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Installed Lectors and Acolytes: Are Women 11-16_TPR-art-Zegano.qxp_Layout 1 10/03/2021 19:41 Page 1 Focus: Acolytes and Lectors – What Next? Installed lectors and acolytes: Are women deacons next? Phyllis Zagano, Senior Research Associate-in-Residence at Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York, and a member of the original Pontifical Commission for the Study of the Diaconate of Women (2016–18) reflects on the change to Canon 230 §1 of the Code of Canon Law allowing women to be formally installed as lectors and acolytes. PHOTO: DIOCESE OF WESTMINSTER Despite Pope Francis’ efforts to encourage lay large, lay women are equal to lay men. Canon 230 participation in the management of the Church as §1 now reads: ‘Lay persons who possess the age well as in the liturgy, women remain on the and qualifications established by decree of the periphery. Quite simply, if one is not a cleric conference of bishops can be admitted on a stable neither he – nor she – can obtain certain offices or basis through the prescribed liturgical rite to the fulfil certain liturgical tasks. ministries of lector and acolyte.’ Even so, Pope Francis’ latest Apostolic Letter, But will women really have access to the altar? Spiritus Domini, is quite commendable in that it Can the remnants of misogyny be overcome? Will recognises the equal humanity of men and the Church adapt to the change? Does this change women. By eliminating one word, the Pope has portend women deacons? declared both to the Church and to the world at April/May/June 2021 | Pastoral Review Vol 17 Issue 2 | 11 11-16_TPR-art-Zegano.qxp_Layout 1 10/03/2021 19:41 Page 2 Focus:Leadership Acolytes and and Ministry Lectors – What Next? Women at the altar The participation of women as lectors varies from place to place, even within dioceses. While women Restrictions against women’s altar service began serve widely as lectors in the developed world, to appear at least 1500 years ago, when the including during papal liturgies in Saint Peter’s Roman-African Pope Gelasius I, who reigned from Basilica, pockets of Church leadership and others 492–6 CE, sought to take control of Eastern decry even that. A woman’s voice, for them, is liturgy. Writing in 494 CE about three provinces in simply not appropriate to give voice to the sacred. southern parts of Italy, Gelasius decried women For support, opponents cite the disputed passage ministering at the altar, ‘performing all the other in Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians: ‘women should (cunctaque) tasks that are assigned only to the keep silent in the churches, for they are not service of men and for which they [women] are allowed to speak, but should be subordinate…’ (1 not appropriate’.1 Cor. 14.34). To this day, academics question who the women The attitude reflected in 1 Corinthians was were and what they were doing. Perhaps they echoed in a 2008 comment of André Vingt-Trois, were performing the diaconal tasks of mixing the then Archbishop of Paris and president of the water and wine and handing the chalice to the French bishops’ conference. Responding to a celebrant of the Mass. Perhaps they were question about the change to Canon 230 §1 ministering the Precious Blood to the recommended by the 2008 synod of bishops, congregation, a task Vingt-Trois said the properly performed by difficulty was how to the deacon or delegated In some places in the world, women train women: ‘the thing to the acolyte and now, is not to have a skirt, by exception, to an lectors and acolytes are unheard of. but something in the extraordinary minister head’.2 His comments of the Eucharist. In others, their service is routine led to the creation of the Comité de la jupe, But who were they? incorporated in France Conjecture includes at least two interpretations: to promote the equality of women in the Church. they were deacons; or they were priests. Given the time and the place, it seems likely these women Opposition to female altar servers is significantly were deacons, especially given the copious more neuralgic. Even so, the Church’s deep history liturgical, epigraphical and other evidence of the of misogyny provides clues to its reasons for diaconal ordination of women contemporary with keeping women away from the sacred. Gelasius’ complaint. Gelasius had support from the fourth-century The problem, however, is not whether they were Synod of Laodicea (Turkey), which declared deacons or priests, but that they were ministering ‘Women may not go near the altar’.3 Successive at the altar. And for centuries, official Church eccelsiastical legislations repeatedly forbade documents have repeated Gelasius’ words to women’s altar service. In the sixth century, bishops justify keeping women out of the sanctuary. The in Gaul (France) complained about priests ban on women eventually solidified into allowing women to ‘hold the chalices and unquestioned tradition, later