Fr. Z's Blog

From a reader…

QUAERITUR:

I know women can’t become priests, but…can they become deacons?

The thought never entered my mind before, but upon gathering some resources for a friend who had asked why women cannot become priests, I found a video – “Why Women Can’t Be Ordained Priests” by Breaking in the Habit. It’s the first video I’ve ever listened to from the channel, so no idea as to how orthodox they are or not, but while they confirmed women cannot become priests, the friar/brother(?) made some claims about the possibility of one day women possibly being ordained deacons.

As a woman, I’m not personally in favor of this idea – I don’t understand the desire to have women be able to do EVERYTHING men can do, and visa versa – but it brought up an interesting question, and I wanted your thoughts on it.

I’ve dealt with this before.  Sadly, it keeps cropping up.

Women cannot be ordained to the diaconate.  The Franciscan in the video is wrong about the possibility of ordination of female deacons.  He correctly states that priesthood and diaconate are different.  He correctly states that the Church is explicit about the impossibility of ordaining women as priests.  But he then errs then in concluding that it is therefore possible for women to be ordained to the diaconate.

Just because there is no explicit document about diaconate, like Ordinatio sacerdotalis is explicit about priesthood, that doesn’t mean that we can legitimately conclude that women can be ordained to the diaconate.  That’s a sort of “no news is good news” argument, which is a fallacy.  No news means no news.   It could in fact be that there a great many really bad things happening that are simply not being reported.  All we can conclude from the lack of a document about diaconate is that there isn’t a document about the diaconate.

Women cannot be ordained to any of the sacred Orders.  Lumen gentium28 reasserts that the Sacrament of Orders has three divinely established ministries. Since two (the priestly levels of bishop and priest) cannot be conferred on women, then neither can the third, diaconate.  The three are, as Lumen gentium describes, intimately related.

Because Orders is one sacrament and not three, women can’t be ordained.

The always invalid attempt to ordain a woman to any of the sacred orders incurs, by the very fact of the attempt, an excommunication. HERE  This is one of the rare instances of automatic or latae sententiae excommunication.  This sort of excommunication is applied for very grave sins.  It’s right up there with desecration of the Eucharist and the direct violation of the Seal of Confession. It is followed up with an explicit, declared excommunication.  The lifting of the excommunication is reserved to the Holy See alone.

The purpose of the censure is to bring the people back to their senses and to repentance and reconciliation as well as to let the faithful know that the sin must never be emulated (thus, to avoid scandal).

Some will say that, because Francis appointed a couple of committees to study the topic of female diaconate from historical and theological viewpoints, it must be possible.  No.  The fact that committees study questions doesn’t imply that it is possible.  It implies that the members are studying the topic.  The committees had/have zero authority to declare anything.

Some will say that there were female deacons (aka deaconesses or, more pleasantly “deaconettes”) in some places in the ancient Church.

Firstly, the practice was isolated and varying.  In fact, we don’t know what they were, though in general they were involved mostly with women, for obvious reasons.

Next, the practice quickly faded out, which sure means something.  Among other things, that suggests that engaging deaconettes was not of divine origin (as is the Sacrament of Orders).

Moreover, it is without question that when someone pushes for the ordination of women to the diaconate, the real objective is priesthood.  They can deny it all they want, but that’s what’s really going on.

The best thing written to date about women and the diaconate, Deaconesses: An Historical Study by Aime G. Martimort (French 1982 & English – Ignatius Press, 1986) [US HERE – UK HERE]

Martimort explains that there isn’t any reliable evidence for their early practice.  Moreover, they were explicitly forbidden from the 5th century onward.  In the 12th c. there was discussion of deaconettes in strict cloisters, but reading on in Martimort we find that even that seems dodgy.  Martimort concludes:

“Even though it is not always easy to fix the exact date of its desuetude in the various churches, it does seem pretty clear that, by the end of the tenth or eleventh centuries, deaconesses had pretty much disappeared in the East, even though the memory of them continued, anachronistically, to be revived in the recopying of liturgical books, and – in a defective and imprecise fashion – in the tradition of canonists.”

A former professor of mine in Rome, Fr. Giles Pelland, SJ explains:

In order to speak of a “tradition” or “practice” of the Church, it is not enough to point out a certain number of cases spread over a period of four or five centuries. One would have to show, insofar as one can, that these cases correspond to a practice accepted by the Church at the time. Otherwise, we would only have the opinion of a theologian (however prestigious), or information about a local tradition at a certain moment in its history—which obviously does not have the same weight.  (L’Osservatore Romano, English Edition, February 2, 2000, p. 9, quoted in the legendary “Five Cardinals Book”.)

In a nutshell, it is possible to find any number of isolated incidents of this or that aberrant practice in the ancient Church.

We see this in our own day.  Just because some group does or says X today doesn’t mean that it is – or was – accepted Catholic practice or teaching.  A serious problem arises when you try to found your arguments on those isolated aberrant practices as if they were accepted.

Oh… yes… there’s this.  From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

1570 Deacons share in Christ’s mission and grace in a special way. The sacrament of Holy Orders marks them with an imprint (“character”) which cannot be removed and which configures them to Christ, who made himself the “deacon” or servant of all. Among other tasks, it is the task of deacons to assist the bishop and priests in the celebration of the divine mysteries, above all the Eucharist, in the distribution of Holy Communion, in assisting at and blessing marriages, in the proclamation of the Gospel and preaching, in presiding over funerals, and in dedicating themselves to the various ministries of charity.

So, deacons are ordained for various roles, including preaching.  However,

We read in 1 Cor 14:

As in all the churches of the saints, ³⁴ the women should keep silence in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as even the law says. ³⁵ If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

How would that work out for deaconettes?

We can grant that Paul is writing to the Corinthians of his day, but that seems to be a pretty general principle, not meant for his time only and that place only.  Women cannot preach in the “churches”.  Ekklesia here surely means the assembly of Christians for worship, not just any gathering of Christians. Speaking here would then mean the vocal prayer and explanation of the Faith and exhortation to the Christian life: preaching.

In any event, no, there never have been truly, sacramentally ordained women deacons.  There aren’t any now, and there never will be any.  It’s impossible.  It seems to me so impossible that a group attempting such a thing probably would not be a real Church, in the sense that the Church intends by the word, laid out in Dominus Iesus.