CV NEWS FEED // A Catholic civil rights organization recently expressed concern about three newly-appointed advisors to the Synod on Synodality, who “are open about their dissident status” towards Catholic teachings such as male-only priesthood.
On February 26, the president and founder of Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, Bill Donohue, published an op-ed highlighting statements made by three of the Vatican’s recently-selected advisors for the upcoming October Synod.
One of the new advisors, Sister Birgit Weiler, has expressed opposition to the Catholic Church teaching that only men can be ordained priests, Donohue wrote. Weiler is a professor of theology at the Pontifical Catholic University in Peru.
“I believe it must be possible for women who feel called to do so to be admitted to the priesthood,” Weiler said during an April 2023 interview.
Another one of the new advisors is Tricia Bruce, a sociologist. Donohue expressed concern over Bruce’s “endorsement of the now defunct dissident group, Voice of the Faithful.”
“She wrote a glowing book about it, crediting them with being ‘an advocate for internal change,'” Donohue noted. “The changes they sought were a wholesale revision of the Church’s teachings on marriage, the family, and sexuality.”
Another laywoman recently appointed as an advisor is Maria Clara Lucchetti Bingemer, who has written on “feminist theology.” Bingemer is a professor of theology at the Pontifical University of Rio de Janeiro.
Donohue noted his concern over content in a theology paper Bingemer wrote in 2014, which read:
The Church is still molded by the patriarchal identity so prevalent in the Judeo-Christian tradition. This patriarchal identity underlines male superiority not only through an intellectual bias, but also by what we may call an “ontological bias.” In other words, women are oppressed because of their own bodies.
Donohue wrote, “We understand it when an organization—any organization—seeks advice on how to improve its performance. But when the core [structures] that define an organization are up for grabs, it makes one wonder why those who reject them are asked for advice.”
“If the hierarchy of a vegan society were to invite anti-vegan devotees to advise them on how to progress, its members might wonder what is going on,” Donohue concluded:
When Church dissidents are invited to advise the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, its members can be forgiven if they are more than skeptical. If this is pandering, that is disturbing. Hopefully it is not more than that.