embedded in presume to administer to blood of Christ to the liturgical law. people of God’,4 and local laws elsewhere banned women from the sanctuary. For example, Canon Women near the sacred 42 of the Capitula Martini, the systematic collection of Canon Law emanating from Braga In developed nations, the contemporary mind (Portugal), states quite simply: ‘Women are not may not comprehend why altar service by women permitted to enter the sanctuary.’5 The reason was and girls is so problematic. Similarly, the their impurity. contemporary mind wonders why there is resistance to a woman reading Scripture. Smaller diocesan synods copied the prohibitions. For example, a synod in Auxerre (France) forbade 12 | Pastoral Review Vol 17 Issue 2 | April/May/June 2021 11-16_TPR-art-Zegano.qxp_Layout 1 10/03/2021 19:41 Page 3 Focus: Acolytes and Lectors – What Next? PHOTO: THOMAS VITALI, UNSPLASH By the early twentieth century, the Church rarely allowed direct female participation in the Mass. The 1917 Code of Canon Law included the requirement that women be outside the altar rail and only in dire necessity could they voice the responses to the Mass: ‘The server at Mass should not be a woman, unless no man can be had, and provided the woman stays at a distance to answer the prayers and does not in any way approach the altar.’10 And, in 1967, Musicam sacram, a document on sacred music emanating from the Second Vatican Council, stated that if a choir includes women, ‘it should be placed outside the sanctuary (presbyterium)’. That liturgical law is still on the books. In 2008, the Twelfth Synod of Bishops recommended that women be formally installed as lectors; 11 in 2019, the Amazon Synod requested women be formally installed as both lectors and acolytes.12 Fourteen months later, Pope Francis responded. Implementing the change Because some dioceses have included women and girls as lectors and altar servers for many years, women from being near the altar and even from the import of the recent change to Canon Law touching altar linens: ‘Women are not to receive may not be immediately recognisable. Nor may the Eucharist in an uncovered hand’ and ‘Women the change be immediately implemented. are not to touch the Lord’s pall’.6 The latter proscription led to a custom requiring a man – not Despite its emphasis on the role of the laity, post- necessarily a priest – to rinse used altar linens Vatican II instructions kept women away from before handing them over (outside the sanctuary) direct participation in the Mass. In 1965, the to a woman for laundering. By the ninth century, Congregation for Divine Worship ruled that the Council of Paris (829 CE) was complaining women could not read the Scriptures, even in a about ‘illegal feminine access’ to the altar, house of Religious women.13 In 1970, the same including among forbidden ‘indecent actions’ Congregation issued Liturgicae instaurationes, their touching sacred vessels or linens.7 solidifying the diocesan bishops’ right to allow changes emanating from the Second Vatican As political discussion in Europe supported the Council, although bishops could not allow female subjugation of women in Church and state, more altar servers. If female lectors were to be modern liturgical law and commentary simply employed, they were required to read from assumed and assimilated prior restrictions against outside the sanctuary.14 By 1980, the Congregation women. John Knox wrote The First Blast of the once again ruled against women altar servers: Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of ‘There are, of course, various roles that women Women, albeit anonymously, because for him can perform in the liturgical assembly: these feminine rule contravened biblical teachings.8 By include reading the Word of God and proclaiming the 1700s, the question of whether women were the intentions of the Prayer of the Faithful. the same species as men – the querelle des femmes Women are not, however, permitted to act as altar – still found footing in Europe, affirming that servers.’15 women were less intelligent than men and were essentially ‘misbegotten males’.9 The 1983 Code of Canon Law, promulgated by April/May/June 2021 | Pastoral Review Vol 17 Issue 2 | 13 11-16_TPR-art-Zegano.qxp_Layout 1 10/03/2021 19:41 Page 4 Focus: Acolytes and Lectors – What Next? Pope John Paul II, seemed to lift these restrictions Women deacons? by giving diocesan bishops the right to temporarily allow lay persons to fulfil the roles of Importantly, this change signals a doctrinal lector and acolyte in cases of true necessity, still development and the reversion to an older restricting formal installation as lector and acolyte tradition. Allowing women to be permanently to lay men (viri laici). While Canon 230 §2 decreed installed for altar service is a recognition of the that any lay person could be temporarily assigned baptismal equality of all people.
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