Women in the Church or power in the Church? What the group 5 report is really about

Vatican City - The Final Report of Study Group No. 5 on the participation of women in the life and leadership of the Church requires careful reading, because the decisive issue is not simply the recognition of women’s contribution, but the way in which, starting from the demands of certain individuals, women and men alike, the very core of the power of jurisdiction in the Church ends up being called into question. This shift, however, does not take place through a magisterial text worked out with the rigour proper to canon lawyers, theologians and experts in sacramental theology, but is instead attempted through a document that takes up and reworks positions already expressed by clearly ideologically driven figures. The result is a text drafted by a selected group within an already defined horizon of thought, which for that reason does not simply describe a problem, but addresses it from a perspective already directed towards particular conclusions.
An already predetermined …