This is the view of Dr Joe Grayland, theologian, author and parish priest of three parishes in Palmerston North, New Zealand.

He questions whether we need another form of the clergy. - Originally reported 31 May 2021

Grayland made the comments, Thursday, during Flashes of Insight - Women Deacons in the Catholic Church, a conversation with Dr Phyllis Zagano, Emeritus Professor of New Testament at the Ecole Biblique, Justin Taylor and hosted by Emeritus Professor of Historical Theology at the University of Nottingham Thomas O'Loughlin.

Grayland asks if the Church actually needs permanent male or female deacons.

If it does, he suggests we need to change the understanding projected by the transitional diaconate modelled in seminaries.

Grayland says he works with eight women across the three parishes; they serve the community, they work full time, but none are ordained.

We might need more priests, but Grayland says the last thing we need is an expanded clerical class, the permanent diaconate.

It is not a perspective Zagano shares.

Zagano is an internationally recognised scholar, prolific writer and advocate for women deacons.

She says that if anyone wants to be a deacon to get power, they have other issues.

The ministry of the deacon is one of service, she says.

Zagano says it is important to have a specialised view of ministry and that the diaconate should not be limited to in-house Church functions.

Zagano says the office of the deacon is distinct from the function of deacons.

Deacons hold the same office, but their ministry of service would be expressed differently, she said.

She says that if people want to go to confession, they see a priest, and if they go for food, counselling or spiritual direction, deacons can offer the service.

If our prime concern is not to expand the clerical class, why ordain anyone, she asks.

She however noted that if the Church were to reintroduce deacons, there is a question around whether they would be installed or ordained.

Zagano says there is no doubt that women were deacons in the Early Church.

It is a point that Taylor, who works on some of the earliest evidence the Church has, agrees with.

Taylor says that it is clear from both scripture and the documents from the first thousand years that women were deacons.

When the Early Church spoke of deacons, there was no distinction made between male or female.

Taylor says that referencing deacons, men or women, the Early Church saw deacons as officeholders and not just functionaries.

Questioned by O'Loughlin about the future, Grayland says that women's ministry should not be seen as a threat to male in ministry.

He commented when looking at the evidence if the Church is going to have women deacons, the church needs to popularise it as part of the Church evolving.

He says that reflecting on what Zagano and Taylor have discussed; the Church needs to understand that the development of women's diaconate is not a straight-line trajectory but an evolution.

Grayland says he hopes our Church's understanding of women's ministry and women's diaconate will change but wonders why we do not have women deacons now.

Zagano agrees and says we must not go forth in political discussion but with a spirit of discernment.

She says that a wise bishop once wrote to her and says this about discernment.

"Discernment is not an organizational technique, and it's not a passing fashion, but it's an interior attitude rooted in an act of faith."

"Discernment is the method and at the same time the goal."

"It's based on the belief that God is at work in the history of the world in the events of life and the people we meet and who speak to us."

"This is why we are called to listen to what the Spirit suggests to us with often unpredictable ways and directions."

"As one might assume, he's a Jesuit bishop," she says.

Zagano concludes by saying it is important that theologians listen to the People of God and for the People of God to make their needs known.

In a spirit of discernment, Zagano is convinced that if the People of God make their needs known, they will not be denied.

As to the future, Zagano says that we need a genuine discerning discussion, a prayerful discussion, to move to a future where the Church will restore the tradition of women in ministry and the diaconate.

As you know, I belonged to the initial Pontifical Commission for the Study of the Diaconate of Women. We were named in August 2016 and first met in November of that year.

I traveled to Rome several days in advance of the scheduled meeting, so I could recover from jet lag.

As soon as I arrived in Rome, I attended the celebrations honouring the three US bishops—they call bishops "monsignors" in Rome—the three US bishops named cardinals then: Blasé Cupich, Kevin Farrell, and Joseph Tobin.

Arriving in Rome

I resided outside the Vatican at the generalate of the LaSalle Christian Brothers for a few days, and on Thanksgiving Day, 2016, I arrived at the Vatican City gate called Porta Sant'Uffizio, in the Palazzo Sant'Uffizio.

That is the Vatican City gate near the building known in English as The Holy Office, where the business of the Congregation, now Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith takes place.

I presented my passport to the Swiss Guard and was permitted through the gate. I walked past Saint Peter's Basilica on the right and the German cemetery on the left, to the guard booth of the Pontifical Gendarmerie, the Vatican military police.

Again, I presented my passport.

The officer looked at the list of expected guests. He looked at me. He looked again at the list. He looked at me. I asked if there was a problem. No madam, he answered.

But you are listed here as "Monsignor Zagano."

He would not let me take a picture of the list.

I proceeded to Domus Sanctae Marthae, the small guest house where Pope Francis lives, and, as a guest of the Holy Father, was saluted as I entered the building.

The desk clerk greeted me, took my passport, and looked at her list which included "Monsignor Zagano."

She looked at me, looked at her list, looked at me, and we both had a good laugh. She let me get a copy of the list.

That was a Thursday, and my first meal at Domus Sanctae Marthae was Thanksgiving dinner with other guests, including an American Nobel Laureate. This, I thought would be some ride.

My Commission met for the next two days, and again in March 2017, September 2017, and June 2018, for a total of eight days over nearly two years. Of course, there were many, many Zoom meetings and emails during those years.

I suppose you would like to know what we gave to the pope.

So, would I.

I'll get to that.

Women - managers not ministers

The question before us this evening concerns the future of women in the Catholic Church.

Please believe me, the future of women in the Catholic Church is the future of the Catholic Church because the future of the Church depends on women.

Women comprise the largest segment of church-going people in the world, Catholic or not.

In the Catholic Church, women staff the Parish Outreach. Women teach Catechism, Women bring their children to church. Women bring their husbands to Mass, at least on Christmas and Easter.

But women at every level of Church life are restricted to management and cannot perform ministry as it is formally understood.

Let me define the terms.

By "management," I mean all the non-ordained and therefore non-ministerial tasks and duties in Church organisations, from parish centers, to diocesan offices, to episcopal conferences, to the papal Curia.

That includes the parish secretary, the diocesan chancellor, the bishops' conference spokesperson, and every employee of every Vatican dicastery. These, except for the jobs (called "offices") that have legal authority over clerics—over deacons, priests, and bishops—these management positions are jobs that any layperson can have.

I am not saying the people in these jobs (or offices) are not "ministering," for they truly perform "ministry" as the term has been enlarged over the past forty years or so.

Yes, the head of the parish religious education program, the organizer of the diocesan CYO, the employees of the USCCB, and the people in the papal Curia are all "ministering" in a sense. But they are not performing sacramental ministry in the classroom, on the playing field, or behind their desks.

So, by "ministry" I mean sacramental ministry, as performed by ordained deacons, priests, and bishops. You know the differences. Deacons may solemnly baptize and witness marriages.

In addition to these sacraments, priests may anoint the sick (give "last rites"), hear confessions and offer absolution, and celebrate the Eucharist.

Performing confirmations is generally restricted to bishops, who sometimes delegate their authority to confirm to priest-pastors.

All these are "clerics," and as such can legally preach at Masses and serve as single judges in canonical proceedings.

So, "Management" is open to women. "Ministry" is not.

It might be helpful to use the distinctions known in military and business organisations: "management" would be "admin", and "ministry" would be "ops."

That is, "management" handles administrative matters, and "ministry" would be the core operations of the organisation.

The analogy may not be perfect, but the important word here is "admin" or "administration." That is what, in his own words, Pope Francis believes women are capable of.

In November 2022, when the pope met in Domus Sanctae Marta with the editors and writers of America Magazine, the journal's executive editor, Kerry Weber, asked him the following question:

Holy Father, as you know, women have contributed and can contribute much to the life of the church. You have appointed many women at the Vatican, which is great.

Nevertheless, many women feel pain because they cannot be ordained priests. What would you say to a woman who is already serving in the life of the church, but who still feels called to be a priest?

Francis' long and thoughtful answer expanded the notion of "ministry" somewhat.

However, he retained the great divide between the ordained and non-ordained, between those people who are central and those people who are not central to the essential operations of the church, to the ordained tasks and duties of performing sacraments, and (because of their ordained status) of preaching and judging.

That is, Pope Francis clearly distinguished the people who can be ordained—men—from those who cannot be ordained—women.

His comments were based on a theoretical construct presented by the long-dead Swiss priest-theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988), a former Jesuit of whom several prominent theologians are critical.

The Petrine Church and the Marian principle

One theologian central to Vatican doctrine since his appointment to the first iteration of the International Theological Commission (ITC) in 1969, Joseph Ratzinger—the future Benedict XVI- said "[von Balthasar] is right in what he teaches of the faith."

Some of what von Balthasar "taught" is what Francis presented to America Magazine: "the Petrine church" and "the Marian principle.' So, the pope said, "The church is a woman. The church is a spouse."

Specifically, in response to the question about ordaining women, Francis distinguished the "ministerial dimension, [which] is that of the Petrine church" from "the Marian principle, which is the principle of femininity (femineidad) in the church, of the woman in the church, where the church sees a mirror of herself because she [the church] is a woman and a spouse."

The pope continued, describing the church as female, and then said, "There is a third way: the administrative way….it is something of normal administration. And, in this aspect, I believe we have to give more space to women."

Francis went on to extol the "functioning" of women in management, summing up his comments by saying, "So there are three principles, two theological and one administrative."

To sum up his belief, the "Petrine principle" covers ministry and the "Marian principle" presents the church as "spouse" and these two so-called "theological principles" are complemented by the "administrative principle" to which women are suited.

Francis concluded by asking, "Why can a woman not enter ordained ministry? It is because the Petrine principle has no place for that."

The Executive Editor of America Magazine, Kerry Weber (a woman) did not ask a follow-up question.

We can return to the question of women in ministry, but let us examine women in management more closely, the idea that women exemplify the "administrative principle" that Francis presented that late November day in 2022.

Management

The Church has advanced somewhat in its inclusion of women in management, in administrative positions in local dioceses.

For example, in the United States today, 54 women serve as diocesan chancellor, an important, non-ministerial position. (c.f. The Official Catholic Directory, Athens, GA: NRP Direct, 2023. There are 28.73% Latin Rite and 11.11% Eastern Rite female chancellors. In Latin Rite dioceses, 23, or 12.71% of chancellors are deacons, none in Eastern Rite dioceses.)

The chancellor is the senior administrative officer, the highest-placed office manager of a diocese, but the chancellor—in his or her role—is not performing "ministry" as it is formally defined, and the chancellor has no jurisdictional authority.

In Rome, especially in the Roman Curia, the question of women in managerial or administrative positions gets complicated.

We know women have been appointed to positions in the Curia, but these appointments are not to offices with jurisdiction. It is important to remember that only persons with jurisdiction can make decisions.

The easiest way to understand the situation is to look at the Instrumentum Laboris—the working document-for the coming session of the Synod of Bishops this October (2024):

In a synodal Church, the responsibility of the bishop, the College of bishops and the Roman Pontiff to make decisions is inalienable since it is rooted in the hierarchical structure of the Church established by Christ." (IL #70)

Listen carefully: "the responsibility…to make decisions is inalienable since it is rooted in the hierarchical structure of the Church."

And who makes up the hierarchy? The hierarchy is the ordained men of the Church.

The paragraph asserting the "inalienable" right of the clergy to make decisions underscores the "you discern, we decide" fact of ecclesiastical discipline, of church law.

Its roots are in Canons 129 and 274 of the Code of Canon Law. (Can. 129 §1. Those who have received sacred orders are qualified, according to the norm of the prescripts of the law, for the power of governance, which exists in the Church by divine institution and is also called the power of jurisdiction. §2. Lay members of the Christian faithful can cooperate in the exercise of this same power according to the norm of law. Can. 274 §1. Only clerics can obtain offices for whose exercise the power of orders or the power of ecclesiastical governance is required.)

Canon 129 states that ordained persons are qualified for the powers of governance and jurisdiction, and that lay persons can "cooperate" in this power.

Canon 274 states that only clerics can obtain offices requiring the power of orders or governance (or jurisdiction.)

But this same paragraph in the coming Synod meeting's Instrumentum Laboris later goes on to give ample room to the actual process of synodal discernment and it even throws a lifeline to the non-ordained of the Church.

The paragraph ends by suggesting the Code of Canon Law restricting the non-ordained to a "consultative vote only" (tantum consultivum) should be, in its words, "corrected."

It remains to be seen what correction could be made. As the synodal processes in Australia and Germany, for example, have proven, requests for change meet great resistance, and at least in the case of Germany rebuke, from Rome.

Having said all this, we must acknowledge the fact that there are more women in more responsible managerial roles in the Roman Curia than during prior pontificates.

The Roman Curia comprises the staff offices for Pope Francis, each managing a specific part of the Church's organisational needs, for example, the choosing of bishops, matters involving other clergy and religious, oversight of finances, and the operations of Vatican City State, from managing the library and museums to overseeing the pope's representatives (called papal nuncios) abroad, etc.

In the Roman Curia, there are sixteen curial offices called dicasteries.

There are also the Secretariate of State, three Institutions of Justice (Apostolic Penitentiary, the Supreme Tribunal, the Tribunal of the Roman Rota), four Institutions of Finance (Council for the Economy, Secretariat for the Economy, the Office of the Auditor General, and the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (A.P.S.A.)).

Of these, only A.P.S.A. has a woman undersecretary, Sister Silvana Piro, F.M.G.B

Curial offices with women as senior officers include:

• the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (Secretary Sister Simona Brambilla, M.C.; Under Secretary Sister Carmen Ros Nortes, N.S.C.),
• the Dicastery for the Laity, the Family, and Life (Under Secretaries Dr. Linda Ghisoni and Dr. Gabriella Gambino),
• the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development (Secretary, Sister Alessandra Smerilli, FMA). These women hold paid professional appointments.

