FOOD FOR THOUGHT
What is a deacon?
A page on the website of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops provides a Q&A on the identity and role of the deacon in the Catholic Church.
A deacon “is an ordained minister of the Catholic Church,” it says. Before the Second Vatican Council, the diaconate was solely a transitional state before ordination to the priesthood. Now there is also a permanent diaconate as it existed in the early years of the church.
The USCCB website notes that as ministers of word, “deacons proclaim the Gospel, preach and teach in the name of the church.”
As ministers of sacrament, “deacons baptize, lead the faithful in prayer, witness marriages, and conduct wake and funeral services.”
As ministers of charity, “deacons are leaders in identifying the needs of others, then marshaling the church’s resources to meet those needs.”
“In keeping with the ancient tradition of the church, in which married men were ordained into ministry” as deacons, present-day deacons can be married, notes the website.
Deacons and the question of women deacons
By David Gibson | Catholic News Service
At the beginning of the day I like to have some idea of what has to get done during the waking hours ahead: where I need to be and when; what I must accomplish to retain some semblance of order in my existence; and, of course, what I can safely put off until tomorrow.
It’s not that I require a rigidly controlled schedule. But in modest ways I aspire to establish some mastery over my time.
Pope Francis challenged this approach to daily life when he spoke May 29, 2016, in St. Peter’s Square during a Year of Mercy event for permanent deacons, their wives and other family members. His topic was the service to the needs of others that all followers of Christ are called to practice and that the church’s ordained deacons particularly are asked to model for others and to foster throughout the church.
The word “deacon” is derived from a Greek term referring to someone who serves. New Testament deacons, for example, worked at assuring that food was distributed equitably to widows in the community (Acts 6:1-6).
The picture Pope Francis drew of a Christian who serves might startle a few of us in its demands. Gone with the wind, so to speak, was my hope of days shaped by a few set objectives.
“One who serves cannot hoard his free time; he has to give up the idea of being the master of his day,” the pope said. Those who serve, he continued, must be “ready to deal with the unexpected” and remain “ever available” to their “brothers and sisters.”
Naturally, generous availability to others sometimes means “setting aside” something one “likes to do or giving up some well-deserved rest.”
If the pope directed these comments on service particularly to deacons, he also had the rest of the church in mind. This is not surprising. The deacon’s role expands outward, highlighting a basic Christian aversion to whatever ignores the authentic needs of the living, breathing human beings who surround us all.
An ordained permanent diaconate was restored in the church soon after the 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council. Now, more than 50 years after the council, many Catholics are accustomed to seeing deacons, many of whom work in parishes. Permanent deacons fulfill roles in Sunday worship, education, charitable action and in certain cases as parish administrators.
The permanent diaconate made headlines May 12, though not the diaconate of men. During a Rome meeting of superiors of women’s religious orders around the world, Pope Francis was asked what prevents the church from welcoming women into the permanent diaconate.
The query came during a question-and-answer session with members of the International Union of Superiors General. Other questions that day inquired about women’s broader roles in church or society and women’s gifts for leadership.
“I would like to constitute an official commission to study the question” of women and the diaconate, Pope Francis responded to the religious-order superiors. He thought it would “be useful to have a commission that clarifies this area properly, especially with regard to the early times of the church.”
Pope Francis acknowledged that deaconesses were known in the church’s early days. He suggested they had roles assisting other women during baptisms by immersion, for example, and in other contexts.
He asked: “What were these deaconesses? Were they ordained or not?”
I cannot predict where a study of women in the diaconate might lead. Pope Francis did not speak of ordaining women deacons.
Notably, the International Theological Commission, an advisory body for the Vatican doctrinal congregation, concluded in a 2002 study that the ministry of deaconesses in the early church “was not perceived as simply the feminine equivalent of the masculine diaconate.”
Also notable was that during his session with the religious-order superiors, Pope Francis was at pains to distinguish the issue of women in the diaconate from other issues related to women’s leadership roles and the necessity of including women in church decision-making.
“Women see things with an originality different from that of men, and this is enriching in consultation and decision-making,” said Pope Francis. “We must move forward” with making women’s voices heard in “decision-making processes,” he stressed.
Pope Francis remarked that a woman fulfills roles in the church as “a right” — her “right as a baptized person with the charisms and gifts that the Spirit has given.”
The impact of a study of women in the diaconate undoubtedly will be felt throughout the church. Why is that? Because whenever the diaconate is scrutinized, the diaconal roles of every member of the body of Christ tend to receive renewed attention.
The International Theological Commission concluded its 2002 study of the diaconate by noting that “ever since Vatican II the active presence” of a permanent diaconate “has aroused … a more vivid awareness of the value of service for Christian life.”
As Pope Francis said to the religious-order superiors, “Your work, my work and the work of all of us is one of service.”
Gibson served on Catholic News Service’s editorial staff for 37 years.
Deacons: Servants in a servant church
By Mike Nelson | Catholic News Service
Several years ago, my son and I attended Sunday Mass at a parish close to home, though it wasn’t our home parish. My wife, recovering from serious surgery a few days earlier, stayed home and asked us to find someone to bring her Communion.
