Commission for Women

Good news about the "Study Commission of the Women’s Deaconate" that Pope Francis talked about back in May (post in my blog about it HERE). The Pope has instituted it with a 12-member group, half of whom are women, plus the leader of the group, Jesuit Secretary of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, Archbishop Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer. You can read more about it and see the members at Vatican Radio website HERE.

The good news in my opinion is that Phyllis Zagano is one of the members. She has done much studying and written books on the subject of women deacons in the Catholic Church. Her books include Holy Saturday: An Argument for the Restoration of the Female Diaconate in the Catholic Church (Crossroad Publishing Company, 2000); and Women Deacons? Essays with Answers (The Liturgical Press, 2016). Her short Amazon biography is HERE.

Deaconesses are mentioned in the Bible. In 1 Timothy 3:11 (NIV), as St. Paul gives instructions to deacons in general, he singles out women deacons:

In the same way, the women are to be worthy of respect, not malicious talkers but temperate and trustworthy in everything.

I won’t add a lot more, since I've written about this before (see Deacons Label at bottom of this post for all links). I’m sure we will hear more as the commission gets going. I hope they don’t take too long until they come to a conclusion—one which Phyllis Zagano has already studied and found: that there were indeed women deacons in the Church in the past and should be now.