Other dicasteries of the Roman Curia have women who are termed "members," and who, alongside clerics (usually cardinals and bishops), largely act as trustees for the dicasteries' work and who meet in Rome from time to time.

All dicasteries have female staff who assist with day-to-day operations, as clerks, secretaries, and translators, but clerics retain the overall organisational power in the Vatican.

While women are also members of Councils and Commissions, for the most part, these are not full-time professional appointments. For example, one of Pope Francis' initial endeavors was to regularise Vatican finances, and so within one year of his election, he established the Council for the Economy, as mentioned earlier.

The title of Pope Francis's Apostolic Letter establishing the Council for the Economy as a dicastery of the Roman Curia is Fidelis Dispensator et Prudens, (faithful and wise manager).

The fifteen-member Council for the Economy has consistently maintained a clerical majority and is coordinated by a cardinal. However, its website describes seven members as "experts of various nationalities, with financial expertise and recognised professionalism," and six of those seven are women, each a financial professional.

Its deputy coordinator, Dr Charlotte Kreuter-Kirchhof, is a law professor who is also an advisor to the "Women in Church and Society" sub-commission of the Pastoral Commission of the German Bishops' Conference.

As you move down the Vatican's wire diagram to the groups with a consultative role, more women are present in "titled" roles.

The Secretary for the Pontifical Commission for Latin America is Argentinian Dr Emilce Cuda, and the Adjunct Secretary for the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors is American Dr Teresa Kettelkamp.

The Secretary of the Pontifical Biblical Commission is Spaniard Dr Nuria Calduch-Benages, a well-known biblical scholar and professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

Dr Calduch-Benages is the unpaid Secretary of the Pontifical Biblical Commission. I do not know if Dr Cuda or Dr Kettlekamp is paid.

You see, not every Vatican appointment comes with a salary.

The voluntary nature of participation in certain positions in the Vatican increases as the commissions and institutes that are ad hoc, or adjunct, to one or another dicastery proliferate.

While participation is unpaid, travel expenses are covered, including (if needed) a few nights' lodging in Domus Sanctae Marthae. However, budgetary and language restrictions within the Vatican cause a significant default to choosing participants and members already residing in Rome and its environs.

And it is important to recall that women -whether secular or religious women - have no guarantee of ecclesiastical salaries outside their voluntary Vatican work.

So even if chosen, it is sometimes difficult for a woman to accept a consultative Vatican appointment.

So, yes, there are many women involved in Vatican operations. Those central to actual management functions of the Curia are salaried Italian women, including many religious sisters, and others fluent in Italian.

Those in more consultative roles are from a larger pool of qualified individuals. Those in even more peripheral positions, such as the members of the two Pontifical Commissions for the Study of the Diaconate of Women, include more women.

But even the commission I served on was comprised of members of other, more permanent Vatican commissions, or they were members of university faculties in Rome. Except me. I was the only member of my commission with no Roman or Vatican connection.

Ministry

The Commission I served on was about ministry as the Vatican formally defined it then and how the Vatican realistically defines it to this day. If you ask the folks at Merriam-Webster, "ministry" comprises the office, duties, or functions of a minister.

That is, ministry is about the office, duties, or functions of a member of the clergy.

As I noted earlier, Pope Francis seems to depend on categories invented by Hans Urs von Balthasar, categories the pope calls "theological."

He said the ministerial dimension is that of the Petrine church and the Marian principle is the principle of femininity in the Church. That appears to eliminate women.

As grating as these categories are, it is important at this point to recall how Pope Francis has referred to women from the very beginning of his pontificate.

In May 2013, during his first address to the International Union of Superiors General, Francis recommended that the sisters be mothers, not old maids.

His repeated "jokes" and other comments about women have fallen flat time after time.

Who can forget his calling women theologians the "strawberries on the cake"? That was ten years ago, but it signaled one way Francis saw women professionals then.

What about now?

Francis has repeated his feminine analogies about the Church.

Just last March, in an address to participants in a conference entitled "Women in the Church: Builders of Humanity," the pope said, "The Church is herself a woman: a daughter, a bride and a mother."

While the qualities he attributes to women are laudable for everyone, he emphasises two aspects of "women's vocation": style and education. He notes that "style" includes the ability "to bring love where love is lacking, and humanity where human beings are searching to find their true identity."

He speaks directly to the conference participants about "education," expressing his hope that "educational settings, in addition to being places of study, research and learning, places of ‘information,' will also be places of ‘formation,' where minds and hearts are opened to the promptings of the Holy Spirit."

Without digressing to the 1967 Land O'Lakes Statement and its controversy or Pope John Paul II's Apostolic Constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae on Catholic universities, I must note here the distinction between theology and apologetics, as well as the tasks and duties of the diaconate.

As for Catholic education, the fact of the formative influence of Catholic education cannot be disparaged nor denied, but theology is not apologetics.

As for the diaconate, the deacon is ordained to the ministries of the Word, the liturgy, and charity. If we consider the historical position of the deacon as the principal coordinator of the charity of the Church, then the duty of the deacon to proclaim and preach the Word in the liturgy becomes evident.

If we apply the pope's words to the diaconal ministry of women throughout the centuries, in the West up through the mid-12th century, we can see that it was women deacons who brought love where love was lacking and who provided formation to women and children.

We know women were ordained in Lucca, Italy in the mid-1100s, but realistically in the 12th century, no person who was not destined for priestly ordination could be ordained deacon.

Since by that time, most women deacons were monastics, with few serving as what might be termed "social service" deacons, and because the diaconate as exercised by men had become mostly ceremonial and generally moribund, the sacramental ordination of women to the diaconate ceased in the West.

I spoke at length about women in management. But what about women in ministry?

It is impossible to ignore Pope Francis' emphatic "no" when he was asked in a CBS television interview about the sacramental ordination of women as deacons.

He seemed to support his "no" with his opinion that the "deaconesses" in the early church—and "deaconess" is the word he used—that the "deaconesses" in the early church served diaconal "functions" without being sacramentally ordained.

That understanding is not supported by scholarship.

A little recent history

Since 1971, the Church has, at various times and various levels, directly discussed the ordination of women as deacons.

In 1971, the second meeting of the Synod of Bishops included substantial discussion about women in ordained ministry.

By 1973, Pope Paul VI established a Commission on the Role of Women in Church and in Society, which met intermittently over a period of two years. In that Commission, the question of women priests was immediately off the table.

But at its first meeting, one of the commission's fourteen women members asked to discuss women deacons.

The Commission's president, an Italian archbishop, immediately closed the discussion.

He said the diaconate was a stage of orders directly connected to the priesthood—this argument would soon be termed the "unicity of orders" -and therefore women deacons could not be considered.

Even so, he augmented the commission's final two-page report with a seven-page private memorandum to Pope Paul VI, which was much more positive about women deacons.

Meanwhile, in 1969 the International Theological Commission had been created to address questions of doctrine.

The world's foremost (male) theologians gathered in Rome on occasion to discuss pressing issues for the Church.

Women in ministry soon became one of those pressing issues, and the Secretary of the International Theological Commission, perhaps at the suggestion of the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, named a small sub-group of theologians to study the female diaconate.

Their discussion was quite positive—even Yves Congar thought the ordination of women as deacons was possible—but despite some members urging a positive vote on the question, none was taken, the question was tabled, and the ITC proceeded to write a document that opined women could not be ordained as priests.

The official commentary to that document stated that the question of women deacons would be left for "further study."

Academic debate continued, and there remained no consensus as to whether the women deacons of history were sacramentally ordained.

However, to say the women of history were not sacramentally ordained would be to dispute the intent of the ordaining bishops, who used the same ritual for women deacons as for men deacons.

The formal rituals used to ordain women were performed within the Mass, where the persons to be ordained as deacons—whether male or female—were ordained by the bishop inside the sanctuary, through the laying on of hands with the epiclesis (or calling down of the Holy Spirit); they were invested with a stole, self-communicated from the chalice, and the bishop called them deacons.

That is, both male and female candidates were ordained in identical ceremonies and were called deacons, or, in some languages, the women deacons were called "deaconesses."

So, why could women not be ordained today?

Several reasons are given, all of which fall to either logic, history, or both. They are,

• Women deacons were blessed but not "ordained";
• "Deaconess" always means the wife of a deacon;
• Male and female deacons had different functions;
• The unicity of orders limits ordination to men (cursus honorum);
• Women cannot image Christ (iconic argument);
• Women are not valid subjects for ordination;
• Women are "unclean" and restricted from the sanctuary.

Since the 17th century, scholars have argued over the history of women deacons, one or another questioning whether the women deacons of history were sacramentally ordained.

In the 17th century, one scholar, Jean Morin, studied all the existing liturgies in Latin, Greek, and the languages of Syria and Babylonia.

He determined that the liturgies met the criteria for sacramental ordination set forth by the Council of Trent.

A century later, another writer disagreed.

When we arrive at the 1970s, the question of women in the church, especially the question of women priests, was in the air.

Nothing came of the work of the ITC sub-commission, except one member, Cipriano Vagaggini published a long and dense article stating his positive view.

Vagaggini was so well thought of, that the 1987 Synod of Bishops asked his opinion on women deacons, which he freely shared.

After reminding the assembled bishops that in 1736, when Pope Benedict XIV approved ordained women deacons in the Catholic Maronite tradition, he permitted them to administer the sacrament of extreme unction within their monasteries, Vagaggini continued:

If that is the case, one senses the legitimacy and urgency for competent authorities to admit women to the sacrament of order of the diaconate and to grant them all the functions, even the liturgical functions that, in the present historical moment of the church, are considered necessary for the greater benefit of believers, not excluding—as I personally maintain—if it is judged pastorally appropriate, equality between the liturgical functions of men deacons and women deacons. (- Cipriano Vagaggini, "The Deaconess in the Byzantine Tradition" in Women Deacons? Essays with Answers, Phyllis Zagano, ed. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2016, 96-99, at 99.)

His recommendation went nowhere, and around that time I was told in Rome by the highest placed women in the Curia that "they can't say ‘no'; they just don't want to say ‘yes'".

The discussion continued and was picked up by the 1992-1997 ITC, which again formed a subcommittee and again found in favor of restoring women to the ordained diaconate.

Their 17-page document was printed, numbered, and voted on, but not promulgated. The ITC president objected. He was then the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

So, the question went to yet another ITC subcommittee, which in 2002 published a paper stating that the question was "up to the Magisterium" to decide.

Nothing happened.

Until, in 2016, the International Union of Superiors General (UISG) asked Pope Francis to form another Commission. And so I went to Rome that following November in 2016.

There was another pontifical commission, which met twice for one week each, in September of 2021 and July of 2022.

The Synod on Synodality

The first session of the current Synod on Synodality asked for the reports of each Commission because in synodal discussion some felt ordaining women as deacons would restore a tradition, while others disagreed.

The Synod stated that questions about women were "urgent," and so, one of the ten "study groups" charged by the pope and the Synod office to provide detailed reports to Synod members was charged with the question of women deacons.

Meanwhile, as I mentioned, in his televised interview with CBS-TV's Norah O'Donnell, the pope said "no" to women deacons.

Specifically, he denied the possibility to Norah O'Donnell, who asked him:

Norah O'Donnell (23:05): I understand you have said no women as priests, but you are studying the idea of women as deacons. Is that something you are open to?

Translator (23:15): No. If it is deacons with holy orders, no. But women have always had, I would say the function of deaconesses without being deacons, right? Women are of great service as women, not as ministers. As ministers in this regard. Within the Holy Orders.

That could be the end of it, or not. I am attempting to get the Spanish recording or the Spanish transcript.

What did the pope understand?

Was he being asked about the diaconate as a preliminary step to the priesthood?

On the face of it, his response is wholly incorrect.

There was no distinction between women deacons and deaconesses throughout history. It is a fact that some, if not all, were sacramentally ordained.

What the Church has done the Church can do again.

And the Church has done it.

On May 2, the Greek Orthodox Church of Zimbabwe ordained a woman deacon—they prefer the term "deaconess"—using the liturgy it uses for ordaining men as deacons.

The ordaining prelate, Metropolitan Seraphim, just changed the pronouns.

We know that Synod reports from every corner of the world ask the Church to recognise the baptismal equality of all people.

While women are increasingly added to church management, the only response to requests for women deacons has been Pope Francis' televised "no."

We sit and wonder what the future holds.

I cannot tell you what my Commission did.

Despite my three requests to the Commission president, then-Archbishop Luis Ladaria, twice in writing and once in person, I have not seen what he gave Pope Francis in the name of the Commission I served on.

I can tell you one thing, however.

After our first meeting formally closed, I asked to say just one more thing, to the group and to the Commission president.

I said: "When I arrived at the Vatican, I was listed on the guest list as ‘Monsignor Zagano.'"

One member asked: "If she's a monsignor, what are we doing here?"

Exactly.

• Phyllis Zagano, Ph.D. is senior research associate-in-residence and adjunct professor of religion at Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York.
• Transcript from Rita Cassella Jones Lecture at Fordham of September 17, 2024.

Joe Grayland - What's the point of having deacons

You've written a lot about the diaconate and women as deacons.

So I'm going to start because, coming with a little bit of a parish priest appreciation, it's like, why do I need a deacon?

What I need is an assistant priest.

So, why do we need deacons?

Why do we have them at all?

What's the purpose and the point?

Phyllis Zagano

Well, you know, that is the situation the Church was in since the 12th century.

