Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg, a newly appointed top adviser to Pope Francis and a leading organizer of the Vatican's ongoing synod process, believed that it might one day be possible to revisit Pope John Paul II's prohibition on the ordination of women to the priesthood. He also stated that the language used by the church to describe LGBT individuals as "intrinsically disordered" is "dubious."
Revisiting Prohibition of Women's Ordination
According to the National Catholic Reporter, Cardinal Hollerich stated that it is still an open conversation among some Catholics, although Pope Francis does not support the ordination of women and that he would like to see women given greater pastoral responsibilities. He also stated that he advocates for increasing the amount of ministerial responsibility given to women. And if they are successful in doing so, then they will be in a position to determine whether or not women still have the desire to get ordained.
However, when asked if a future pope could rule against John Paul II's 1994 apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, which stated that the Catholic Church does not have the authority to ordain women, Hollerich said that it was possible and that the church's teaching could be developed.
He then connected to the "Syllabus of Errors," published in 1864 by Pope Pius IX. The document was regarded as infallible and attacked religious freedom and interfaith dialogue. According to the cardinal, such acts are now widely accepted inside the church.
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Ban on Female Priests
The American Wedding Blog reported that on June 1. 2021, Pope Francis made it abundantly clear that the Roman Catholic Church still considers any attempt to ordain women to the priesthood to be a "grave crime," possibly on par with the sexual abuse of children and adults by members of the clergy.
The prohibition had only been addressed in ecclesiastical law until this point, where it was stated that the priesthood was reserved for "baptized males." Thus, attempting to ordain a woman is considered a criminal offense. The offender and the woman who is the subject of the attempted ordination will both be automatically excommunicated, and the cleric could be stripped of their clerical status as a result of the offense.
Francis first changed the Code of Canon Law forty years ago. He focused on clarifying the church's position and the consequences associated with four different topics: clerical sex abuse of adults and minors, fraud, and the ordination of women.
Moreover, as per an article from America The Jesuit Review, Pope Francis noted that the doctrine that the Catholic Church does not allow women to be ordained to the priesthood or episcopacy is likely to remain in place for the rest of time.
Following his visit to the Lutheran Church of Sweden on November 1, 2016, led by Archbishop Antje Jackelen of Uppsala, the nation's first woman primate, Pope Francis was questioned about the possibility of the Catholic Church one day ordaining female priests and bishops. This question came after the Lutheran Church of Sweden hosted Pope Francis.
As he has done in the past, the Pope responded that the subject had been settled in 1994 by St. John Paul II, who taught that the ordination of women in the Catholic Church is not conceivable since Jesus chose only men as his apostles. The Catholic Church maintains women in a subordinate status by preventing them from being ordained, although most practicing Catholics disagree with this form of discrimination.
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