Fr. Joseph Fessio, SJ, is a man who needs no introduction. Most famous for being the founder of Ignatius Press, he played an important role at the 1987 Synod of Bishops that few Catholics today are aware of. He was one of twenty experts appointed to that synod by Pope John Paul II, which discussed lay ministries among other topics, and which led to that pope’s apostolic exhortation Christifideles Laici, in which he famously criticized the “clericalization of the laity.”
In a paper distributed to the participants, Fr. Fessio presented in broad outlines the case against female laity being admitted to liturgical ministries such as acolyte and lector. This text seems to have been published in Origins 17/32 (January 21, 1988), but I discovered it in the fairly obscure newsletter of the St. Joseph Foundation, which is where the text I have scanned and reproduced below came from. At the time, Fr. Fessio was a member of the Foundation’s National Advisory Committee.
While Fr. Fessio’s arguments are sound and strong, and apparently persuasive enough to have caused the synod to waver on the question, he and those who took the traditional stance lost the battle. Infamously, John Paul II would cave on female altar servers (as Paul VI had already caved on women as substitute readers), and Francis would introduce a further rupture by legislating that women can be “instituted” acolytes and lectors. Such nonsense has nothing to do with the traditional Minor Orders and Subdiaconate, which are part of the Church’s immemorial tradition and still remain in use today in traditional institutes of apostolic life and religious communities. My book Ministers of Christ is dedicated to the explication and defense of these lower Orders as well as the refutation of the feminist novelties.
Without further ado, here is Fr. Fessio’s superb intervention from 1987. May it be read far and wide. —PAK
Continue reading at Tradition and Sanity