ROME — Pope Francis called on the International Theological Commission Thursday to increase the number of women in its ranks, insisting they make theology “tastier.”
“I believe that perhaps it would be important to increase the number of women, not because it is fashionable,” the pontiff declared, “but because they think differently from men and make theology something deeper and even tastier.”
During his address, the pope repeatedly called for a “creative faithfulness” to tradition, always open to change rather than stuck in dogmatic certainties.
Either tradition grows or it is extinguished, he asserted, since it is a “guarantee for the future and not a museum piece.”
Traditionalism, on the other hand, is the “dead faith of the living,” he stated, caused by people becoming closedminded.
File/Pope Francis meets with nuns during the weekly general audience on August 17, 2022 at Paul-VI hall in The Vatican. (VINCENZO PINTO/AFP via Getty)
“Today there is a great danger, which is to go in another direction: backwards,” he said.
Traditionalists insist that “it has always been done this way,” Francis declared, because they believe “it is better to go backwards, which is safer, rather than moving forward with tradition.”
This approach has led some movements in the Church “to remain fixed in time, in backwardness. They are stuck in reverse,” he contended.
With true tradition, “moral conscience grows, awareness of faith grows,” he said, whereas “backwardness leads you to say that ‘it has always been done this way, it is better to go on like this.’”
Catechists are called to teach good, solid doctrine, he continued, but theologians are called “to take risks and go beyond. It is the job of the Magisterium to stop them.”