of sanction even today.

  Catholic theologian Eva-Maria Faber says the topic of women itself is dangerous. In her theme-setting paper, “Tradition, Criticism of Tradition, and Innovation,” she explores the metaphor of the “closed door” to presbyteral ordination of women in the Roman Catholic tradition. She advocates looking behind the door and even looking for other doors. Focusing only on that one closed door shuts out Catholic women from a whole host of decision-making processes within their church.

In the few years since the Osnabrück Congress. Pope Francis has appointed more women to Vatican posts, most recently naming French nun Nathalie Becquart as undersecretary in the Vatican’s Synod of Bishops Office, the first women to hold a voting position in the Vatican. The head of the Synod of Bishops office, Cardinal Mario Grech said, “A door has been opened.” But even the Pope has admitted that the representation of women in decision-making roles in the Church remains weak and the door to presbyteral ordination for women remains shut.

In her presentation Faber moves behind the shut door into the deeper issue of the necessary relationship between a critiqued Tradition and Innovation. For example, finding an early church precedent for women deacons reveals a larger context—the amazing versatility of those same early church communities to respond to new issues out of a faith insight—to innovate. In this light, opening up ecclesial space for women becomes a continuity with that early innovative energy and creates a way to respond to new issues, new questions.  

Women deacons is a new/old question. One of the Sections of this book that holds together best, in my opinion, is Section III on the Diaconate. Theresia Hainthaler reviews the historical research on the known deaconesses in the first few centuries of the church, their acceptance within structures and their influential correspondence with bishops and other leaders.  Peter Hünermann then focuses on the Diaconate for women in the Catholic Church, where Pope Francis has named yet a second Commission to study the issue. Hünermann concludes that after Vatican II’s foundational change in the understanding of ministry there is no longer any justification for the exclusion of women from the diaconate. Thomai Chouvarda finishes the section with a brief historical review of the inter-Orthodox interest in strengthening the roles of women, especially proceeding with the revival of the ancient institution of deaconesses by the Congress of Rhodes.

These three are best read in tandem with a later article by Sabine Demel, Professor of Canon Law at the University of Regensburg, who argues that reality lags behind law in the church. The 1983 Code of Canon Law establishes the church’s legal authority to determine and review the criteria for validity of the individual sacraments; it also establishes the CDF’s lack of canonical ecclesiastical competence to pronounce the infallibility of Ordinatio Sacerdotalis. She maintains that Canon 1024 can be changed to open a canonical path for baptized women to be ordained as deacon and presbyter, so that the Canon in the future could be revised to read all “baptized persons” instead of “baptized men (vir). In fact, in a similar action, on January 11, 2021 Pope Francis made a change to Canon Law so that women can now be formally instituted in the lay ministries of lector and acolyte. He changed “lay men” to “lay persons.”

Contributors in this book make clear that the Catholic Church has been framing the presbyteral ordination of women in other denominations as an obstacle to ecumenism. This blocks an openness to learning from the living practice of other denominations. There is much to learn from Andrea Strübind’s contribution tracing of the role of women in ecclesiastical office from the Reformation through various Protestant denominations to this day. It is far from a straight line. She finds asymmetry and doctrinal difference but also a strong vein of local and regional synodality that moves acceptance of women in church ministries from the particular to the whole church. Strübind acknowledges that the history of the ordination of women in the Protestant tradition was fueled and moved forward by strong, biblically oriented women who refused to be ignored.  In Section V., Pastoral Perspectives, Ulrike Link-Wieczorek looks at the change in perception of women pastors in the Protestant church and the shift of parsonages from public to private for serving families.

Also in the Pastoral section, Sr. Mary John Mananzan, a Benedictine sister in Manila, offers an eye-opening history of women in the Catholic Church in the Philippines and traces their journey from a pre-colonization role as the mujer indigena through the privatizing dynamics of a patriarchal society and, due greatly to the work of women religious, back to a sense of their original equality. 

This English translation is compiled of “central contributions” from the initial book in German. One wonders what was left out, and in some cases detrimentally, as when Ulrike Link-Wieczorek writes about Protestant women pastors and refers to two articles “in this book” which are, in fact, not included in the English edition.  Readers may want to keep in mind that these were individual papers meant for group discussion. Remembering the ecumenical nature of the gathering and its fidelity to a methodology of scientific theology offers some needed background coherence.

The presentations of the Osnabrück Congress reveal that even within their own denominations women are having different experiences of their roles in the church. Sharing those experiences in the light of a theologically critiqued tradition, may be just the common ground necessary for a future visible and dynamic Christian unity. This book is an important resource for continuing the momentum on the historical development of ecclesiastical ministries by making them open to all. Beyond the book, the Osnabrück Congress is a model for ecumenical dialogue that deserves to be replicated.