Molly Cahill: Women deacons. They are the subject of a growing debate in the Catholic Church. So much so, that Pope Francis established multiple Vatican commissions to study them.
Currently, the Catholic Church does not ordain women as deacons. But there is significant historical evidence for them. And though women deacons disappeared in the 12th century, no definitive prohibition to ordaining women as deacons was ever issued by a pope, or Vatican decree, until…
Clip from “Pope Francis: The First with Norah O’Donnell, CBS News, April 24, 2024
Norah O'Donnell: “For a little girl growing up Catholic today, will she ever have the opportunity to be a deacon and participate as a clergy member in the church?”
Pope Francis: “No.”
Molly Cahill: Pope Francis’ comments in April 2024 came as a surprise, given his general encouragement of open dialogue in the church.
Sheila Pires: That was an answer to an interview. It is not a decree or anything like that from Pope Francis. It was sim- a simple answer to an interview.
Bishop W. Shawn McKnight: He has made his mind clear, which is helpful. But he has not asked us to stop talking or thinking about it.
Molly Cahill: That’s probably why his comments have not deterred many Catholics from continuing to discuss, debate and discern the prospect of restoring women deacons. Could women deacons make a comeback in the Catholic Church?
1. What is a deacon?
Molly Cahill: The word “deacon” comes from the Greek word “diakonos,” which means “servant.”
Deacon William Ditewig, PhD:A deacon serves in three major areas, as do all the ordained: of word, sacrament and charity.
Molly Cahill: A deacon is an ordained minister in the Catholic Church, who serves under the authority of a Bishop. They are distinct from priests, who preside at the Eucharist, acting in the person of Christ. Deacons do works of charity and service. They proclaim the gospel, preach and assist during Mass. They also bless marriages, and preside over baptisms and funerals. Today, only baptized men can be deacons. They are usually married with families.
Along with priests and bishops, deacons are “ordained,” which refers to an official sacred act of consecration into the clerical structure of the church. In other words, deacons become members of the hierarchy, along with priests and bishops. Sacramental ordination involves the bishop reciting a special prayer and laying hands on the deacon’s head. Catholics believe that, through ordination, the Holy Spirit blesses and gifts the deacon with an empowering grace for lifelong ministry.
2. In the beginning, there were deacons
Molly Cahill: The unique ministry of deacons has a long and widespread history in the Catholic Church. There are numerous references to deacons in the New Testament, and many more in early Christian writings. Deacons were distinct from priests, and ministered at the right hand of the bishop. It was a unique and recognized role in the community.
Bishop W. Shawn McKnight: There was a cultural understanding of that term, a secular, if you will, meaning to it, that anybody who performed a function like an emissary or ambassador, that fulfilled the charge of someone higher in authority, that they could have that term associated with them while they did the service.
Deacon William Ditewig, PhD: Almost universally within the Patristic sources, the Ministry of Deacon is compared to the Ministry of Christ. That's almost surprising when you first read it, because we're used to associating Christ’s ministry with priests.
Molly Cahill: And, like priests and bishops, deacons trace their roots back to the Christian Scriptures.
Molly Cahill: Interestingly, the oldest reference, and the only deacon mentioned by name in the New Testament is a woman, Phoebe. Paul, the great Christian missionary, entrusted Phoebe to deliver a letter he wrote to the Christians in Rome, around the year 57 or 58.
“I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church at Cenchreae, so that you may welcome her in the Lord as is fitting for the saints, and help her in whatever she may require from you, for she has been a benefactor of many and of myself as well.” (Romans 16:1-2)
Molly Cahill: At such an early stage, it’s difficult to know exactly what defined a “deacon,” like Phoebe. There’s a story in the Acts of the Apostles which describes the earliest Christian community choosing “seven men of good standing, full of the Spirit and of wisdom,” to distribute food, so that the Apostles can devote themselves “to prayer and to serving the word.” The chosen men, the text tells us, “stand before the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them” (Acts 6:1-6).
Bishop W. Shawn McKnight: Deacons were performing a ministry that the apostles understood to be their obligation. And that's why they asked for assistance; auxiliaries to help them with their responsibility as something less than the heads of the community. But being empowered with the gifts of the Holy Spirit for a function that helps preserve the communion of the church.
Molly Cahill: This became a foundational text for the Catholic Church’s understanding of deacons and their ministry. Did Phoebe exercise the same ministry? We don’t know. But the fact that Paul, an Apostle, acknowledges Phoebe as “sister," "deacon" and "patron,” suggests at least a general awareness and recognition of a unique ministry open to women in the earliest Christian communities.
