Vatican newspaper suggests giving women the right to preach homilies

Friday, Mar. 11, 2016

If you’re thinking of publishing something adventurous about the Church, don’t send it to L’Osservatore Romano, the official paper of the Vatican. They won’t give you the time of day.

All the more surprising, then, that the Vatican paper should publish an article recently in which it was proposed that women could be allowed to give the homily at Mass. This article could not be published without the approval of “higher-ups.”

Enzo Bianchi, author of the article, recognizes that authorizing women to preach “would constitute a fundamental change in [women’s] participation in church life.” It would respond to Pope Francis’ oft-repeated commitment to giving women a greater role in the life of the Church. Bianchi recognizes the topic of women preaching “is a delicate one,” but, he says, “I believe it is urgent that we address it.”

Such a move would not, however, be a complete departure from the tradition of the Church. David Gibson, who commented on the L’Osservatore Romano article for Religion News Service, points out that for the first 800 years, women preached during the liturgy. It was only in the 13th century, as part of a general reform of the Church, which consolidated power in the hands of the clergy, that Pope Gregory IX barred lay people from preaching.

The argument for women preachers is not based on a desire to “modernize” the Church, but rather a reinvigoration of the tradition of the first millennium, in which women preached before priests, bishops, and even popes. 

Lay preaching was allowed on occasion in the following centuries. In the early 1970s, the matter of women (and men) preaching was raised again. Interestingly, in 1973, the Vatican gave the German bishops permission to experiment with lay preaching for a period of eight years. I don’t know what became of the experiment, though I would surmise that lay preaching continues to be practiced in some Western European countries.

In another column in L’Osservatore Romano, Sister Catherine Aubin, a professor at a pontifical university in Rome, points out that Jesus encouraged women to preach  the message of salvation. (See the story on p. 5.) Mary Magdalen is known as the “apostle to the apostles” and was the first person to witness to Christ’s resurrection. Dominican Sr. Madeleine Fredell wrote that preaching “is my vocation as a preacher.” (It is ironic that while Dominican women have “O.P,” – Order of Preachers – after their names, they cannot actually preach liturgically.)

I find it ironic that in periodicals like America women often provide sample homilies to inspire clergy in the preparation of their homilies. (I suspect that in many cases clergy end up using these homilies verbatim.)

There are no doctrinal or theological obstacles to letting lay men and women preach during Mass. The 1983 Code of Canon Law states that the homily “is reserved to a priest or deacon” because it is a fundamental part of the Mass. But this is a human rather than a divine law, and there is nothing to stop it being softened or even abolished.

“Conservatives” will argue that women’s preaching would continue the “feminization” of the Church – one of the most insulting arguments against women’s greater ministerial presence in the liturgy of the Church.

The bottom line: Opening up preaching to lay men and women after rigorous training and official episcopal commissioning as “lay preachers” could, I think, greatly improve the unsatisfactory state of preaching in the Catholic Church.

In the meantime, I support the observance of the law as it is. Lay preaching now would flout canonical norms.