And I think the Church found itself devoid of the diaconate when the priests, mostly the priests in Rome, but priests in other places in Europe, were getting more and more annoyed that the fellow who was going to be elected as bishop was a deacon.

And so when we talk about the diaconate, we're talking about many, many different things.

We talk about the diaconate today, I have the same question.

What good is the diaconate?

Why would anybody want to be a deacon, particularly a woman?

Why would a woman want to be a deacon?

And why would a parish priest want to have a deacon?

Well, if you can't have an assistant priest, if you're not knitting one in the basement these days, you're well off to have a deacon.

But I don't think that's the only reason to have a deacon. When we think of the diaconate as it is, it's about its liturgical functions.

The deacon can do the wedding, the deacon can do the baptism, the deacon can do the funeral.

The diaconate to me is really bringing the Gospel in action to the people of God.

So it's the deacon, really historically, who managed the Church's charity.

And if we really recover the diaconate today, I think the deacon would be the one to help get the checkbook out of the pastor's hands and spread the wealth around, take care of the poor.

I really think that that's what it's about, evangelisation and taking care of the poor.

Joe Grayland - So what about transitional deacons?

Okay, so what do you think then about transitional deacons?

Do they have a point in your opinion?

Phyllis Zagano

Well, there's one diaconate and the diaconate is still a stage on the way to priesthood.

But when we think of what they call improperly, actually, the transitional diaconate, as opposed to the improperly called permanent diaconate, when we think of the diaconate as a stage on the way to priesthood, it is, I think, a necessary training ground for priests.

But I don't know that it's necessary at all, really.

Many people have written on this. I really haven't written that much about it, but a lot of people have said there's no reason to ordain anyone a deacon before that person's ordained a priest.

So, it's what we do.

It's our custom now.

It is confusing.

I don't like the term transitional deacon any more than I like the term permanent deacon.

But it's what we have.

And I don't think it's going to change.

Joe Grayland - Why bother about deacons?

Where does your love and interest for the diaconate come from?

What's influenced you over the years to even bother with the whole thing, given how difficult it can be?

Phyllis Zagano

Well, how difficult the whole Church can be.

I think the love is the love of the Gospel.

And the job of the deacon is to preach the Gospel, to spread the Gospel, to bring, as William Deitwig says, "drag the ambo to the streets."

And I just found myself in a situation, a position when I was finishing my doctorate actually, of learning about the diaconate, learning that there had been women in the diaconate, and marching myself into the local seminary and telling them I wanted to study to be a deacon.

And I stayed there for about a year, taking courses, mostly part-time.

But the encouragement came from the Papal Nuncio to the United States, actually.

When I was at the seminary, there were a couple of fellows who were not what we call lifers.

They had finished college and were just starting their graduate studies there.

Everybody else in the seminary had been in the system for eight or ten years.

And they said, "Well, the Nuncio's coming. How's your Cassock and Sash?" - which I didn't have.

So I wore a yellow pantsuit.

Joe Grayland: And they saw you coming!

Phyllis Zagano: They kind of noticed me.

We sat not in the chapel, but in the refectory. My friends set me on the end so that when the Nuncio and the bishop walked by, it was really hard to miss.

And the bishop, who knew me; the bishop had played basketball with my father.

The bishop looked down and said, "Phyllis, what are you doing here?"

I said, "I'm studying".

So soon enough, a lovely young priest came to me and said, "The Nuncio would like to see you in the front hall."

So I went.

And it was Archbishop Jadot, and he interviewed me for 20 minutes about a vocation to the diaconate.

And he said, "Don't quit."

And so, you know, then I went, I finished my doctorate, I was teaching, I was working for John Cardinal O'Connor.

I actually got a request before I started working for O'Connor as Archbishop of New York. I actually worked first in the military archdiocese.

I got a request from the director of vocations for the Archdiocese of New York that this Vicar General of the Military Ordinariate, as it was at the time, John O'Connor, wanted to know how to get more women in chaplaincy in the military.

So I said, "Tell him to ordain us."

And she came back and said, "He wants a longer answer."

So I wrote a big paper.

And I gave an equivalency of military rank and structure, particularly Navy rank and structure, talking about enlisted and warrant grades and officer grades, and the way that a warrant grade could be established for the diaconate.

The diaconate was certainly a ministry that the Catholic chaplaincies could use in the American military.

So he asked to see me, and I went in, and of course the fight was on.

And he encouraged me, he outlined with me my first book, Holy Saturday.

He told me that he would get it to the Pope.

I said, "Oh, you don't know the Pope."

Well, he did, and he ended up as the Archbishop of New York, and I worked for him.

So I just continued the studies, continued my own work, but also continued interest, training as a spiritual director, working where I could in chaplaincies and church-related entities.

Joe Grayland - Woman suing the Church

I wonder whether you've heard about the 62-year-old woman in Belgium who's suing the church, the Belgian church, because they won't allow her to become a diaconess.

Do you think, there's lots of things going on there.

Do you think it's a matter of justice?

Would you agree with what she's doing?

You know, even though I'm not asking you to understand everything, you know, you probably don't know her personally, but do you think the idea is good, or is it a waste of time?

Phyllis Zagano

Is it a matter of justice that she do this? Well, justice for whom?

You know, the question, if it's justice for the Church, if the Church deserves the ministry of women and its diaconate, then the conversation needs to be concluded in a positive manner.

It has been suggested to me to sue in ecclesiastical court, the restrictions against women and the diaconate.

It's not something I've pursued, certainly, or even studied.

But I would say she's not asking to be a diaconess, she's asking to be a deacon, unless she is in the Eastern tradition.

And I will tell you that on May 2nd of this year in Harare, Zimbabwe, the Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Africa ordained a woman a diaconess.

And so there is a movement, particularly now with our older cousins, explaining that this is truly a sacramental ministry to which women can be called.

So I don't know anything about what's going on in Belgium.

It's interesting, but I don't find going to the courts helpful in really in most any controversy.

Joe Grayland - Was the woman ordained a deacon

I want to come to an example I was reading as well of the woman who was ordained a deacon.

So, some questions were raised in the German media, the Catholic media, here in Germany, and the questions were really: Was it right or worthwhile for one part of an Orthodox communion to operate without having consulted the rest?

So that's one question.

But more specifically for the diaconate is, in what manner or form was this woman ordained?

So is it a sacerdotial thing that she's received?

Is it a laying on of hands?

Is it an institution?

What words would we use in the Roman church, if you like, or in the Western world to describe what happened to her in terms of ritual?

And also to describe, would we use the word ontological change in terms of...

I know, yes, I can see your heads going, God help us.

But it is a real problem, which you actually address in your book.

But it's that concept of, was she ontologically changed?

Did the ritual provide that ontological ritualiszation?

What happened there?

Phyllis Zagano

I'm not going to get into the ontological debate, but I will tell you, I've seen photographs of the ordination.

She had the laying on of hands inside the iconostasis.

The ritual was the ordination ritual for the Orthodox church.

It's part of the section, or Harare is part of the Patriarchate of Alexandria, which agreed, and also with the agreement, as I understand it, of His All Holiness Bartholomew.

So, it was not so much a departure that it may have been presented in the German papers.

Maybe four or five years ago, there was another ordination in another part of Africa.

And that was more likely an ordination to the subdiaconate, which is still a major order.

But the women there, the five women there, three religious and two lay people or vice versa, were ordained.

And the intent of the bishop at that time was to ordain them to the diaconate, not to the subdiaconate.

However, American money interests said that if he did that, they would pull their money from him.

So it was a subdiaconal ordination, and that's all I know about that.

But I will say that the one in Harare, and I haven't spoken, an American named Dr Carrie Frost was there.

I've spoken to her before, but not since.

She was there to witness it, and she was assuring me that it would be a liturgically correct Greek Orthodox ordination, which is to a major order, and that the woman would be considered a member of the clergy and a deacon.

She wanted me to know there are women deacons in Bulgaria.

There are women deacons in certain places of the Orthodox world that we really don't hear about, and they do proclaim the Gospel.

And they're not all women religious.

And this particular woman is not a religious.

She will be what might be termed a social service deacon.

She's not a monastic deacon.

She'll be out there working with the people, and that was the intent of the bishop, the ordaining bishop.

That's what he said he wanted.

Joe Grayland - The Gospel with hands and feet

So he wanted in many ways then to go back to the roots that you talked about at the beginning of our conversation, that taking the checkbook away from the pastor, I think, was the phrase you used, but getting out there and being part of that social outreach of the church, you know, where the Gospel actually has feet and hands and an intention beyond a proclamation within the liturgy or a homily without reality behind it.

I think it's interesting, don't you think, that if Orthodoxy moves in this way, do you think it makes it easier for Roman Catholicism to follow on?

Do we need them to take the lead rather than the Anglicans?

Phyllis Zagano

Well, I'll tell you, years ago, one woman, a Greek Orthodox woman, spoke with His All Holiness in Constantinople, and he said, well, you know, we don't want to get ahead of the Romans on this.

And another woman I know, a great funder actually in Boston, spoke to Cardinal Sean O'Malley, and he said, well, we don't want to get ahead of the Orthodox on this.

And, of course, three women speaking together said, we could figure this out pretty easily, boys.

I think it's helpful that the Orthodox are reclaiming their tradition.

And the most important thing is that you use the word "sacerdotal ordination," the diaconal ordination is not a sacerdotal ordination.

Pope Benedict XVI, with omnium in mentum in 2009, really echoed the words of the catechism, which had been promulgated, what, in 1983, that basically the diaconate is not the priesthood.

And we see this in Lumen Gentium 29.

We see it in many, many places, that the diaconate is clearly not part of the priesthood, which really rebounds to your question about the so-called transitional and permanent diaconates.

The diaconate is part of holy orders, but it's not part of the priesthood.

And to get that through, the minds that govern the decisions in the Church, I think is the most important barrier that we must overcome.

There is no need, no reason, to assume that an individual ordained as a deacon will actually become a priest.

However, with the work of Gresham in the codification of the Cursus Honorum, at the time you could not be ordained a deacon unless you were, for the most part, going to be ordained a priest.

That's really where the problem is, and it's eight, nine centuries old.

So it's a steep hill to climb.

And I think it's a question of a greater understanding that's needed in the church on both sides of the altar rail on what exactly is the diaconate and how can the diaconate be part of the circle.

Joe Grayland - Catholic Social teaching, Synodality and Women

I want to move the circle on a little bit.

Your recent book, Just Church, was a fascinating read: Catholic Social Teachings, Synodality, and Women.

Why did you put those three elements together?

Phyllis Zagano

Well, the book actually came out a little while ago.

It was completed before the most recent meeting of the Synod.

Catholic Social Teaching, I found an interesting way to enter how women have been discussed in the church.

And of course, I was interested in the way the Synod would be and is discussing the questions relative to women in the church.

So, I just felt there'd be a one, two, or three step, and we first have to understand what Catholic Social Teaching is.

We can take a look at how Catholic Social Teaching has spoken about women, which I do.

Then we can try to understand what is Synodality, and then see how these two concepts have affected the discussion about women in the church and how they might affect the discussion going forward.

The last time we spoke, three years ago, I think, on this program, and at the time I read a letter from someone who I said was a bishop, who I knew, actually was a Jesuit bishop.

Well, actually, I didn't tell you it was from the Pope.

And what he wrote to me, now he wrote me this in 2020.

So, this is one year before the Synod was announced.

And he talks about discernment.

He thanks me for my work and how relevant it is to the question of discernment.

And I'll read you the paragraph that I read on your program three years ago.

"Discernment is not an organisational technique and not even a passing fashion, but it is an interior attitude rooted in an act of faith.

"Discernment is the method and at the same time the goal that we propose.

"It is based on the belief that God is at work in the history of the world, in the events of life, in the people we meet and speak to us.

"This is why we are called to listen to what the Spirit suggests to us with often unpredictable ways and directions."

And he goes on to talk a little bit more about that.

But I don't even think I got it.

I don't think I understood what he was saying in 2020.

And I think we are all trying to grasp.

And I think, you know, I'm trained as an Ignatian director.

Why didn't I get it?

I had been told that the Holy Father was waiting to hear the voice of the Spirit on the question of women in the diaconate.

I think genuinely, and going back to the book, genuinely, that is what I was setting up, and that is what is happening.

Joe Grayland - Taking the Gospel to the streets

We see that Catholic social teaching has taken the Gospel to the streets.

We see a growing understanding of what is synodality, what is discernment.

And now we can take a look at the question of women.

Do we need deacons, such as you asked?

Do we need women deacons, such as you suggest?

These are things to be discerned and carefully discerned.

Can I just go back to some things in your book.

On page 25, you talk a little bit about the UN and what they've been up trying to do.

And you say, not in your words, but in mine, that the Church remains at odds with a lot of these sort of statements.

You know, that we've got, you don't say this so much, but we've got all of this language, all of this intentional language around the place of women and the place and families and everything like this.

But when it comes down to it, maybe the point is that lay people cooperate with power, but they don't share it.

This is an example that comes out of the Australian Plenary Council, you know, and their vote on the diaconate for women.

And I'm just wondering whether, again, another quote from page nine, which I thought was really cool, ontological equality, while also admitting hierarchical subordination.

And so, taken out of context, you know, which is the perfect thing for an interviewer to do, taken out of context, putting all of those things together.

What do you think is the big problem, not the problem, or the challenge that the Church is facing in terms of laity being involved and being included, being activated, but more particularly in terms of women being included?

And then I suppose it comes down to the very particular question around women in the deaconate, which I think is very particular.

But could you take us back up out of the roots, to the top of the grass, and give us an overall view of where you see the Church being at odds with the reality of the world in which many Western Christian Catholic women live?