3. The complicated history of women deacons
Deacon Williams Ditewig, PhD: As far as I can tell from the history, in terms of women in the diaconate, some places had them, other communities did not. The diaconate just like the Episcopate and the Presbyterate is not a monolithic exercise.
Molly Cahill: For the first 12 centuries of Christianity, there were women who were called “deacons.” Influential church fathers like Origen and St. John Chrysostom argued that women were and should be deacons.
So, what does the historical record tell us about them? They worked closely with the bishops, and exercised a wide range of ministries including baptizing other women, preaching, and organizing works of charity. We know of these women through numerous references in papal letters, synods, chronicles, pastoral manuals, legislative texts and inscriptions.
Records of ancient and medieval ordination rites show that some bishops did ordain women as deacons: in the sanctuary, through the laying on of hands while invoking the Holy Spirit. The bishop would place a stole around their necks, and the women would communicate from the chalice during Mass.
But the history is… complicated…
Not all women deacons were ordained in this way, and both historians and theologians disagree on whether those ordinations were the same as sacramental ordinations for male deacons. It’s also important to note that women deacons were not present throughout the church. And their duties and functions could differ from place to place. In other words, there was no uniform expression of women deacons in the first millennium of Christianity.
So why did women deacons eventually disappear?
4. The decline of women deacons
Deacon Williams Ditewig, PhD: Around the 11th or 12th century, the theology of orders changed dramatically. At that point, the priesthood emerged as sort of the ultimate rank. I mean, yes, you had bishops, but it was becoming the priest. And everything, including diaconate, became subordinate to that.
Molly Cahill: This period saw significant developments in sacramental theology. Ordination to the priesthood came to be understood as God making an indelible mark on the man, setting him apart from others in the community. The bishop and priests had always exercised oversight, while the deacons were ordained and commissioned, in service of that authority. But the theology of this period reinforced and elevated the priests’ unique status in the church.
And there were other reasons for the decline. Some scholars point to the revision of baptism rituals, so that women deacons were no longer needed to administer female baptisms. Some deaconesses joined convents as religious orders expanded. The church also began to emphasize ancient purity laws, which meant that women could not enter the sanctuary to assist at the altar. And since tradition held that deacons served at the priest’s side at the altar––the argument went––women could not be, and must not have ever been, deacons.
Even male deacons ceased to exist as they had in the past. The diaconate became a transitional ordination and ministry; a step in the process of becoming a priest.
5. The renewal of the diaconate
Molly Cahill: For 800 years, there were no permanent deacons in the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church. But in the 1960s, during the Second Vatican Council, Catholic Bishops from around the world voted to renew the ancient ministry.
Deacon Williams Ditewig, PhD: None of them had ever known a permanent deacon. None of them had ever served with one. Where they got their reflection from was the experience largely of priest survivors from the concentration camps of World War II. They're the ones who kind of said, we didn't need the fancy buildings, and we didn't need the fancy vestments. What we need to have are people that model the image of Christ, the servant who poured himself out for the good of others. And that's why we need deacons today. Not in place of priests, or not to complement, but to work together, and to present that fuller, richer image of Christ to the world.
Bishop W. Shawn McKnight: In reading the debates that took place during the council about the restoration of a permanent diaconate there was an element of the Holy Spirit of something being involved here based upon our discovery of early church sources that we hadn't had for centuries.
Molly Cahill: The bishops of the Council wrote:
“At a lower level of the hierarchy are deacons, upon whom hands are imposed not unto the priesthood, but unto a ministry of service. For strengthened by sacramental grace, in communion with the bishop and his group of priests they serve in the diaconate of the liturgy, of the word, and of charity to the people of God.” (Lumen Gentium #29)
At the council, the bishops renewed the diaconate for men. Part of the rationale was that lay men were already functioning as deacons:
“… either preaching the word of God as catechists, or presiding over scattered Christian communities in the name of the pastor and the bishop, or practicing charity in social or relief work. It is only right to strengthen them by the imposition of hands which has come down from the Apostles, and to bind them more closely to the altar, that they may carry out their ministry more effectively because of the sacramental grace of the diaconate.” (Ad Gentes #16)
Molly Cahill: The Second Vatican Council did not discuss restoring women to the diaconate. But in the decades that followed, a major debate emerged about women’s ordination to the priesthood.
