On July 22, seven women, including Sylvaine Landrivon, applied for positions prohibited for women in the Church. Procedures that disturb, to the point of arriving at very real death threats.
Monday July 27, Sylvaine Landrivon opens her mail and she discovers with amazement a letter of threats, going as far as the evocation of death. This act occurs following his candidacy for episcopal ministry (the post of bishop) in Lyon. On the paper is written: "our new bishop (…)" we look forward to your next reform, see (sic) your next Council. The Church is counting on you. But hurry, because death risks surprise you. " These words were revealed by the collective “All Apostles!” In a press release.
An odious gesture which led Sylvaine Landrivon filed a complaint with the gendarmerie "for threat of death materialized in writing".
The letter shocked the “All Apostles!” Collective, which fights for equality between men and women in the Church. As well as the six other candidates for positions usually and traditionally reserved for men within the Catholic world as preacher, deacons, parish priest, bishop and nuncio. Among these women, there is a single childless, another divorced, and a third was assigned male at birth. A real revolution!
"All are in solidarity with Sylvaine Landrivon and determined to live out their commitment to the equal responsibility of baptized Catholics. (…) our simple demand for true equality provokes such violence, it is good that some feel threatened in their identity. Women are today the hostages of this malaise. (…) We must be able to build gender relations that escape the games of violence, power and hierarchy. "
To achieve "true equality"
A wind of modernity is blowing in the irreformable Catholic Church. In the momentum started by Anne Soupa at the succession of Cardinal Barbarin to the Archdiocese of Lyon, Alix Bayle, co-founder of "All apostles!", Strongly encouraged women to embark on careers under the yoke of men.
"In order for her to accomplish her mission, the Church must allow women access to the various ordained ministries as well as to the high responsibilities of the institution," say members of the movement.
The collective can count on many support from all over the world, and “unsuspected support”, in particular “from priests who call in covered words for more equality in their homily”.
The question of women's access to these positions remains taboo. During a press conference on the plane that brought him from Rio to Rome, Pope Francis said that women who must be "active" in religion cannot become priests. Commentators point out that the latter is rather open to the question, but he would have around him an entourage of traditionalists, for their part, not very receptive to change.
If we refer to the code of canon law of 1983, "only a baptized man validly receives sacred ordination". But why ? John Paul II had explained that "the priestly ordination, by which is transmitted the charge, entrusted by Christ to his Apostles, of teaching, of sanctifying and of governing the faithful, has always been, in the Catholic Church since the origin, exclusively reserved for men ".
The place of women in other religions
The Anglican Church in the United Kingdom is the most advanced in the place of women in religion, in fact, since 1994 women can be priests. The Church of England has, moreover, had one woman as its leader since 1952: the very respectable Queen Elizabeth II.
As far as Judaism is concerned, there are female rabbis but in the liberal movement (which has existed since 1903). Danièla Touati thus became the fourth female rabbi in France in 2019. However, this progress must be qualified because for traditionalists and Orthodox, the rabbinate cannot be entrusted to a woman because it does not comply with Jewish law – the halacha. Beginning of July, The supreme religious authority of Orthodox Judaism, dependent on the state of Israel, has expressed its opposition to the decision of the country's attorney general to want to create a course of rabbinical study for women in the country.
In the Muslim religion, women imames are present like Kahina Bahloul, Eva Janadin and Anne-Sophie Monsinay, for example, in France. The latter two led the very first mixed and inclusive prayer on September 7, 2019. The same year, Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Paris Mosque and (acting) president of the French Council for Muslim Worship (CFCM), said: "our imams are studying the text, to see if there is a solid basis for the wish expressed by women to be able to lead the prayer", he assured theAFP. The Danish Sherin Khankan, who launched the progressive Mariam mosque in Copenhagen in 2016, told 20 minutes: "we can have women imames in every country in the world."
A first step. Bishop Celestino Migliore, Vatican Ambassador to France, wishes to meet the seven candidates individually at the start of the school year.