Women and Offices in the Catholic Church: Possibilites, Current State, Perspectives

Sa？etak In relation to the pre？conciliar period, the Second Vatican Council and the 1983 Code of Canon Law opened up new possibilities for women in the Catholic Church. The first part of the article presents these possibilities. The second and third part present how were these possibilities implemented in the Catholic Church in Germany and Croatia. On the basis of research carried out in Germany, the main problems of women employed in ecclesiastical institutions and measures to resolve these problems are discussed. Since there are no data nor studies on women employed in ecclesiastical institutions in the Catholic Church in Croatia, this article utilised the following sources: web pages of (arch)dioceses at the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019, opinions of Catholics on the attitude of the Church towards women in leadership positions in the Church procured through the questionnaire carried out on the representative sample in 2018, within the frame of the project ？Relational Gender Relations in Croatia: Modernisation and Developmental Perspectives？ (GENMOD), and the representative questionnaire study realised within the frame of the project of the Franciscan Institute for Culture of Peace ？Male and Female He Created Them. Women and Men in Living of and Service to God’s Mission？, realised in 2005. The goal of the article is to incite research on the position of lay people in general and women in particular in ecclesiastical institutions in Croatia