Between 1976 and 2010, multiple statements from the Vatican ruled out ordaining women as priests, but they never ruled out women’s ordination to the diaconate. In 2002, after a 10-year study, the Vatican’s International Theological Commission concluded:
“With regard to the ordination of women to the diaconate… it pertains to the ministry of discernment which the Lord established in his Church to pronounce authoritatively on this question.” (International Theological Commission, “From the Diakonia of Christ to the Diakonia of the Apostles,” 2002)
6. “Why not set up a commission?”
Clip from: “Pope creates commission to study history of female deacons,” August 2016
Delia Gallagher: “Pope Francis has named a 12-member commission––6 men and 6 women––to study the historical question of women deacons in the early church.”
Molly Cahill: In 2016, the leaders of women’s religious orders from around the world asked Pope Francis to establish a papal commission to study women deacons. And he did. The commission was not tasked with making a recommendation, but with studying the history, to see if a clear picture emerged. Within two years, they submitted an initial report to the pope. It has yet to be released publicly. But we know that they did not reach a consensus.
Clip from “Pope Francis on women deacons,” May 7, 2019 Pope Francis: “They were all able to agree up to a certain point.”
“What is fundamental is that there was no certainty that there was an ordination with the same form and same aim as the ordination of men.”
Molly Cahill: A few months later a major synod on the Amazon was held at the Vatican. It became evident that a majority of the bishops present were in favor of opening the diaconate to women, because of the fundamental roles women already have in the region. The synod asked the Pope to continue studying the question.
Clip from “Closing Address of Pope Francis at the Pan-Amazon Synod,” October 26, 2019 Pope Francis: “I welcome the request to reconvene the Commission and perhaps expand it with new members in order to continue to study the permanent diaconate that existed in the early Church.”
“I welcome the challenge that you have given me, ‘and that they may be heard.’ I accept the challenge.” [Applause]
Molly Cahill: Pope Francis followed up in April of 2020, establishing a new commission, with all new members. Unlike the first commission, this one was tasked with studying key theological questions, and with making recommendations. The Covid-19 pandemic initially delayed the commission’s work, but it did complete its mandate and submitted a report to the pope. To date, that report has not been made public.
Aside from the two commissions, Pope Francis has invited the Catholic Church to become more collaborative in its discernment and decision-making. Starting in 2021, every Catholic around the world could share their perspective through local consultations that culminated in two synods at the Vatican in 2023 and 2024. Almost all of the reports from around the world raised concern that women are not valued or involved in decision-making. Women deacons became a major topic of discussion.
Sheila Pires: I was really surprised that I was so free to say what was on my mind and to speak without being judged, without being looked down at, especially when I would find myself in a group where I was the only woman, and everybody else around me were cardinals, bishops, and archbishops and patriarchs.
During those moments where we could have individual sharing, that was when you could hear these suggestions coming forward. And these were coming mainly from women that were at the synod.
Molly Cahill: At the Vatican, synod members deliberated about the issue, and asked that research be continued. Pope Francis then decided to send it to yet another study group.
Sheila Pires: The mere effect that he himself and the Vatican has said that the question of the diaconate of women needs further studying already gives you some hope that, okay, this is not the final decision.
And the working document, in the conversations that we are having in the various webinars as synod delegates and other faithful that are not synod delegates, the question of the diaconate of women is still there.
Clip from “Pope Francis: The First with Norah O’Donnell,” CBS News, April 24, 2024
Nora O’Donnell: “I understand you’ve said, “no women as priests.” But you are studying the idea of women as deacons. Is that something you’re open to?
Pope Francis: “If it is deacons with holy orders, no. But women have always had, I would say, the function of deaconesses without being deacons, right?”
Deacon William Ditewig, PhD: It almost feels like the Pope is suggesting we go back to having like a minor order of deaconess that would not have the full sacramental participation that a deacon or priest or a bishop has.
Molly Cahill: There is growing talk of a possible fourth order for women doing diaconal ministry. It could include many of the functions of deacons, like preaching at Mass, while maintaining the unicity of the Sacrament of Holy Orders, reserved for men. But such an innovation carries its own set of theological complications.
7. Women deacons: to be determined…
Molly Cahill: The decades-long debate about women deacons could be summed up as: to be determined. The pope has not made a decision. The best scholars have studied it exhaustively, but they don’t agree. The tendency has been to focus on history: where did women deacons exist? What did they do? Were they ordained the way male deacons were ordained?