Phyllis Zagano

Well, you know, Joe, I think the Church will always be at odds with the world as it is typified.

I've just been invited to debate at the Cambridge Union in the UK that feminism is incompatible with religion.

And I wrote them back and said, please define your terms, because if you're talking about feminism that is pro-abortion, etc., of course, if you're talking about feminism that says, no, excuse me, women can do jobs just as men can do, and there's really no restriction, well then, no, it's not.

And in fact, that is something that the Church is, that religion needs to support.

When you talk about authority in the Church, and you reference the term cooperate, I know you were thinking about Canon 129, which was actually written by Joseph Ratzinger, with the exception of one comma.

It went straight into the 1983 Code of Canon Law, that basically lay people can cooperate but not share in governance.

And that is where the tension lies.

And in fact, in terms of the somewhat significant advances that Pope Francis has made in terms of giving women position in the Curia, it's still management, not ministry.

The jobs are ancillary to the spreading of the gospel, not that they're not necessary, but they don't include women at the altar, they don't include women at the ambo, they don't include women in an official capacity, I think, managing the Church's charity.

Except, you know, it's certainly legally, there are ways to do it.

But I think when we, and they certainly don't include women as single judges, you have to be a cleric to be a single judge in a canonical trial.

So there are things that a cleric, and I was just reading this morning, discussions about how the woman deacon of history has always been considered a cleric.

Joe Grayland: There are certain things that are necessary, clerical status is necessary.

Now, does that also imply power?

Phyllis Zagano: Not necessarily.

You know, if you think of power in terms of authority, the woman who is the abbess in history may also have been a deacon, most likely was.

She has ultimate authority in her abbey and her abbey territories.

That authority is also given over to her by the members of her community.

So if we move back to the 21st century, and we find the authority that rests in the episcopacy, it is still given over by the people.

The authority to the bishop is given over by his priests and deacons, and the authority of the people of God is similarly given over.

I don't know, I was asked the other day about power and women asking to be deacons so they could have power.

And my answer is simply that if you're looking to be ordained to have power, you probably want to do something else.

But isn't that the problem?

Well, yeah, it is a problem, but you won't get much or any.

And certainly an individual who comes to be a deacon, just because he or she can't be a priest or a bishop, they'll be shown the door.

I mean, they're just two separate questions.

But again, let's return to the circle.

If we think about the way that a community can discern, and I know that the Australian meeting was not last summer, but the year before, I think it was, was contentious.

And I am aware that 18 Australian bishops voted down the original wording that included women deacons, and I think only five voted it down and one kind of abstained when they reworded it.

But there was still some admission that the people in that assembly did have some power to change things.

I have been described a couple of times as quite interested in the meeting. After tea time, two bishops stood with the rest of the people who refused to sit down or take their seats.

And I've talked to a couple of the bishops who were there.

And, you know, sometimes in families, discussions get tough, and I think this was one of them.

Joe Grayland - Women deacons a sign of a just Church

Why would you suggest that the deaconate for women would be a sign of a just church?

Would it be a sign of the end of discrimination?

Would it be a sign of a theological movement?

Would it be a sign of coming back to the original source?

Phyllis Zagano

You know, Mary Magdalene, for instance, proclaimed the resurrection?

Well, again, I said this before: the question of justice, it's not so much justice for me, and I want this job.

It's more justice for the people of God in a couple of different directions.

First of all, and I've said this quite often until the Holy Father has a woman proclaiming the gospel in St Peter's at a Mass he celebrates, the church really doesn't have the right to say women are to be recognised as equal and to be held as equally human to men.

I mean, it's as simple as that.

I've been told by officials of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is now the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, I've been told that women cannot image Christ.

I said, watch me. And I wrote a book about it.

You know, that women cannot image Christ is silly.

It's a silliness that is restricted to naive fiscalism.

If you think that only a man on this planet can represent in any way the love and beauty of the risen Christ...

And I think that (women representing the image of Christ) is the justice the church needs.

The church in justice needs to have the whole gospel proclaimed.

The church in justice needs to have all its people ministered to and ministered to as they need to be ministered to.

You know, the Holy Father, and twice I've heard him say this, once in a commission meeting and again in public, or actually first in public, to the International Unions of Superiors General.

He said, you know, he had spoken with an expert, a scholar of Syrian history, who told him that when a woman accused her husband of beating her, she would go to the woman deacon who would examine the bruises and then give testimony to the bishop.

Well, that to me says so much.

The bishop affirmed the testimony of a woman and probably did something about it.

I mean, it's almost an annulment, you know.

And so when you move to the present, when there is a single judge, the single judge is not going to be a woman.

So you will not have a woman going into us for an annulment, telling a single judge who would then give testimony basically to the bishop that there is reason for an annulment.

And that to me, I debated American Professor Sarah Butler at a seminary in Philadelphia years ago.

And she said, oh, women deacons only minister to other women.

I said, well, who ministers to women today?

I mean, even if you restrict the work of women deacons to other women, so what?

Joe Grayland - Cultural beliefs about women

Well, it takes us back to the original, as I mentioned, Mary of Magdala.

And the whole question that is subcutaneous there is about somebody proclaiming a truth when they are considered before the law to be incapable of proclaiming truth.

Yet when the Christian church takes it on, as you've just said, and a woman testifies for another woman in front of a bishop and the bishop does it, then you begin to see that there is a tradition that women are truth tellers within the church.

An uncomfortable tradition, possibly.

Phyllis Zagano

You know, that comes in collision, I think, with a lot of cultural beliefs about women.

I walked out of Mass the other day with a 82-year-old woman, religious, and I told her something that maybe she could mention to the pastor.

She said, well, he's not going to listen to us.

And the influence, well, the implication was he's a man and we're not.

And that's quite true.

And you do find that the stained glass ceiling does exist in other traditions who have ordained women to the diaconate and to priesthood, certainly in the Anglican communion.

Although there are more and more Anglican women bishops, not that I'm arguing for either Anglican bishops or priests, but there is the cultural problem of the way men in the world relate to women in the world.

And as I alluded to or said earlier, until the pope stands up and says, you know, that women are trustworthy enough to proclaim the gospel, even to preach, I don't think the church has the right.

And I will blame the church.

I will blame the church for female genital mutilation.

I'll blame the church for dowry burnings.

I'll blame the church for menstruation huts.

I'll blame the church for wife beating.

There are many instances around the world where women are really badly treated and denigrated and looked down upon.

And you don't know this.

I've suffered it myself.

You know, I love to go to places where they have no idea who I am and they treat me like I'm a dimwit.

I mean, you just laugh because it's so, it's so sad, really.

Joe Grayland - Synods affirm women's diaconate as sign of hope

Recently, you may be aware that in Austria the synodal process there has affirmed the decision of the women's diaconate as a sign of hope.

But, and here in Germany the same, and in various other places it's come through the synodal process.

However, on the other side of it, we've seen other people like Cardinal Sara and others in Africa talking very strongly against these Western European colonial ideas, with introducing the thing that I would describe as an African exceptionalism.

Where in sub-Saharan Africa, you know, the exception is that gay people can be mutilated, burnt, raped, and then killed.

It's perfectly okay for the African episcopate to accept that.

Possibly because they've got some other problems they think are much more important.

Like having to face down Islam, for instance, or as a scholar friend of mine who's in Tübingen at the moment from Nairobi has been informing me of the movement of young people back to the pre-colonial worship forms and understandings of God.

That's a context.

My point is this.

Is it possible that the push for women deacons, equality of women, to not accept, you know, the arguments of the menstruation huts and all the rest of it, is a thoroughly European, North American, white person, I don't know how you describe it.

It's become very difficult to describe.

But it's sort of our argument, but it's not an argument of the global South, which is also a sort of a silly sort of term, because the global South doesn't include places like Australia and New Zealand.

I mean, you know, from all of your travels, what do you think it's just, do you think we're the only ones really interested in it?

Or, you know, is it European, North American exceptionalism to have women or want women or need them?

Phyllis Zagano

Well, European, but probably not Italy, North American, but also Australia and South America and Central America.

I sat at a table with Wilfred Nepier in South Africa, the retired cardinal, who told me that he objected to my pushing Western ideas down his throat.

I said, well, no one's pushing anything down anybody's throat.

If your territory does not need or wish for women in the diaconate, it will not have it.

It's as simple as that.

If Austria and Germany find that the diaconate can include women and the church can accept it, and there is a need for it, then that's what it is.

I sat at a table with the bishops of Cambodia and Thailand, and I asked them about women in the diaconate.

They said, we wouldn't care, male or female, we need the help, number one, but you know what, we don't have enough educated people to make them deacons.

That was, I think, before the Holy Father invited the church to include women as acolytes and lectors.

I can see where, for example, in Cambodia and Thailand, formally training and installing women and men as lectors and acolytes would be a wonderful expansion of the church's ministry.

I think that the cultures that can accept the ordination of women will, and the cultures that cannot may move to have a greater understanding of the equality of women as human beings.

Even if they do not include women in their own diaconates, if they have diaconates at all, I think it could still be helpful as an example of the way women can and should be recognized and respected.

I'm certain that if, not actually if, when it rolls out, it'll be the same as the diaconate was rolled out after the Second Vatican Council.

That is, Episcopal conferences would need to decide if they would include women in their own diaconates, and Rome would approve their requests.

And then it would go back, and the Episcopal conferences would simply say to their bishops, individual bishops would make their own decisions about what they need in their diocese.

And one would hope, with an increase in synodality, that the bishop's decision could be a more synodal decision, and less of an individual "I'm in charge" decision, which the church suffers in too many places still.

Joe Grayland - Census fidei

Maybe there are other things going through your head and you would like to give us a sentence or some sort of phrase just to wrap up maybe the loose ends of this conversation.

Something that occurs to you that I haven't asked that I should have asked, or a point that you'd just like to emphasise before we wrap up.

Phyllis Zagano

Well, I think the thing I would like to emphasize is that the work of the church, the mission, you know, the synod talks about communion, mission, and participation.

As the dogmatic constitution of the church teaches, we must be in communion on matters of faith and morals.

You know, the census fidei is there, and it's very important.

The mission of the church to me is to spread the gospel and to act on the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And participation is who gets to do what.

And I think that's where we are in terms of figuring it out as we go along in our different cultures.

You know, Joe, you're in Germany. Others are listening in New Zealand, in Australia.

I'm in the United States.

Everybody has a different situation.

But if that situation and if that conversation has the gospel at its centre, I think that's where we will progress as human beings, certainly, and as Christians.

• This is a transcript of a conversation between Phyllis Zagano and Joe Grayland on the topic of the diaconate. The text has been edited in parts for flow.
• Phyllis Zagano is American author and academic. She has written and spoken on the role of women in the Roman Catholic Church and is an advocate for the ordination of women as deacons. She is a researcher and adjunct professor a Hofstra University. Her latest book is "Just Church: Catholic Social Teaching, Synodality, and Women".

She made the comments to Dr Joe Grayland from Tubingen University, Germany. in an interview for CathNews.

Deacons bring Gospel into action

Zagano, a leading scholar on the diaconate, argues that women deacons could be a tonic for the Church, revitalising it by bringing the gospel into action.

Asked why the Church needs deacons at all, Zagano said "The diaconate is really about bringing the gospel in action to the people of God".

Temporal and spiritual

Clarifying that the role of a deacon is both temporal and spiritual, Zagano said that historically deacons managed charity and performed weddings, baptisms and funerals.

She told Grayland that deacons' actions were crucial in spreading the gospel and restoring the diaconate, especially for women, and that they could help the Church address modern challenges.

"If we recover the diaconate today, I think the deacon would be the one to help get the chequebook out of the pastor's hands, spread the wealth around and take care of the poor" she said.

Diaconate - not an apprenticeship for priesthood

Zagano however has some reservations about the role of transitional deacons, those ordained as a step before priesthood, as they were serving as apprentices.

Questioning the necessity for this, she said there is one diaconate and that many people have said there's no reason to ordain anyone a deacon before that person is ordained a priest.

Clarifying, Zagano said being a deacon is about service and is the opposite of having power.

"I was asked the other day about power and women asking to be deacons so they could have power.

"My answer is simply that if you want to be ordained to have power, you should probably do something else.

Grayland asked Zagano whether having power is the issue. Zagano said that it is, but an individual will not get much or any power.

"Certainly an individual who comes to be a deacon just because he or she can't be a priest or a bishop will be shown the door; they are two separate questions."

A global perspective

Zagano acknowledges cultural differences within the global Church.

She acknowledges that some regions may be more receptive to the idea of women deacons while others face different challenges.

"If your territory does not need or wish for women in the diaconate, it will not have it" she says.

"But if Austria and Germany find that the diaconate can include women and the Church can accept it, and there is a need for it, then that's what it is."

She argues that the Church's mission should include all its people and that justice for women in the Church means recognising their equal humanity and ability to proclaim the gospel.

Zagano's advocacy for women deacons continues to spark significant debate within the Catholic Church.

Her call for justice and equality resonates with many, but the path forward remains contentious.

As discussions continue, the Church must balance tradition and modernity in its mission to spread the gospel and serve its global community.

Personal journey and advocacy

Zagano's interest in the diaconate stems from her own experience.

Archbishop Jean Jadot, Papal Nuncio to the US, encouraged her to pursue her studies and advocacy despite challenges.

During their conversation Jadot told her "Don't quit".

Today she continues her advocacy, emphasising the historical precedent and modern necessity of women deacons.

Read more on deacons in the Church

What is a Deacon?

Ten-year-old Beth asks her parents about the new deacon in the parish.

They explain the diaconate and she is surprised.

