Today’s Wednesday Audience

Posted on 14 February 2007 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Today the Holy Father brought to a conclusion his teaching about the early workers in the Lord’s vinyard with a fascinating presentation about the women involved in the early Church.

Among the various things he spoke about, and I recommend that you read his audience address, Pope Benedict spoke about the woman Phoebe who was described with the Greek word "diakonos".  The Pope made a clear distinction that the word "deacon" for her did not have any heirarchical ministerial implications, Phoebe nevertheless exercised a measure of responsibility in her local Church and St. Paul gives her due recognition, saying that she had helped many people including himself.

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6 Comments

  1. Irulats says:
    14 February 2007 at 4:40 PM

    Father Z., You said, “Pope Benedict spoke about the woman Phoebe who was described with the Greek word “diakonos”. The Pope made a clear distinction that the word “deacon” for her did not have any heirarchical ministerial implications, Phoebe nevertheless exercised a measure of responsibility in her local Church and St. Paul gives her due recognition, saying that she had helped many people including himself.”

    Seems that bid has been cut from the official version….

    http://212.77.1.245/news_services/press/vis/dinamiche/c0_en.htm

  2. Fr. John Zuhlsdorf says:
    14 February 2007 at 5:44 PM

    Irulats: That is just a summary. The longer address was in Italian.

  4. Cathy_of_Alex says:
    14 February 2007 at 8:30 PM

    I can’t wait to read it! I may even have to stumble through the Italian.

  5. Londiniensis says:
    15 February 2007 at 2:13 AM

    At the moment, the Vatican’s website is only showing a precis of the address in all languages other than Italian. However, from looking at the transcripts of some earlier Audiences, it appears that they are complete line by line translations from the original texts. I therefore assume that the current precis is just a holding exercise until a complete translation can be prepared. However, if this is indeed the case, it might perhaps be useful to have this indicated in some way.

  6. Matthew Kennel says:
    15 February 2007 at 6:52 PM

    The audience can be found on Zenit (http://www.zenit.org/english/audience/visualizza.phtml?sid=102978).

    I know that the pope began this series of audiences with reflections on the nature of the Church, and then continued by going over the lives of the apostles and their contemporaries. I have downloaded these audiences, put them in a word document, and plan to read it as if it were a book. It seems likely to me that next week’s audience will be about Ash Wednesday and the beginning of the Lenten season. I wonder if, after that, the Holy Father will continue to elucidate other points about the Church (perhaps illuminating some of the lives of the Fathers and Doctors, or the history of some institutions in the Church), or if he will instead begin another series of audiences. In either case, I’m excited to see what our Holy Father has in store for us.

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