The status of women worldwide was by no means central to the concerns of the Second Vatican Council. Indeed, the index to the Abbott edition of the conciliar documents turns up only five mentions of "women." There is reference to an observation in the document on the laity that women should have greater participation in the apostolate (Apostolicam Actuositatem #9), and there are four references to passages of the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. These passages treat "equity with men before the law and in fact" (Gaudium et Spes #9), women's educational and vocational rights (#29), the "domestic role" of mothers (#52), and women's participation in cultural life (#61). Although few in number, these statements about women, in combination with two passages that Abbott does not link with women in his index, have served as seeds of enormous change in Catholic consciousness and activities, and they presaged a greatly enhanced role for women in the life and thought of the tradition. Full equality has not been reached, but the council has already inspired important developments, and Catholics today have reason to trust that the Holy Spirit will guide us toward the further reforms that are needed.

The two passages not mentioned in Abbott's index under "women" are the powerful words of GS #29 that "with respect to the fundamental rights of the person, every type of discrimination, whether social or cultural, whether based on sex, race, color, social condition, language, or religion, is to be overcome and eradicated as contrary to God's intent," and the observation in GS #62 that lay persons are eligible to serve as theologians, a role previously reserved to the clergy. It is unlikely that the bishops who voted to approve this document as the council neared its conclusion imagined how enthusiastically women would connect the dots and go into action to implement the new vision the bishops were endorsing, which gave strong religious support for moral convictions that were also gaining force from secular movements for justice for women and racial minorities.

Within a decade of the Council there were influential books by women trained in theology, notably Mary Daly (who gave up on all "patriarchal religion" in the early 1970s) and Rosemary Radford Ruether, and an historic conference on women's ordination. More than 1200 persons assembled for that conference near Detroit over Thanksgiving weekend in 1975, where for the first time men and women theologians together assembled to probe a question that the hierarchy had long considered settled. Joining such thinkers as Richard McBrien and Carroll Stuhlmueller as presenters that weekend were Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Anne E. Carr, Margaret A. Farley, and others. This trio would influence generations of students at Notre Dame (and later Harvard), Chicago, and Yale, respectively. Meanwhile a cadre of other women theologians were assuming positions at universities, colleges, and seminaries, and were publishing in traditional fields as well as in the new field of feminist theology. Theological Studies devoted its December 1975 issue to women's concerns, and women were gaining influence in various professional societies for religious scholars.

In the forty years since 1975, which the UN designated the first "International Women's Year," the momentum of Catholic feminism has grown significantly, and yet there remains the "stained glass ceiling" of sacramental sexism. Although women serve in so many pastoral, educational, and administrative capacities today, the canonical ban on women's ordination continues to undermine claims of the hierarchy to respect women's equal human dignity. Although Pope Francis is unwilling to open up this topic for consideration, his position strikes me as significantly different from that of his immediate predecessors, who argued vehemently against the possibility of ordaining women priests and bishops. Instead of making unconvincing arguments and forbidding a discussion, Pope Francis has simply said that the "door is closed" on the subject of women's ordination, and gone on to devote his energies to writing an inspiring and challenging encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si. Influenced by communications expert Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who noted in 1987 that papal teaching changes only after there has been a period of papal silence on a question, I have interpreted Pope Francis' remark about the closed door as "the gift of papal silence" that is buying some time for the universal church to prepare for a momentous change in the canonical status of baptized females.