Saturday, August 25, 2012

Parishioner leads charge to break ground for women in church

 Lynne Mapes-Riordan, of Evanston, hopes women will one day serve as Roman Catholic deacons. After 800 years, she could be one of the first.

Growing up, she never gave ordination a second thought. But then she learned that, unlike the church's verdict barring female priests, the question of female deacons has never been resolved.

That open question has led Mapes-Riordan, 49, and fellow parishioners at St. Nicholas Catholic Church in Evanston to seek an answer. If the church finds in favor of female deacons, she could become one of the first women ordained since the 12th century. 

After meeting last winter with members of the parish, including Mapes-Riordan, Chicago's Cardinal Francis George reportedly promised to raise the question in Rome during his visit earlier this year.

Scholars say female deacons wouldn't be a novel idea but the restoration of a tradition abandoned centuries ago.

The idea of female deacons "is being talked about very slowly," George said earlier this year during a forum at the Union League Club in response to a question about the future likelihood of female priests. "The diaconate is a more open question. At this place, at this time, it is not a possibility."

Mapes-Riordan, a lawyer, wife, mother of two and longtime parishioner at St. Nicholas, does not take a position on whether women should become priests. The church has made it clear that's not permitted. Ordaining women as deacons is not the same, she said.

"In a strange way, I don't see this being about women," Mapes-Riordan said during a recent interview inside St. Nicholas. "I see it as being about church and mission. We have this part of a puzzle, this piece, that I'm not going to say is missing, but we could have a fuller picture if this (letting women become deacons) was added. I don't see it as a women's issue. I see it as a matter for our church."

At a time when critics have accused Catholic Church leaders of declaring a war on women by restricting insurance coverage for contraceptives, rebuking American nuns and maintaining an all-male priesthood, a renewed discussion about ordaining women as deacons indicates high-profile church leaders such as George want to give women more opportunities for leadership.

"It's a message of hope. It's a way to stay within the boundaries of Catholic teachings and have women with real preaching authority within the system," said Phyllis Zagano, one of the American church's leading researchers on the subject of female deacons. "I think the bishops need to address this issue directly."

In the Catholic Church, there are three levels of ordained clergy: bishops, priests and deacons. Deacons can't say Mass, hear confessions or anoint the sick, but they can baptize, officiate at weddings or funerals and preach.

For St. Nicholas, a well-known progressive parish in the Chicago Archdiocese, nominating a deacon of any gender has been a breakthrough.

Since 1988, the parish has had only one deacon to help serve Latino worshippers. Laypeople — both men and women — have done most of what deacons typically do, including preach. 

The Rev. Robert Oldershaw, the parish's former longtime pastor who retired in 2006, admits he sometimes bent the rules. But he always told the faithful they should listen to what God is asking of them. When they felt called to preach, he honored that.

"I didn't have a real positive view of the diaconate simply because it was another way of separating the clerical establishment from the laity and men from women," Oldershaw said. 

"We've spent so much time separating the clergy from the laity, and yet we're called in our faith to be a community of equal disciples. So that was certainly my approach."

When the Rev. Bill Tkachuk took over in 2010, he intended to introduce the idea of deacons in his second year. But six months into his tenure, a male parishioner expressed interest.

Tkachuk knew that anything off-limits to women would be a hard sell at St. Nicholas. But he also knew that female deacons were more likely than female priests.

"It's a step toward truly acknowledging the leadership abilities that women have to bring to the church and bringing them into a church where they can be a larger part of the conversation," he said. "We need to find other ways to do that. It doesn't have to involve women priests.

"If there was a clear answer that it couldn't be done, that would have been said a long time ago."

A handful of scholars, including Zagano, argues that the diaconate of the early church included both men and women. 

In fact, they say Apostle Paul chose a female deacon, Phoebe, to deliver his most important epistle to the Romans, explaining the concept of salvation through Jesus Christ.

Historians say that in an attempt to accommodate societal norms, the church ceased giving women public leadership roles. The permanent diaconate vanished until the Second Vatican Council asked Pope Paul VI to reinstate it in the 1960s. Even then, the pope asked what role women should play, but the question reportedly never got a public answer.

In 2002, the International Theological Commission of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a report that didn't rule out the possibility of female deacons. 

Seven years later, Pope Benedict XVI issued an apostolic letter that distinguished between the role of bishops and priests and the purpose of deacons. 

While bishops and priests act as icons of Christ, deacons act as Christ's servants, he wrote.

Zagano, whose archives are housed at Loyola University Chicago, said she believes that if the church had resolved the question and invited women into the permanent diaconate, there would be less upheaval about female priests.

"It's clear that women were ordained sacramentally as deacons and could be so ordained again," Zagano said. "Because the church is not moving, a lot of people are moving beyond it."

But Sister Sara Butler, a professor of systematic theology at University of St. Mary of the Lake Mundelein Seminary, said she does not believe that there is sufficient historical or theological evidence to support adding women to the permanent diaconate. 

One of the first two women named to the International Theological Commission in 2004, Butler said the church is still trying to sort out just what it means to be ordained a deacon.

"I don't think it's because they don't want women," she said. "The theology of the diaconate needs to be thoroughly refined. … A woman should not be prepared for this or encouraged to prepare themselves. This has been explicitly discouraged repeatedly. Women want to have the right to exercise jurisdiction and make decisions, and that has always been tied for centuries to ordination. People like Phyllis Zagano want to be able to preach and be judges in the canonical tribunal. They want power, to put it boldly. They don't think men alone should exercise this kind of office. It seems clear to me the Lord himself gave it to men, used a man as a model for it and it's a male responsibility, not some elite privilege."

Mapes-Riordan never dreamed of becoming a priest or deacon. She believed neither was permitted by the church. But when she discovered that the diaconate might one day be open to women after all, she began to lose sleep at night.

It was not political. It was deeply personal. As Oldershaw had always taught, she tuned into what God was asking of her, and she told Tkachuk.

"I honestly said to her about what she was perceiving and experiencing: 'If you were a man, I would be handing you the application and encouraging you to fill it out to begin this journey,'" Tkachuk said. "She was asking all the right questions. It was coming from all the right places."

Mapes-Riordan has served as a Eucharistic minister. She has helped prepare second-graders for First Communion and has served as a mentor for lectors training to read Scripture. When the parish underwent a redesign of its worship space, she served on that committee. 

She has worked for several years on the parish's liturgy board, which essentially choreographs the liturgy in the new worship space. 

In her kitchen on Sundays at dawn, she even bakes the bread later consecrated for Communion.

As she waits for permission to discern what she perceives as a call to the diaconate, she is working on a master's in liturgy at Catholic Theological Union.

George declined to answer specific questions from the Tribune, reiterating through his spokeswoman that the matter of female deacons is still an "open theological question" for the church. 

During his meeting with parishioners, George expressed reservations, suggesting some theological questions had to be resolved first. 

But he also promised to include it in his report to the pope and to raise it with key leaders during his February meeting in Rome with the church's leadership.

"He did say it's a question of our time," Mapes-Riordan said. "It's a question to get answered. There's a sense of some urgency around it."

Tkachuk said he believes that George recognizes Mapes-Riordan's authenticity.

"I think he was truly valuing that," Tkachuk said. "This is church at its best. We're having a conversation. And we can all trust each other in this conversation."