She quickly finds out that her classmates do not know what a deacon is or what a deacon does.

She and her and her friend Carol ask their CCD teacher, who explains what a deacon is today and helps them to begin to think about the future.

What is a Deacon by Irene Kelly

Just Church

Just Church engages the reader in the synodal pathway to a "Just Church" that can and should reflect its social teaching.

An important measure of justice is an ecclesiology open to participation by others beyond celibate clerics, especially in consideration of competing Catholic ecclesial bodies and methods of membership.

Just Church study guide - Phyllis Zagano's free Study Guide.

That sums up the synod and the state of the Catholic Church's attitude toward change.

In October, hundreds of bishops, joined by lay men and women, priests, deacons, religious sisters and brothers met for nearly a month in Rome for the Synod on Synodality.

At its end, the synod released a synthesis report brimming with the hope and the promise that the church would be a more listening church.

Some 54 women voted at the synod. Back home, women are still ignored.

Why?

It is not because women quote the Second Vatican Council at parish council meetings. It is because too many bishops and pastors ignore parish councils.

It is not because women of the world do not write to their pastors and bishops. It is because without large checks, their letters are ignored.

The Synod on Synodality was groundbreaking in part because it was more about learning to listen.

It was more about the process than about results. Its aim was to get the whole church on board with a new way of relating, of having "conversations in the Spirit," where listening and prayer feed discernment and decision-making.

Even now, the project faces roadblocks. At their November meeting this week in Baltimore, U.S. bishops heard presentations by Brownsville, Texas, Bishop Daniel Flores, who has led the two-year national synod process so far.

His brother bishops did not look interested.

To be fair, some bishops in some dioceses, in the U.S. and other parts of the world, are on board with Pope Francis' attempt to encourage the church to accept the reforms of Vatican II, to listen to the people of God.

Too many bishops are having none of it

The synod recognized the church's global infection with narcissistic clericalism.

It said fine things about women in leadership and the care of other marginalized people. Yet the synod remains a secret in many places. Its good words don't reach the people in the pews.

Ask about synodality in any parish, and you might hear "Oh, we don't do that here." You are equally likely to hear "When I" sermons ("When I was in seminary," "When I was in another parish"), and not about the Gospel.

Folks who were excited by Francis' openness and pastoral message just shake their heads.

The women who want to contribute, who want to belong, are more than dispirited.

They have had it.

And they are no longer walking toward the door — they are running, bringing their husbands, children and chequebooks with them.

In the Diocese of Brooklyn, it was recently discovered that Mass attendance had dropped 40 percent since 2017.

It is the same in too many places.

The reason the church is wobbling is not a lack of piety.

It is because women are ignored.

Their complaints only reach as far as the storied circular file.

What do women complain about?

Women complain about bad sermons, as discussed. Autocratic pastors. And the big one: pederasty.

If truth be told, women do not trust unmarried men with their children.

Worldwide, in diocese after diocese, new revelations continue. Still.

Many bishops and pastors understand this.

Francis certainly does, but he is constrained by clerics who dig their heels into a past many of them never knew.

More and more young (and older) priests pine for the 1950s, when priests wore lace and women knew their place. That imagining does not include synodality.

Will the synod effort work?

Francis' opening to women in church management is promising. Where women are in the chancery, there is more opportunity for women's voices to be heard. No doubt, a few more women there could help.

Getting women into the sacristy is trickier.

While it seems most synod members agreed about restoring women to the ordained diaconate as a recognition of the baptismal equality of all, some stalwarts argued it was against Tradition.

Still, others saw the spectre of a "Western gender ideology" seeking to confuse the roles of men and women.

So, they asked for a review of the research. Again.

Women know the obvious: Women were ordained as deacons.

There will never be complete agreement on the facts of history, anthropology and theology. Women have said this over and over.

If there is absolute evidence that women cannot be restored to the ordained diaconate, it should be presented, and a decision made.

The women have finished speaking about it.

• Phyllis Zagano is an author at Religion News Service. She has written and spoken on the role of women in the Roman Catholic Church and is an advocate for the ordination of women as deacons.

The U.S. Catholics have been mostly silent about this effort, but in several countries, including Australia, France, England and Wales, and Germany, things are moving full steam ahead.

Two major problems have come up time and time again: clericalism and the place of women in the Church.

If you haven't heard much about this effort, which completes its first phase this summer, you are not alone.

In May 2021, six months prior to the synod's October 2021 opening, the Vatican asked the world's bishops to name synod coordinators in their dioceses, who were expected to organise a program of public meetings for Catholics, ex-Catholics and non-Catholics alike to talk about the Church.

Some did. Some did not.

Yet, somehow most U.S. dioceses — 95%, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops — wrote reports, though relatively few are published.

Participating dioceses melded parish reports into diocesan reports, which were combined into regional reports.

From the regional reports, as well as reports from some 110 independent Catholic organisations, the USCCB will create a 10-page report, due in Rome by mid-August.

Some diocesan reports, such as those from Buffalo, Louisville, Salt Lake City and Trenton, point to clericalism and the lack of women in leadership as problematic.

Louisville, Trenton and Salt Lake City noted calls for women deacons. The Buffalo report found "the abuse scandal (and) the lack of respect for women as manifested in an all-male clergy" caused declining church attendance and membership.

Even San Francisco, led by conservative Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone, admitted to clericalism, and Washington, D.C.'s rosy report notes one core fact: People do not trust the bishops.

The synod is a worldwide event, and early reports from bishops' conferences outside the U.S. repeat the same story: Clericalism is a scourge on the Church, and women are not respected or included in leadership.

Australia recently survived a rocky Plenary Council meeting, during which the country's bishops voted down a statement "witnessing the equal dignity of women and men," apparently because it included a request to restore women to the ordained diaconate.

After nearly a quarter of council members protested, refusing to take their seats following a tea break, emergency meetings softened the statement to say the bishops would accept Rome's decision on women deacons.

France reported deep dissatisfaction with the place of women in the Church and the need to recognise their suffering and expectations.

England and Wales recognised that women were a "silenced, unrecognised majority … excluded from leadership and ministry."

Germany went so far on these and other topics that it earned a published reminder from the Vatican: While they might discern, Rome would decide.

Once all the national reports get to Rome, the plan is to create a general document for another round of discussion next year, in preparation for the October 2023 synod meeting of some 300 representatives in Rome.

Historically, synods are synods of bishops, but so far at least one woman, Xaverian Sister Nathalie Becquart, one of two undersecretaries (second in command) in the Rome synod office, will have a vote.

The list of synod members, observers and experts should appear by the end of the year.

Whether anything will come of all this effort is anyone's guess, but strong words — in several languages — are calling out supercilious clerics who, convinced they control access to heaven, are ruining the Church and chasing away members, especially women and girls.

Overall, the people agree with Francis. These clerics do not. Whether clericalism can block calls for reform coming from the synod is uncertain.

How can this be?

For starters, the so-called "biological solution" touted by conservative Catholics is taking hold.

As priest and bishop supporters of the Second Vatican Council and of Francis age out or die in place, they are replaced by a cadre of bishops ordained as priests during the reign of Pope John Paul II, who in turn appoint conservative pastors ordained during the reign of Pope Benedict XVI. Francis, as strong and alert as he is today, is not getting any younger.

Positive takes on the situation say the voice of the Holy Spirit is heard through the people, and God will steady the barque of Peter.

But meanwhile, the Catholic Church as a force for good continues to lose influence inside and outside its walls, in large part because of how too many of its clerics treat women.

• Phyllis Zagano is a senior research associate-in-residence and adjunct professor of religion at Hofstra University, in Hempstead, New York. Her most recent book is Women: Icons of Christ.
• First published in RNS. Republished with permission.
• The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.

Participants at the 1998 Wellington Archdiocesan Synod voted in favour of a lay pastoral leadership model rather than introducing the permanent diaconate, the major motivator reportedly that both women and men might then participate in parish leadership.

Whilst the preparatory sessions for the Synod 2023 are calling for the opportunity for increased participation in leadership in the Church for women, there are conflicting views on the diaconate.

These are probably best summarised by two opposing views of participants on the commission studying the question of women in the diaconate in the Catholic Church.

On the one hand, Phyllis Zagano (Women: Icons of Christ) demonstrates almost conclusively that, historically, certainly for much of the first millennium, both men and women were ordained to the diaconate by the same bishop, at the same liturgy, using the same words and ritual.

Then on the other hand, Deacon Cerrato (In the person of Christ the Servant - a theology of the diaconate based on the personalist thought of Pope John Paul II) takes the purely Thomist approach that there is a unicity in Orders that sees the bishop, priest and deacon share in the Alter Christos, each in his own way, and therefore if women are admitted to the diaconate (which he argues they can't be), then equally they might be admitted to the priesthood and the episcopacy.

Both views are fraught.

One needs to be mindful that one cannot read current practice or understandings into historical practice and understanding.

"Ordination" has a different meaning now from what it did during that first millennium.

The current Thomist view of "ordination" developed early in the second millennium is based on the Aristotelian thinking of the schoolmen.

In considering whether to move toward the ordination of women to the diaconate, the Church, and indeed individual women, needs to consider if they wish to perpetuate a clericalist system originating from the "political needs of the church as a public body within the Roman Empire" (Thomas O'Loughlin, Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches) and which perpetuates that model: hierarchical, patriarchal and arguably misogynist.

Pope Francis has an often-expressed dislike for such clericalism.

He is looking to grow a distinctly lay ministry in which both men and women can participate.

As Archbishop of Buenos Aries, he instructed his priests: "If you can, rent a garage and find some willing lay (person), let them go there, do a little catechesis and even give communion" (cited in Vallely, 2013, Pope Francis, Untying the Knots. Kindle loc. 2237).

Francis is also appointing women to senior positions within the Vatican.

In Pope Francis's view, the laity has historically and still ‘proclaims God's word - teach, organise communities, celebrate certain sacraments, seek different ways to express popular devotion and develop the multitude of gifts that the Spirit pours out in their midst' (Querida Amazonia, QA #89).

Francis expounds on his vision for lay ministry and leadership.

"In some cases, a ministry has its origin in a specific sacrament, the Sacred Order: it pertains to the "ordained" ministries of the bishop, the priest and the deacon. In other cases the ministry is entrusted, with the liturgical act of the bishop, to a person who has received baptism and confirmation and in whom specific charisms are recognised, after an appropriate journey of preparation: we then speak of 'instituted' ministries." (Explanatory letter to Spiritus Domini).

In that same letter, Francis goes to some length to explain that the development of lay ministries in no way detracts from the ordained ministry but rather enhances it.

O'Loughlin posits what might be seen as an alternative approach: "Where two or three are gathered in the name of Jesus, he is with them (Matt 18:20) and so their actions together - such as celebrating a meal - take place in the presence of the Father, because Christ, present among them, is always their High Priest.

"This theological vision has important implications for individual Christians who find themselves performing specific acts and ministries, within the church.

"There is no suggestion in the first-century documents that leadership at the two key community events, baptism and eucharist, was restricted in any way or the preserve of those who were community leaders.

"Any subsequent distinctions such that particular ministries are not potentially open to every baptised person are tantamount to a defective theology of baptism by which all ministry is brought into being."

Zagano suggests that the existing framework can be modified by changing one word in Canon Law.

Perhaps rather than enter into the existing framework, the Church might consider changing the framework such that lay women and men who have completed a programme of formation are authorised to do the very things that ordination to the diaconate authorises as a norm rather than as an extraordinary mandate:

• the authority to baptise,
• witness marriage,
• preside at funerals,
• proclaim the gospel,
• give homilies during the Mass, and
• offer a ministry of service.

Joe Green is a lay pastoral leader and director of parish mission in Ohariu, Wellington.

• First published in "Launch Out Letters", the journal and newsletter for lay leaders and ministers. Republished with permission.

Francis' new apostolic constitution, "Praedicate Evangelium" ("Preach the Gospel"), issued last month, noted that the heads of dicasteries and other offices that manage the church need not be ordained.

This highlighted Francis' stated aim to give "more space" to women in the church.

Most of the important dicasteries are as a matter of fact headed by cardinals.

But if any Catholic can head a curial office, the question becomes, does the title come with the job?

More importantly, is the title needed to do the job?

If the main duty of a cardinal is to be an adviser to the pope, and there is no ordination required, it could make sense to restart the tradition of lay cardinals and to include women in the mix.

Since the 16th century, cardinals have come mostly from the ranks of priests and bishops, but this has not always been the case.

Some Spanish and Italian royals were created cardinals in the medieval church. More recently, Pope Pius IX named the curial lawyer Teodolfo Mertel a cardinal, two months before ordaining him deacon in 1858.

Mertel was not exactly a lay cardinal — he received clerical tonsure, a rite just short of ordination, in his late 30s — but he remained a cardinal deacon for the rest of his life.

As auditor of the papal treasury, he oversaw a good part of the Vatican's money.

There is even historical evidence of female deacons doing much the same. A sixth-century inscription recalls the Deacon Anna, who, with her brother, appears to have served as the treasurer of Rome.

Under the 1917 Code of Canon Law, however, anyone named cardinal was required to be at least a priest.

The 1983 version of the code dictates that in addition to being chosen from among men who are at least priests, new cardinals are to accept ordination as bishops.

Appointing a layman or woman would require a change to, or at least a dispensation from, the law.

Yet in the late 1960s, Pope Paul VI considered making the French philosopher Jacques Maritain a lay cardinal, an idea Maritain himself rejected.

There is a rumour that Mother Teresa turned down Pope John Paul II when he asked her to become a cardinal.

So lay and female cardinals are not beyond the realm of possibility.

