If you gather three people to discuss a single topic, you will often end up with six opinions. By all accounts, members of the Irish Catholic Synod learned this the hard way when they met at Gormanston in Meath for their National Assembly last month.

At least that is what you might glean from news reports. Synod members are sworn to secrecy, which makes sense if the objective is to have a private, prayerful meeting, following the Vatican-dictated processes for “conversation in the Spirit.” We will never know how much of the Meath meeting was process and how much was politics, but it seems that, once again, women in leadership and ministry was a divisive topic. We may never know why, but we can guess.

The Meath meeting had 294 synod delegates (150 men and 144 women), with five guests and observers representing other Christian denominations. The delegates assembled included 23 bishops, 50 priests, eight deacons, 17 female religious, 127 other women and 69 other men.

The guests – four women and one man – included an ordained Presbyterian minister, Rev Dr Karen Campbell; and general secretary of the Irish Council of Churches and archdeacon Katharine Poulton, the first woman ordained deacon in the Church of Ireland. The lone man in the group of guests was Prof Ty Monroe of Assumption University in the US.

Irish hotelier, horse breeder and cattle exporter........

© The Irish Times