After Mass, I approached a friend at the parish and explained the situation. Without hesitation, she tracked down the deacon who had served the liturgy and introduced him to me.
“I know we just met,” I said, “but do you think you could come to our house sometime today and bring Communion to my wife, who’s just had surgery?”
The deacon (also named Mike) looked me in the eye and nodded. “I think I can do that,” he smiled. “Would 2 o’clock be OK?” At the appointed hour, the deacon arrived at our home, greeted my wife, prayed with us and gave her Communion.
This man, within just a few minutes’ time, exemplified for me the ministry of the permanent diaconate, as defined in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (No. 1588): “They are dedicated to the people of God, in conjunction with the bishop and his body of priests, in the service of the liturgy, of the Gospel and of works of charity.”
It is a teaching rooted in the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, which restored the permanent diaconate: “Dedicated to duties of charity and of administration, let deacons be mindful of the admonition of Blessed Polycarp: ‘Be merciful, diligent, walking according to the truth of the Lord, who became the servant of all.'”
The U.S. bishops define the role succinctly: “The deacon, in virtue of his sacramental ordination and through his various ministries, is to be a servant in a servant church.”
Through my work as a Catholic journalist and as a member of several parishes through the years, I have been privileged to know and work with literally dozens of permanent deacons and reported on the ordination of many (including 64 at once, in 2007 in Santa Barbara, California).
I have always found the most powerful moment of the ordination liturgy to be the presentation of the Book of the Gospels to the deacons, near the end of the rite of ordination. As they receive the book, these men receive a powerful admonition from their bishop: “Believe what you read, teach what you believe and practice what you teach.”
For me, it is a moment to reflect on my own call to ministry, a reminder that all of us, as ministers, are servants of the Lord, regardless of our role. That is both humbling and uplifting for me. I pray for the deacons.
They come from all walks of life — insurance salesman, building contractor, educator, doctor, maintenance worker and more — and all have been active for many years in their respective parishes.
Collectively, they serve in a variety of parish ministries — in outreach to the sick or imprisoned, in religious education and Christian initiation, even in administration. In the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, some deacons serve as assistants to the auxiliary bishops in the five pastoral regions and as master of ceremonies at liturgies these bishops celebrate.
One of the kindest and humblest deacons I ever knew — not exactly a young man — drove 60 miles daily from the Ventura County suburbs to South Los Angeles to coordinate a community-services program for the underserved. His wife, an absolute sweetheart, assisted him in this ministry and also was a spiritual director, served on a local fair-housing council and was active in their parish.
Theirs, like that of so many deacons and wives I have known, was a ministry of joyful and loving service to God’s people, models for all who serve in any ministry of the church.
Nelson is former editor of The Tidings, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
Deacons and their service to the church
By Daniel S. Mulhall | Catholic News Service
The order of ministry known as the diaconate is among the oldest in Christianity, as is recorded in Acts 6:1-7. Deacons were selected from among the community to assist the apostles in their work:
“Brothers, select from among you seven reputable men, filled with the Spirit and wisdom, whom we shall appoint to this task, whereas we shall devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word” (Acts 6:3-4).
From its inception then, the ministry of the deacon has been closely connected to the role of the apostles and the bishops who have been appointed as their successors. This closeness is articulated in 1 Timothy 3, where St. Paul first lays out the qualifications for those to be chosen as bishop and immediately follows that with the qualifications for those to be chosen as deacons.
“Deacons,” Paul writes, “must be dignified, not deceitful, not addicted to drink, not greedy for sordid gain.” They are to hold “fast to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience.” They are to be married only once, and do a good job of managing their children and their households. As their reward, deacons will “gain good standing and much confidence in their faith in Christ Jesus” (1 Tm 3:8-13).
Lately, there has been discussion about women as deacons, and that idea finds some support in this passage, for St. Paul, when describing the qualifications for a deacon also writes, “Women, similarly, should be dignified, not slanderers, but temperate and faithful in everything” (1 Tm 3:11).
No other explanation is provided on the topic, although in Romans 16:1, Phoebe is named as “a minister of the church at Cenchreae.” A note in the New American Bible explains that the word “minister” translates the Greek word, “diakonos,” from which the word “deacon” comes.
William Ditewig, former director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Secretariat on the Diaconate — and also a deacon — says that while it is “next to impossible to describe (much less define) specific details” of the diaconate in the early days of the church, several themes emerge.
The first is that the deacon is always associated with the ministry of the apostles. Ditewig says the “unique and direct relationship of deacons with their bishop” (as noted in 1 Tm 3) has “traversed the centuries” and continues even today.
Ditewig notes that this close connection is expressed liturgically at the ordination of deacons today, where “only the ordaining bishop lays hands on the head of the ordinand.” This liturgical symbol illustrates that the role of the deacon is a “primary extension of the apostolic ministry of the bishop.”
The second theme, Ditewig says, is that the role of the deacon is “always associated with the ‘temporalities’ of the church.”
Deacons have always had “a particular responsibility for the stewardship of the church’s goods and treasures, with a special focus on making sure that those most in need receive the aid they need from the goods of the church.”
And after nearly 2,000 years, deacons continue to minister in service to the church.
Mulhall is a catechist and a freelance writer who lives in Louisville, Kentucky.