The question is, would it make any difference?

It would certainly be interesting.

Lay or deacon cardinals would be admitted to the College of Cardinals, which since 1179 has elected the next pope. It's highly unlikely a lay or female cardinal would be elected the bishop of Rome.

But Francis has already named a layman, former journalist Paolo Ruffini, to head the Dicastery for Communication, and the pope's emphasis on the church's mission of evangelization signals that his choice of personnel — male or female, married or single, ordained or not — depends solely on an ability and willingness to do the job within that context.

The message of "Praedicate Evangelium" is that becoming a cardinal is secondary and relative only to how gaining the title would or would not advance the task at hand.

That includes expanding management and ministry to laypeople.

That also includes telling the world that women are equally talented and capable human beings.

So, has the time come for female cardinals?

Maybe so, maybe no. But it is a new church.

• Phyllis Zagano is a senior research associate and adjunct professor of religion at Hofstra University and was a member of the 2016-2018 Pontifical Commission for the Study of Women in the Diaconate. She is the author, most recently, of "Women: Icons of Christ" and "Women Religious, Women Deacons: Questions and Answers."
• First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

In Catholicism, the argument against ordaining women to any grade of order rests in the intimation that women cannot image Christ, the Risen Lord.

But in 2021, Pope Francis modified Canon Law to allow women to be formally installed as lectors and acolytes, each required for diaconal ordination.

In Orthodoxy, in 2017, five women were consecrated as deaconesses (or as subdeacons) in Kolwezi, Democratic Republic of Congo, by the Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria. Other Church leaders eventually convinced the patriarch to suspend the practice in 2020.

Both facts — women lectors and acolytes in Catholicism and deaconesses or female subdeacons in Orthodoxy, point to the restoration of the tradition of women ordained as deacons.

Each brings to mind two events.

Some time ago, a colleague asked Bartholomew I, the Patriarch of Constantinople, about restoring women to the diaconate. His response was: "We don't want to get ahead of the Catholics on that."

Soon after, another woman reported the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Sean O'Malley, was asked the same question.

"What about women deacons?" He responded: "We don't want to get ahead of the Orthodox on that."

Despite historical evidence, despite theological anthropology and the crying needs of the People of God, Catholicism and Orthodoxy seem wedded to the argument that women cannot be ordained to major orders.

Other ecumenical discussions aside, it appears the leadership of each tradition agrees that one thing is necessary to ensure the stability and order of religion: women must be kept away from the altar.

Except that each of two recent developments — women lectors and acolytes in Catholicism in 2021, and deaconesses (or female subdeacons) in Orthodoxy from 2017 to 2020-apparently promote altar service, if not ordination, for women.

Roman Catholicism

On January 10, 2021, the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, by the "motu proprio" Spiritus Domini and in response to a direct request made in the Final Document of the 2019 Synod on the Amazon, Pope Francis changed Canon 230 § 1 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law to allow women, as well as men, to be formally installed as lectors and acolytes.

The change is not insignificant. Although many commentators correctly point out that many women already perform the functions of these lay ministries, installing women in them is a relatively major step.

Formerly, each was a minor order and a stage in the now-abandoned Roman Catholic cursus honorum.

Solidified and codified in the thirteenth century, the cursus honorum or "course of honor" first led male candidates from tonsure through the minor orders of lector, porter, exorcist, and acolyte, and then through the major orders of sub-deacon, deacon, and priest.

In 1972, when Pope Paul VI suppressed the four minor orders and the major order of sub-deacon, he stated that the functions of these five orders would henceforth belong to the installed lay ministries of lector and acolyte.

The 1983 Code of Canon Law decreed that, should the bishop deem it necessary, any layperson could perform these functions, but only males could be so formally installed.

Formal installation into each of these ministries is required prior to diaconal ordination.

Does the formal installation of women as lectors and acolytes portend women deacons in the Roman Catholic Church?

To be clear, the question is about ordination (cheirotonia) to a major order, not "blessing" (cheirothesia) to a minor order.

For Rome, ordination to the subdiaconate was the ordination to a major order, as was and today is the diaconate. It is important to remember that ordinations of Roman Catholic subdeacons and deacons were to major orders.

The Subdiaconate and Deaconesses
In Orthodoxy, however, the sub-diaconate is the highest of the minor orders, ranked between the reader and the deacon.

There are interesting facts about the subdiaconate in the Eastern Churches.

First, when vested, the Eastern subdeacon wears the orarion, or stole, over the inner and outer cassocks and alb.

Second, the Eastern subdeacon has care of the altar, including of altar cloths and clergy vestments. For these latter purposes, the Eastern subdeacon has a specific blessing to touch the altar.

In the West, the now-suppressed subdiaconate comprised individuals who assisted the deacon while vested in an alb, with a maniple, cincture, and tunic.

Unlike in the East, the Western subdeacon did not wear a stole. In the West, the use of the maniple signified the major order of subdeacon.

Each Church's tradition of the subdiaconate may give hope to those seeking the restoration of the female diaconate.

The events in the Democratic Republic of Congo and their aftermath point to significant advances in the quest for the restoration of the tradition of women deacons at least in Africa, and perhaps elsewhere in Orthodoxy.

The Congolese ceremonies, by the Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa, seem to have been consecrations or blessings to the Orthodox minor order of subdeacon, as evidenced by their manner and location.

Specifically, the women received a laying on of hands at the throne, not at the altar during the liturgy.

Further, while ancient canons limit diaconal ordination of women to those above the age of forty, photographs of the ceremonies depict five women apparently under the age of forty.

Each woman holds a basin and ewer, items often carried by the subdeacon when taking blessed water to the people so they may bless themselves with it.

Both the photographs and the description of the ceremonies support an assumption that the new "deaconesses" were brought into the minor order of subdeacon, although the patriarch is thought to have intended diaconal ordinations.

In Catholicism, there is no discussion about restoring women to the subdiaconate, because it has been suppressed.

When viewed through the lens of Querida Amazonia, Pope Francis' response to the Final Document of the 2019 Amazon Synod, the restoration of women to the diaconate can seem far off.

However, Francis has pointedly stated that the two documents, the Synod's Final Document and his own Querida Amazonia, must be read in tandem. That is, the one does not replace the other.

At first glance, two paragraphs (102 and 103) of Querida Amazonia seem dismissive of the fact that women can and do image Christ, the Risen Lord.

When read against the backdrop of history's derisive commentary about the place of women in society and in the Church, these two paragraphs seem to present more of the same.

And the imago dei is distorted when Mariology is stressed over the teaching that we are all made in the image and likeness of God.

But what Francis wrote may not be so dismissive:

In a synodal Church, those women who in fact have a central part to play in Amazonian communities should have access to positions, including ecclesial services, that do not entail Holy Orders and that can better signify the role that is theirs.

Here it should be noted that these services entail stability, public recognition, and a commission from the bishop.

This would also allow women to have a real and effective impact on the organization, the most important decisions and the direction of communities while continuing to do so in a way that reflects their womanhood. (QA, 103)

Pope Francis may here be referring to a more pressing need in the Amazon: to regularize the service of women who are de facto Canon 517 § 2 Parish Life Coordinators.

Women, including women who do not have the vocation to the diaconate, are already managing parishes and other ecclesial groupings.

With or without ordination, they can receive and in fact deserve, as he says, "stability, public recognition and a commission from the bishop."

No matter how off-putting his remark about "womanhood," the paragraph does not eliminate the possibility of restoring women to the ordained diaconate.

In fact, responding to the Final Document of the Amazon Synod, Pope Francis acted quickly to modify Canon 230 § 1 to allow women to be installed as lectors and acolytes, which protocol replaced the four minor orders and the major order of subdeacon nearly fifty years ago.

The question arises: If women can now be admitted to installed lay ministries that replace these clerical states, including the major order of subdeacon, how can women now be restricted from joining the ordained diaconate, in which historical documents they have already served?

Arguments against ordaining women as deacons often claim "unicity of orders," calling to Inter insigniores (On the Question of Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood) (15 October 1976).

That is because women cannot be ordained as priests, either can they be ordained as deacons.

In large part, this papally-approved declaration by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith depends upon the so-called "iconic argument" in its presentation against the ordination of women as priests.

The principal argument in Inter insigniores, however, is the argument from authority. Simply stated, the Church says it does not have the authority to ordain women as priests because Jesus's apostles were male.

The force of Inter insigniores and the subsequent Ordinatio sacerdotalis (1994) is underscored by the new Book Six of the Code of Canon Law, which goes into effect this December 8. One innovation in this new Book Six is Canon 1379 § 3:

Both a person who attempts to confer a sacred order on a woman and the woman who attempts to receive the sacred order, incur a latae sententiae excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See; a cleric, moreover, may be punished by dismissal from the clerical state.

But neither Inter insigniores nor Ordinatio sacerdotalis mentions the diaconate. The assumption that there is some relation between the diaconate and the priesthood runs counter to magisterial and conciliar teachings, and canon law, all of which clearly distinguish the two.

While the law may seem to close all possibility of women being restored to the ordained diaconate in the West, the bishop who presented it in the for the Vatican Press Office said in response to a question: "If the teaching changes, the law will change."

As it is, this law is what is termed a "merely ecclesiastical law," such as the recently changed Canon 230 § 1 regarding lectors and acolytes.

(The Congregation for Divine Worship is apparently re-writing the installation liturgy to emphasize the baptismal connection to lay ministry, although in some countries women are already being prepared to be installed using the current liturgy, with the necessary adjustments to pronouns.)

Orthodox Churches

The situation in the East is more complicated, and perhaps more volatile.

The initiative taken by the Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa to consecrate women caught the rest of Orthodoxy by surprise.

The patriarch appears to have based his decision to act unilaterally on the documents of the Holy and Great Council attended by twelve of the autocephalous Churches on Crete in 2016.

Complaints and applause for the patriarch's actions attempted to drown each other out.

The situation is confusing. While the ceremonies appear to have been consecrations to the subdiaconate, the women were called deaconesses.

There is a needle to be thread here. In some historical lists of orders, "deaconess" appears after subdeacon and before deacon.

Some argue this indicates the "deaconess," belongs to an order distinct from the deacon, and is member of a minor order. Some argue that "deaconess" was a major order.

No matter which, the deaconess (if indeed in a separate order) is on the cusp of both minor and major orders.

However, it was the widely known intent of the patriarch to ordain these women as deacons, not as subdeacons, although his plan was scotched by donors' threats to cut off financial support to the Patriarchate.

Even so, his repeated consecrations of women as "deaconesses" until 2020 solidified his intention to grant the women, whom he determined were already performing diaconal ministry, diaconal (and thereby clerical) status.

Whether as "subdeacons" or as "deaconesses" it seems the patriarch considered these women, these "deaconesses" to be in major orders.

It appears that forces outside Africa are deeply concerned about allowing women to be in major orders, or even in minor orders as subdeacons, perhaps because of the possibility of subdiaconal altar service.

The patriarch's greeting to a 2020 Zoom-hybrid conference on women in the diaconate in Thessaloniki indicated he had ended his practice of consecrating women as deaconesses.

No doubt, the combination of anger and money may cause other Orthodox bishops to hesitate before bringing women into the clerical caste in any grade of order.

But the ministry of women in Orthodoxy, or at least in Africa, underscores the fact that women perform significant tasks and duties proper to the subdiaconate and the diaconate.

In many places in Africa, for example, women assist in the baptism of women and girls, teach catechize, lead services where priests are not available, and proclaim the Gospel in church.

There is no talk about whether these are "womanly" tasks and duties. They are functions, yes, but they are now carried out, at least by a few, with the charism of consecrated mission and ministry.

Conclusions

In Querida Amazonia, Pope Francis calls for "itinerant missionary teams" (98) and "other forms of service and charisms that are proper to women and responsive to the specific needs of the peoples of the Amazon region at this moment in history." (102).

The Patriarch of Alexandria specifically consecrated his "deaconesses" as missionaries.

Combine this with the known facts of other ministries by Orthodox women in Africa and Catholic women in the Amazon, and we might see that the two traditions are not colliding, but rather moving in tandem.

While not necessarily directed at diaconal ordination these events, East and West, seem to belie the assumption that women cannot perform altar service, even as they demonstrate an ongoing resistance to women near the altar.

Western Church history documents claim that women are de facto unclean and cannot be near the sacred. Neither can a Western priest marry.

But the East does not so fully accept these arguments.

As its married priesthood demonstrates, the East does not completely subscribe to the concept that touching a woman renders a man unclean.

Such taboos, better inscribed in Western Church history, are the root of Pope Gelasius's Fifth Century criticism of women's altar service in what were most probably Eastern Church celebrations in Sicily in his time.

Even so, there is some movement toward recognizing women as able to represent Christ in both traditions.

The changes to Roman Catholic Canon Law formally allow women's altar service. The African consecrations of women, whether as the separate order of deaconess or to the order of subdeacon, may allow the same.

What is most interesting is that from the outside at least, it appears that one Church is not in front of the other.

In fact, it could appear that they are operating in tandem.

• Phyllis Zagano holds a research appointment at Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY and is the author of several works on women deacons, including Women: Icons of Christ (Paulist Press, 2020).
• This article was a talk given, via Zoom, to a November 21 seminar on women's ordination sponsored by the American Academy of Religion inSan Antonio, Texas.

A metaverse is a virtual world, like those existing in virtual reality games such as Roblox, Minecraft and Fortnight, where individuals exist as avatars, or three-dimensional icons of themselves.

These games are precursors to an even larger virtual world, where individuals would be able to hide their identities, interact and present their views anonymously.

The future, however, is upon us.

