The Vatican’s synodal study group on women in the Church welcomes the “entry of women into public life— which developed and consolidated during the twentieth century.”

Historian Bronwen McShea, who has written a great deal about the powerful influence of women over the centuries, is dismayed that the study group seems not to notice the role that women— or lay men, for that matter— have always played outside formal ecclesiastical structures. In an excellent First Things essay (link below) she observes:

Perhaps, even though we are more than sixty years past Vatican II, we are still not ready in the Catholic world to truly leave behind the “clericalism” that the report condemns. This would, after all, require us to confront the possibility that a truly serious, historically grounded discussion of women’s participation in high levels of ecclesial decision-making might not have all that much to do, after all, with the suitability (or not) of women for diaconal ordination. Nor may it have all that much to do, either, with appointments of specific women— made always by popes and other high-ranking clergymen these days— to positions in the Vatican or in bishops’ chanceries.