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Female Ordination: A Sociological Analysis of a Debate on Rights and Religion Flanders (Belgium) in the Mid Nineties

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2015

Dirk Jacobs
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Abstract

On 30 May 1994 Pope John-Paul II declared that the discussion on ordaining women was “definitively” closed. Women could not become priests, the Vatican repeated for the “very last” time. This event stimulated an unprecedented commotion in the Flemish (Belgian) Catholic community. The laity voluntarily working in the Church even threatened to strike. The debate on feminism and human rights within the Roman Catholic Church erupted more fiercely than ever before. The laity reacted in an astonishingly radical manner. The bishops tried to hold a position in between the displeased Catholics and the Vatican. An analysis of the debates held on these issues in the Flemish newspapers shows that the human rights discourse and the Vatican doctrine were worlds apart. Nevertheless, progressive Catholics tried to create a new discourse that was able to combine both perspectives. In this article, the interrelations between the several discourses and the dynamics of the debate are discussed, using the “commonwealth model” of Boltanski and Thévenot. It is argued that their model is useful but inadequate, because of its lack of attention to power and its ahistoricism.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Law and Religion , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , 2002 , pp. 191 - 218
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University 2002

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