Now, it is possible to be wherever you want, say whatever you want and find like-minded folks to be with, even to worship with, all within a cocoon of anonymity.

The word "parish" has taken on a new meaning.

In pre-pandemic times, folks chose parishes according to their likes and dislikes the community, the location, the pastor and the liturgies, pretty much in that order.

Now, the good news is the bad news. It is easier to shop around.

Community has nothing to do with it.

Location only presents temporal considerations:

• What time zone is the parish in?
• It is the pastor and his liturgies that make or break the choice.
• Tridentine or novus ordo?
• Intelligent homilies?
• Women altar servers and readers?

Community is increasingly disconnected from both online and in-person parochial life.

While once the parish church was the one down the block, where the Friday potluck suppers helped cement social interaction, now the "parish" is virtual. Community is in a Catholic Metaverse created through social media in which you can participate anonymously. Or not.

Most folks are conversant with the ways and means of, say, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the like.

What they may not see, even if they participate in them, is the solidification of distinct virtual communities on these platforms.

Each virtual community has a different aim and ethos.

Each has a different outlook on church teaching and discipline. None is controlled by Rome.

We are not there yet, but on the horizon is a virtual reality far beyond online Masses and Catholic Twitter-fights.

We are on the verge of a genuine metaverse, a grandchild of the internet, which expands to encompass more than just words and pictures.

What is upon us is a development in online gaming platforms that will allow people — as avatars — to move from one platform to another.

Individuals will no longer need distinct Facebook profiles, Twitter handles and internet accounts.

They will be able to invent themselves and exist in the virtual world and move around (virtually) in real-time, seamlessly from one platform, or community, to another.

The metaverse will not be a game. It will be an alternative reality.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg says that within the next five years or so Facebook will be a "metaverse company," an "embodied internet."

He predicts "a persistent synchronous environment" in which users are embodied as holographs. The entire point is to build community.

How?

Zuckerberg says the present research objective is to deliver a much stronger sense of presence, a more natural way of interacting.

Think of it as a new way of being present to other people, a three-dimensional Zoom with surround sound and holographs that you can access anywhere.

Religion is included in the plans.

Already, Facebook has been partnering with faith communities, such as the Hillsong megachurch in Atlanta, the Assemblies of God, and the Presbyterian Church (USA).

The company is creating products for churches, including audio and prayer sharing and online tools to build congregations using Facebook.

As Zuckerberg moves Facebook to a metaverse company, he predicts even more.

His vision is a genuine metaverse, where different companies' platforms will be compatible and which will include public spaces and social systems anyone can access, including churches.

That is in the future.

What is upon us now is remote access to worship, spiritual direction, preaching, Bible study, after-church socials, just about anything the in-person parish might provide in terms of information and interaction.

Remote access allows people to choose whom to listen to and with whom to interact. It is moving to the point where Catholic fact and Catholic fiction are in competition.

The question: Will there be a Rome-controlled Catholic Metaverse?

Or will the various Catholic virtual communities continue to grow in their own directions?

Then, there is the big what-if in all this: What happens to sacraments?

Someday, the pandemic will be under control. But the church is changing. It won't be your grandfather's Catholic church. It is not that already.

• Phyllis Zagano is a senior research associate-in-residence at Hofstra University, in Hempstead, New York. Her most recent book is Women: Icons of Christ, and her other books include Women Deacons: Past, Present, Future. Study guides for both books are available for free download at sites.hofstra.edu/phyllis-zagano/.
• First published in NCR.
• Republished by permission of the author.

After mass, she expressed her displeasure that Pope Francis had announced changes to the Code of Canon Law, lumping together the issues of child sexual abuse and women's ordination.

I had not read the changes nor the rationale for same. Hearing her characterization of the matter, I said, 'I can understand your frustration.' She promptly retorted, 'It's not frustration; it's anger. You have to understand how hard it is for us women to remain.'

Canon law has never been a favourite subject of mine. I thought I had better get up to speed.

In 1994, Pope John Paul II solemnly declared 'that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.'

In 1998, Pope John Paul II then amended the Code of Canon Law to provide that 'anyone who rejects propositions which are to be held definitively sets himself against the teaching of the Catholic Church'.

Anyone who obstinately rejected such a teaching and refused to retract when warned by their bishop was to be punished with a just penalty.

Pope Francis has now authorized a further change to the Code of Canon Law so that the obstinate non-retractor is to be punished with censure and deprivation of office. The canonical screws are being tightened.

Pope Francis has authorized a comprehensive re-write of Book VI of the Code of Canon Law which defines certain offences and sets down sanctions.

Quite rightly he has brought in a string of new offences against human life, dignity and liberty, dealing with child sexual abuse, grooming, pornography, and failing to report abuse.

He has also introduced a new suite of offences against the sacraments.

Until now the Code has dealt with those who are not ordained but who attempt to celebrate mass and those who purport to hear confessions though they are unable to give absolution.

The Code also had a more general provision providing for the punishment of an ineligible person pretending to administer a sacrament. Pope Francis has seen fit to move into the Code a provision (Canon 1379(3)):

'Both a person who attempts to confer a sacred order on a woman, and the woman who attempts to receive the sacred order, incur a latae sententiae excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See; a cleric, moreover, may be punished by dismissal from the clerical state.'

Understandably this has left many people upset, including the woman who sang at my ordination 36 years ago.

Why is there any need for a further specific penal provision to be added at this time to the Code of Canon Law, and at the same time as the much needed overdue legal reforms dealing with child sexual abuse? Why not leave things as they were?

This new provision in the Code might not only deal with someone purporting to ordain a woman as priest. It could also apply to anyone purporting to confer diaconate on a woman, and the punishment would also apply to the woman seeking the conferral of the sacred order.

For many years, there has been discussion about two distinct matters: the theological possibility of women priests and the historical evidence for women deacons in various branches of the Catholic Church.

Back in 1988, Cardinal Ratzinger, as he then was, spoke at an event in New York where he agreed 'that the God of philosophy is neither male nor female, and the God of theology is both'.

He told the audience that the matter of women's ministry as deacons or priests was under study by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

For how much longer can we turn them away?

In 2002, after 28 years of consideration of the matter, the International Theological Commission could not come to a definitive answer on the historical reality of women deacons concluding that 'it pertains to the ministry of discernment which the Lord established in his Church to pronounce authoritatively on this question.' Whatever that means!

In 2016, the International Union of Superiors General asked Pope Francis to consider the possibility of women deacons in the contemporary Church. He set up a commission.

On 7 May 2019, Pope Francis was asked about the work of the commission during a press conference on a flight back to Rome. He said: 'The commission was created and has worked for almost two years. They were all different, all "toads from different wells".

They all thought differently, but they have worked together and have agreed to a certain extent.

But, each of them has their own vision that does not agree with that of the others. And there they have stopped as a commission and each one is studying how to move forward.'

He concluded his answer by saying, 'we have reached a point and now each of the members is studying according to their thesis. This is good. Varietas delectat. (Variety delights!)'

Some months later, the participants in the Special Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon Region voted 137 to 30 in favour of the Pope investigating further the possibility of women deacons.

In his final address to the Synod, Pope Francis indicated that he welcomed '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'.

One of those who served on the 2016 commission is the highly respected American theologian Phyllis Zagano.

Prior to her appointment, she published an academic article on 'Women Deacons in the Maronite Church' stating, 'Without question, women were ordained as deacons in many Eastern churches, as copious research demonstrates.'

Since completing her term on the papal commission, she has published a book entitled Women: Icons of Christ.

She concedes that 'the Church teaches women cannot be ordained as priests'. But she then states correctly: 'it does not teach definitively that women cannot be ordained deacons.'

She reminds us that 'Phoebe is the only person in Scripture with the descriptor "deacon" and that Paul did not feminise her title to "deaconess".' She concludes: 'That women deacons existed cannot be denied, nor can their participation in sacramental ministry.'

What troubles her most is that 'Beneath every objection to restoring women to the ordained diaconate is the suggestion that women cannot image Christ.'

For her, this is not only a scandal: 'it is the disfigurement on the entire Body of Christ' and it 'is probably formally heretical'.

I quote her because she spent years researching this topic before being appointed to the papal commission. She expressed such views before her appointment, and she has consistently expressed them since.

We who are called to share the bread of life believe that Jesus had to be human so that we might be saved. Being human, he had to be either male or female. He could not be both.

That did not mean that only half humanity could be saved. Nor did it mean that only half humanity could be 'icons of Christ'.

Zagano demonstrates in her researches that women were ordained deacons in situations when there was a need for women to minister particularly to women and girls.

They were 'included in the order of deacon, not only in the early church but at least until the twelfth century in the West (and the East up to modern times)'.

Back in 2012, Zagano said, 'at some point, however, bishops are going to have to answer the question the International Theological Commission attempted to answer.'

Having reflected on the writings of Zagano, I now more readily understand why the woman who spoke to me after Mass a couple of weeks ago was not just frustrated. She was angry and rightly so.

The question about women deacons deserves an answer now. Not even Pope John Paul II claimed to have closed the door on that one. The matter has been crying out for the discernment called for by the International Theological Commission in 2002.

Having given up on his first commission of 'toads from different wells' and having only recently set up his second commission on the matter, surely Pope Francis could have told the canon lawyers to stay their hand when it came to instituting a specific new offence in canon law dealing with the purported ordination of a woman deacon.

The canon lawyers had more than enough on their plate with new offences dealing with child sexual abuse.

Zagano takes heart that the Vatican official explaining why the new canonical provision was not confined specifically to priestly ordination said, 'If we come to a different theological conclusion, we will modify the norm.'

During the week, we celebrated the feast of St Mary Magdalene who in the Byzantine Liturgy is called 'the apostle to the apostles'.

I recall the cartoon of the bearded apostles greeting the women with the words, 'So ladies, thanks for being the first to witness and report the resurrection and we'll take it from here.'

It's the women like the one who spoke to me after Mass who still front up each Sunday offering us five barley loaves and two fish. For how much longer can we turn them away?

The people are hungry for the Bread of Life, and it's not just the women. It's time for a discerned decision that reflects the delightful variety of the faithful.

• Frank Brennan SJ is Rector of Newman College, a residential college for undergraduates and postgraduates within the University of Melbourne. He is a human rights lawyer. His latest book is 'Observations on the Pell Proceedings', Connor Court, 2021.
• Published in La Croix. Republished with permission.

The general perception that "they" (clerics) do not need "us" (women) seems to be fading. Or is it?

The great diversity of the "church workers" on which the Catholic Church depends fall into two main categories: paid and unpaid.

The great majority of paid professional positions are held by clerics. The great majority of volunteer, unpaid positions, whether professional or not, are filled by women.

Of course, there is cross-over, but the exploitation of women in what is loosely referred to as "church work" is a scandal that Francis seems ready to repair. For sure, restoring women to the ordained diaconate may be part of the answer, but it is not the only one.

Let us look at three points:

1. Francis' emphasis on lay involvement in the Church;
2. the problem of clericalism;
3. the possibilities for women deacons.

Francis' emphasis on lay involvement in the Church

The Synod of Bishops' special assembly on the Amazon in 2019 held great promise for women.

Its twelve language groups spoke forcefully: lay persons should be more involved in governance; the Church should allow women to be formally installed as lectors and acolytes, and the Church must continue to consider ordaining women as deacons.

Reportedly, nine of the twelve language groups asked for women deacons, but the language softened as it travelled through drafts of the Final Document.

Francis' responses came fairly quickly. Yes, he said to the Synod assembly, he would pick up the gauntlet thrown down over women deacons.

But Querida Amazonia, his response to the Synod's Final document, struck a different chord. In that post-synodal apostolic exhortation, the pope emphasized the fact that parishes could indeed be led by lay people, and that in fact many already were.

So, instead of mentioning installed lay ministries or women deacons in his response to the Final Document, he emphasized Parish Life Coordinators, as described in Code of Canon Law (can. 517§2).

Recalling Francis asked that the Final Document and Querida Amazonia be read in tandem, we can see his emphasis on laity is really emphasis on women. After all, two-thirds of parishes in the Amazon region are led and managed by women, mostly women religious.

In Querida Amazonia, Francis asks that they be recognized as Parish Life Coordinators (can. 517§2).

He asked that they have set terms of office. He asks that they be professionalized. He implies they should be paid.

Why? Recall the other major request of the Amazon Synod: ordaining viri probati (married men of proven virtue) to the priesthood, most probably those already permanent deacons.

Now imagine the Amazon parish led by a woman, which includes a married deacon. If the married deacon becomes a priest, would not the current way of thinking about Church automatically see him as pastor?

With Querida Amazonia, Francis deflected the question of married deacons becoming priests while emphasizing the point of the community. And, in emphasizing the point of community he specifically called for Parish Life Coordinators (can. 517§2).

That is, he called for an expansion of that office, which can be filled by lay men and women, religious or secular, as well as deacons. In so doing, he cut the tie between parish leadership and clericalism. Or at least he cut that tie in theory.

The problem of clericalism

The problem of clericalism is real.

Of its many facets, what points to our concern today is the connection between clericalism and law. That is, the Code of Canon Law places ordained clerics, predominantly priests and bishops, above the laity and, it seems, above the law.

There is virtually no way, at least no legal way, for any lay person, to have governance and jurisdiction in the church at the parish or diocesan level.

Even the newly reworked Book VI of the Code of Canon Law, while heavy on penalties, is equally heavy on secrecy and clerical (read episcopal) self-policing.

Five-hundred years ago, Martin Luther called clericalism a destroyer of Christianity. Luther wrote:

Yea, the priests and the monks are deadly enemies, wrangling about their self-conceived ways and methods like fools and madmen, not only to the hindrance, but to the very destruction of Christian love and unity.

