Foot in the door

'Sailing Nun' to help steer Church course with key Vatican job

 (Photos source: Twitter)

Translated from Vida Nueva: "Nathalie Becquart: the woman with a voice and (for the first time) with a vote at the Synod" - and a foot in the door!

"A female undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops. Make no mistake about what it means. It is not an administrative responsibility anymore. The French nun Nathalie Becquart will be in charge, along with the Spanish Augustinian Luis Marín, named after her on February 6, to take care of the proper functioning of this Roman department that is in a prominent place on Pope Francis' reform agenda. And they will do so under the guidance of Cardinal Mario Grech, secretary general of the Synod since last year.

Marie-Lucile Kubaki, Vatican correspondent for the French Catholic weekly La Vie, observed, "With her arrival at the Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, the Pope deepens his logic of appointing more women to positions of responsibility in the Vatican, as he did with Francesca di Giovanni, undersecretary in the Section for relations with States in 2020, for example.

"Small but firm steps. That seems to be Jorge Mario Bergoglio's strategy. It is clear that Nathalie's voice and vote will not change things on their own. But for the first time, the opinion of one of the 660,000 religious women on the planet counts. Will others follow?"

'Small but firm steps' will sound familiar to Anglicans. Step by step women who, allegedly, only wanted to be deacons used every trick in the book to be ordained priest  and to be admitted to the episcopacy.

Remember when it was said that if women were allowed to be accepted as deacons, it didn't follow that they would then be allowed to become priests? When deacons wanted to be ordained priests, it didn't mean that they would be allowed to become bishops?

Jolly June Osborne, bishop of Llandaff, admitted recently in a podcast that "once you've made women priests there isn't a theological reason at all why they shouldn't enter the episcopacy."

June along with her colleague Joanna Penberthy, bishop of St Davids, both complain that anyone taking a different theological position to them is prejudiced.

In a television interview in April 2018, bishop Joanna asserted, "if you can be prejudiced in the soft institution of the church, what does that say about your attitude to women?"

The 'soft institution of the church' to use Penberthy's words has been used by feminists to advance their own cause at the expense of the Church, trampling on the faithful in the process as Women and the Church (WATCH) have demonstrated when they have reneged on the agreement that gave them what they wanted, feminist power.

A foot in the door is just the beginning.