Controversy over women’s ordination, even at the Synod, detracts attention from the plight of women in the Church and society, Broken Bay Bishop Anthony Randazzo said on Friday.
When Catholics in the global North are “obsessed” with the issue of women’s ordination, “women who in many parts of the Church and world are treated as second-class citizens are totally ignored,” Bishop Randazzo, a member of the Synod on Synodality, said during the Synod press briefing.
While Bishop Randazzo said he sees no problem with the topic of women’s ordination being discussed and studied at the Synod, he said such attention should “absolutely not” come at the cost of the dignity of women in the Church and in the world.
“Can we stop talking about women and listen to, and speak with, women?” he asked. “This is how the Church is called to act.”
Bishop Randazzo, who is president of the Federation of Catholic Bishops’ Conferences of Oceania, lamented that “so often we get caught up with niche issues that we talk about in Europe or in North America”, Crux reported.
Often, he said, these issues come from “churches and communities that have great wealth, great access to technology, and resources.”
“Those issues become all-consuming and focusing for people, to the point that they then become an imposition on people who sometimes struggle simply to feed their families, to survive the rising sea levels, or the dangerous journeys across wild oceans to resettle in new lands,” he continued.
Bishop Randazzo called this “a new form of colonialism” that oppresses the vulnerable and which is “certainly not the mind of the synodal Church in mission”.
While these niche issues are important and need to be discussed, he emphasised, “they must not be so all-consuming to the point that others cannot live or exist on the face of this planet simply because people of might and power and authority and wealth decide that those niche issues are the most important ones.”
“Please, do not forget the most vulnerable, and remember, when you come to Oceania, you here in Europe are the periphery.”