Deaconess

The Pope made world-wide news Thursday by announcing he would set up a commission to study women deacons in the Catholic Church. What a historic move! His decision came about after an international meeting with consecrated women and International Union of Superiors General. An article about the circumstances is HERE at the Crux website.

The women had written questions for the Pope (4 main topics) which more or less asked why women still do not have a say in the Church and why we are barred from being deacons. The questions can be read HERE.

I am excited for a few reasons. I have said before that women should be deacons. They should be ordained as deacons. Married men are ordained as permanent deacons, and if the Church leadership insists on only male priests, women can at least be permanent deacons. It is just not right for the Church to have seven sacraments for men and six for women. Another reason they should be named deacons is that many do the work of deacons anyway. But men can be ordained and women not. It is just plain discrimination. I know many will say there are reasons to keep women out, but there were rationalizations to keep African-Americans out of seminaries at one time. We all know of the terrible prejudice against African-Americans in general, but not so much about how this carried over to Catholics (see the book by Cyprian Davis, The History of Black Catholics in the United States).

Of course, the question of who will be on the commission for women deacons is next. Obviously, if the members are all conservative bishops, women will not have a chance. The pope has been fairly astute about these things. He has been placing more progressive persons in critical roles. However, the current prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the time this post is first published, Gerhard Cardinal Muller, is conservative. Perhaps the Pope hides behind him a bit. After a previous commission’s look into the female diaconate, Muller made a statement along the lines that women will feel discriminated against if they are allowed to be deacons but not priests or bishops. Zenit reports this HERE.

Apparently the consecrated women who asked the Pope to become deaconesses do not have that problem. Nor do some others. A link to the organization called Catholic Women Deacons is HERE.

The Internet is buzzing, including the website I follow, Catholic Answers Forums (CAF). I think it is a topic that will not go away. We should all pray for discernment into what is best for the Church and especially for doing the Lord's will.