Deacon William Ditewig, PhD:To me, the history seems mixed. But why do we then bind ourselves to that history? History itself is not the determining factor. The determining factor should be theology, not history.
Molly Cahill: One of the key theological questions is the nature of ordination itself. The Catholic Church believes in the unicity of the Sacrament of ordination, which bishops, priests and deacons each receive, to carry out their unique ministries. Bishops and priests are ordained in the priesthood of Christ, to lead the community and celebrate the Eucharist. Deacons are ordained to a broader ministry of service in the community, including preaching and certain sacraments.
Bishop W. Shawn McKnight:If the sacrament of holy orders is one, what's the essence of that unity of the three orders, and how does that also impinge upon this discernment about women deacons today?
Molly Cahill: Since the magisterium has definitively ruled against ordaining women to the priesthood, does the unicity of the three orders necessarily restrict women from being ordained deacons? Or, are the three ministries different enough to allow for the ordination of women deacons without compromising the unicity of the Sacrament?
Bishop W. Shawn McKnight: The more of a distinction you can make theologically between priests and bishops, to those who are deacons; and if you have the reservation to men alone for the priesthood and the episcopate, is there enough separation there to allow for women to be ordained deacons? That's the question.
Deacon William Ditewig, PhD:If you approach unicity of orders, the answer is no. If you support diversity of orders, the answer is yes.
In my reading of the Second Vatican Council, a couple of the major players made strong impassioned pleas for a renewed diaconate based on grace; that the church is entitled to all the grace God gives the church. Now, one of those graces is the grace of diaconate. And secondly, that there are many people already in the church exercising the church's diaconia as laypeople and religious. They should be given the grace and the strengthening from the sacrament in order to do that work and to give them strength in their work. And so I find that argument from the perspective of grace to be very powerful. Do I need ordination to go to the jail and minister to the inmates? No, I can do that as a layperson, but with the grace of the sacrament, I go not only on my own authority, but bringing the church with me as I do it. Plus it gives the strength to keep going, to keep doing that work.
Bishop W. Shawn McKnight: We have women doing deacon-like functions in the church, some in our parishes, some at the diocesan level, some in the mission territories. Would it be a help to the church if they were empowered and blessed with the gifts of the Holy Spirit in order to perform the liturgical functions of a deacon and so forth? Absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. And therefore, if we don't have good reasons to withhold it from them, then that would seem to be contrary to the teaching of the Second Vatican Council.
Molly Cahill: The long discernment about women deacons in the Catholic Church seems destined to roll on. And the longer it rolls on, the more Catholics are becoming engaged.
Sheila Pires: A lot of discussions have been going on about the diaconate of women at the level of conferences, at parish level, at the group discussions. Just small individuals coming together to talk about the church. We are having this conversation and we are eager, we want to know what's going to be the answer.
Molly Cahill: While theologians debate the sticking points at the Vatican, Catholics around the globe are discerning the diaconate based on the serious pastoral needs of their communities, and the need to involve women in leadership and decision-making. In places like the Amazon, women are already taking the lead in ministry: catechising, organizing liturgies and serving the poor.
Sheila Pires: So, women are aware of this, more women are aware of this than before. And even more bishops and priests and the church in general is more aware of this conversation than we were before.
I don't see this discernment around the study of the diaconate of women being dragged on forever. I don't see it that way, no.
Molly Cahill: As the debate continues and expands, the question becomes: For how long can an open discernment go on?
Bishop W. Shawn McKnight: What I am careful about is making sure that we don't try to rush this discernment too quickly because of very strong opinions that we hold either for or against. And we've got to focus primarily on the will of God. What is the mind of Christ in this? What is the movement of the Holy Spirit? Regardless of our preconceived notions and perspectives and maybe even our ideologies, we need to learn how to let them go in order to do the will of God.
Deacon William Ditewig, PhD, is the author of “Courageous Humility: Reflections on the Church, Diakonia and Deacons,” and numerous other books on the diaconate. He is a deacon of the Archdiocese of Washington, DC and holds a BA in Philosophy, an MA in Education, an MA in Pastoral Theology, and the Ph.D. in Theology and Religious Studies from the Catholic University of America.
Bishop W. Shawn McKnight is the bishop of the Diocese of Jefferson City, MO and author of, “Understanding the Diaconate: Historical, Theological, and Sociological Foundations.”
Sheila Pires is the Secretary of the Commission for Information for the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, and a delegate to the synod. She is the Communications Officer for the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference.
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