Each one clings to his sect and despises the others; and they regard the laymen as though they were not Christians. This lamentable condition is only a result of the laws.(Martin Luther, Works of Martin Luther, Philadelphia: A.J. Holman, 1915, p. 295)

How does clericalism affect women and church work?

Women, and anyone else not ordained a priest, are automatically lower-ranked members of the Catholic Church. Lower-ranked members — be they secular or religious, male or female — are not the first to find professional respect or support in Catholic parishes and chanceries.

Think back to the proposition from the Synod assembly on the Amazon regarding the priestly ordination of married deacons. Is it not the way of the Church to call the ordained priest the pastor, no matter his qualifications?

And, if the former deacon is now the pastor, would the current way of thinking about Church automatically grant him a salary, housing, vacation, retreat, a housekeeper, a cook, transportation and food? Would he not merit a sacristan, a secretary and one or two days "off" per week?

Of course, that scenario paints clericalism in the broadest strokes, and we can assume the parishes and parish groupings in the Amazon region cannot afford well-paid clericalism.

But if we transfer that scenario to other parishes in other countries, is this not the case? In some parishes, the bulk of parish donations go to support the pastor and his personal needs and staff.

Women, where they appear at all, are volunteer catechists and sacristans, and perhaps part-time cooks and secretaries.

I am not even discussing the question of what amount of parish donations goes to the poor. If there is parish support of the poor, at least in the United States, a substantial amount of the funding comes from government sources and in-kind donations.

And parish ministries to the poor are staffed predominantly by women. And by and large, those women are volunteers, or at best part-time workers without benefits.

The possibilities for women deacons

So, what is the problem with volunteerism?

Many years ago, when I began serious work on restoring the tradition of ordained women deacons, a friendly monsignor in my archdiocese said, "Oh, so you want to be a volunteer?"

In fact, the larger portion of deacons in the US Church are volunteers, now retired from their "day jobs," who volunteer in the very ministries we think of when we think of "Church."

They visit the sick, they bury the dead, they manage soup kitchens and food banks, they teach catechism, they hold marriage classes. But in many places, the bishop or pastor prefers to hire a deacon (full- or part-time) for positions from the coordinator of religious instruction to the chancellor of a diocese.

So, women are effectively shut out of jobs for which they are eminently qualified, except for their gender, which restricts their ability to be ordained as deacons.

Then there is the fact that, on the feast of the Baptism of the Lord this year, Pope Francis changed canon law to allow both men and women to be installed as acolytes and lectors, which in 1972 effectively replaced the suppressed minor orders of lector, porter, exorcist and acolyte, and the major order of subdeacon.

Experience in each installed office is required for ordination as deacon.

Until now only the most conservative of bishops have installed men as lectors and/or acolytes, principally — it would seem — to eliminate the possibility of women's altar service and women reading during Mass.

More recently, the pope also established the installed permanent ministry of catechist. This would seem, in part at least, to professionalize catechetical ministry.

These events can both help and hurt the prospects of women achieving paid parish employment, professional or otherwise. These roles have traditionally been filled by lay volunteers, so nothing seems added here except the requirement for training leading up to the installed ministry.

The "but," and it is a large but, is that each of these three installed ministries is connected to diaconal ordination.

The installation as acolyte and lector is, as I said, required prior to diaconal ordination. The ministry of catechist has an even more direct relation to the diaconate.

One reason, or justification, for the restoration of the diaconate as a permanent vocation stemming from the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) was to strengthen the ministry of catechists with the charism of order.

That was because catechists in developing nations were often serving as today's Parish Life Coordinators (can. 517§2) and performing other diaconal ministries.

The recent trajectory of events seems to bring women closer to the diaconate, and therefore closer to preferential treatment for employment.

The deacon can be the single judge in an ecclesiastical trial. The deacon can witness marriages. The deacon can solemnly baptize.

Do the changes to canon law and the creation of the installed ministry of acolyte mean Pope Francis is about to ordain women as deacons? Probably not.

While he changed canon law regarding lectors and acolytes with a simple motu proprio and did the same in creating the newly installed ministry of catechist, he also recently promulgated a new Book VI of the Code of Canon Law.

The new book repeats language first presented in 2007 by Cardinal William Levada, then-prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Repeated by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010, it imposes latae sententiae excommunication on anyone who "attempts to confer a sacred order on a woman" as well as on the woman ordained (can. 1379§3).

While the pope could change that canon—indeed the bishop presenting the new book to the press said as much—there is not likely to be much movement before the Synod of Bishops' assembly on synodality, which has been postponed until October 2023.

This brings us back to women and work.

What difference does it make if a woman is installed as lector, acolyte, or catechist, or appointed as a Parish Life Coordinator?

What difference, indeed, if a woman is ordained a deacon?

In the United States, the Church depends principally on female "church workers" - in pastoral, service, and support positions - in its mission of proclaiming and living the Gospel.

Yet female workers are exploited.

They are assumed to be volunteers, no matter their professional training for pastoral or service ministries. Where they do find church employment, often part-time and without benefits, it is service or support work that supports clericalism.

The ethical challenges to the ways "church work" is organized are real and laid bare when the institutional exploitation of such workers - especially women - is examined.

One response, some might say a Gospel-driven response, causes both religious and secular laity to work outside or at least around the traditional structures to provide ministry.

These trained professionals serve as spiritual directors, remunerated by retreat centres and directly by their directees.

They gain employment as chaplains in prisons, hospitals and other secular institutions.

More indirectly, they work in community organizations and advocacy groups, or they write and speak and teach outside any Church-affiliated structure and strictures.

That they carry the Gospel to the people is to be applauded.

That this is so hard to do within Church structures is sad.

• Phyllis Zagano is senior research associate-in-residence at Hofstra University (New York). This article also appeared in La-Croix International and is reproduced with permission.

Which way is this going to go?

Not long ago, the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, echoed a 50-year-old passage from a book by ... wait for it ... Swiss theologian Hans Küng.

Speaking on Spain's church-owned COPE radio network, Parolin underscored the Good Friday theme of Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher for the papal household, and (perhaps unknowingly) brought forth a concept delineated by Küng 50 years ago: Some things can change, but internal church divisions are dangerous.

Dangerous they are, and many divisions fostered by the well-funded hard right in the United States are fixated on pelvic issues and incorporate forms of Trumpism.

The relatively disorganized progressive left can tend to cross the line as well, in the opposite direction.

Still some things, Parolin said, can and should change, although "there is a level that cannot be changed, the structure of the church — the deposit of faith, the sacraments, the apostolic ministry — these are the structural elements."

So, who can change what?

Canon law maintains power in the priestly class, although the combined power of the secular purse and the power of media can present checks and balances to clerical power.

But money also supports clericalism.

Money and media, especially social media, demonstrate the dangers of a clerical-political cash-infused soup.

No doubt about it, there are many people only too happy to replace anything vaguely post-Vatican II with their 1950s imaginings.

There are probably just as many people annoyed at the ill-informed preaching of lace-dressed younger clerics and some bishops. (Recently, the bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, preaching during Ireland's RTE radio Mass, spoke about "Mary Magdalene with her colourful past.")

For those who think the Second Vatican Council was a good idea, there are many legitimate issues to discuss and many "merely ecclesiastical laws" that can and should be modified.

And the majority of the church — the lay 99% — want to have a say.

That is where the question of justice rises to the discussion.

Aside from women ordained as deacons, a fact continually affirmed by historians, there are well-researched, well-documented, well-established facts that support lay participation in church governance.

Over the centuries, the church froze the laity out of any participation in governance and jurisdiction, and the Code of Canon law nailed that door shut.

Canon 129.1 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law — written by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — firmly states that laypeople can cooperate but not participate in the power of governance.

Cash, clericalism, divisions and authority

So how does the church — that means all of us — view what is going on with cash, clericalism, divisions and authority?

The money behind the alt-right is lay money aimed at affecting the way the church reacts to questions of justice: for the poor, for the needy, for women, in addition to the fixation on sexual matters.

Change or no change?

The "no-change" folks have a lot of clerical support. Some "change" folks continue to speak, but many simply walk away.

We know the church can change because it has, usually to maintain clerical power.

Over centuries, the church moved to remove women from any role in the celebration of Eucharist, to keep women outside the altar rail "fence" of superstitious misogyny. (The ridiculous beliefs remain: A bishop told me just the other day that his cathedral rector apologized because a woman was in the sanctuary during the Easter Vigil.)

Yet, there is some light at the top of the clerical ladder.

Pope Francis changed the law so women can be installed as lectors and acolytes. Cantalamessa warned against divisions. And Parolin's talk sounded like a passage from Küng's 1971 book, Why Priests? Küng writes:

A multiplicity of opinions, criticism, and opposition have their legitimate place and require a constant dialogue and the constructive display of contrary ideas.

In all this the private sphere of every member of the Church should be respected (whether they are avant-garde or conservative in nature).

In "matters of faith and morals" nothing can be attained with mere votes. In this regard, where it is impossible to obtain some sort of consensus (not unanimity), it is better to leave the question open according to ancient conciliar tradition.

Echoing Küng, Parolin said: "Sometimes ... one fails to distinguish between what is essential that cannot change and what is not essential that must be reformed, must change according to the spirit of the Gospel."

The secretary of state continued, "There is a whole life of the church that can be renewed."

But is there fear that change will cause the far right to take their money and run? You may recall that the church leaves many questions open because, as Küng points out, "it is impossible to obtain some sort of consensus."

I am not so sure avoiding decisions is the best route.

It is never good to prefer peace to justice.

• Phyllis Zagano is a senior research associate-in-residence at Hofstra University, in Hempstead, New York. Her most recent book is Women: Icons of Christ, and her other books include Women Deacons: Past, Present, Future. Study guides for both books are available for free download at sites.hofstra.edu/phyllis-zagano/.
• First published by ncronline.org. Republished with permission.

On the other hand, reports that the Vatican has outlawed women deacons are not true—at least not yet.

The International Theological Commission approved a study on the diaconate during its meeting in Rome from Sept. 30 to Oct. 4, 2001. After news services correctly reported that women deacons were not ruled out, the commission's general secretary, Georges Cottier, O.P., insisted that the document tends to support the exclusion of women from the diaconate.

In fact, the 70-page French document leaked to the media neither allows for nor disallows women deacons.

As a working paper, which may go before the plenarium of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the document is a short and selective exploration of the history and theology of the diaconate.

The question of women deacons has been before the commission for at least 20 years. The original study on women deacons, requested by Pope Paul VI, was suppressed.

While that document remains unpublished, an article published in Orientalia Christiana Periodica in 1974 by then-commission member Cipriano Vagaggini concluded that the ordination of women deacons in the early church was sacramental.

What the church had done in the past, he suggested, the church may do again.

Other scholars, before and after Vagaggini, have reached similar conclusions, but the current document only refers to the debate and strenuously avoids concluding that women ever received the sacrament of holy orders.

What is unfortunately clear is that the new document is both carefully nuanced and fundamentally flawed by a need to prove its unstated point: that women never were ordained and never can be ordained.

The study omits a large body of historical-theological evidence that women were sacramentally ordained.

It also tries to argue that the diaconate's participation in the sacrament of holy orders eliminates women, latching on to language that implies that the deacon, like the priest, is so configured to Christ that women are eliminated.

One commission member explained privately that the salient points in the ongoing conversation over the years, as the document grew from 18 to 70 pages, were:

1. What did women deacons do?
2. Were women deacons ever sacramentally ordained?
3. Does the ordained diaconate share in the sacrament of order?
4. Does the ordained diaconate share in the sacrament of order in such a way that it is part of the sacerdotal priesthood?

This last point caused deep debate within the commission.

What did women deacons do?

While the work of women deacons—always rooted in the word, the liturgy and charity—differed regionally, the fact of women deacons is undeniable.

The commission recognizes that St. Paul called Phoebe a deacon (not a deaconess) of the church at Cenechrae. But the commission ignores or relegates to footnotes significant epigraphical and literary evidence.

There is a scattershot approach in the document to what is known about ordained women, and a general attitude that all persons called deacon are male, even though women deacons of the early church were called by their job title.

The commission states at the outset, citing Cardinal Walter Kasper, that it is impossible to take a few historical facts and make an argument, yet that is clearly what it attempts even as it recognizes deaconesses as one of the two branches of the diaconate.

Over 40 years ago Cardinal Jean Daniélou, a French Jesuit, noted four ministerial areas of women deacons:

1. evangelization, catechesis and spiritual direction,
2. liturgical roles equivalent to porter, acolyte, lector and deacon,
3. care of the sick, including anointing and
4. liturgical prayer. Daniélou actually argued that women sacramentally anointed the sick, citing Epiphanius: the woman deacon is delegated by the priest to perform his ministry for him.

This raises a deeper question and underlies the quandary imbedded in the document: can women be given the power of holy orders? Continue reading

• Phyllis Zagano was appointed by Pope Francis to the Papal Commission studying the history of women deacons in the Catholic Church.
• Phyllis Zagano is author of Holy Saturday: An Argument for the Restoration of the Female, Diaconate in the Catholic Church (Herder & Herder, 2000), winner of a 2001 Catholic Press Association Book Award and of the 2002 College Theology Society.
• This opinion piece is an extract from Phyllis Zagano's 2003 article in America.

She says that according to the CDF, the "women religious of the United States were spending too much time on social issues and not enough on defending doctrine", and that the "US Catholic bishops, who have no moral credibility ... can't get their own job done and so are taking the sisters into receivership".

• Read Phyllis Zagano's article
• Image: CathNews USA

Phyllis Zagano is a lecturer on contemporary spirituality and women's issues in the church.