WILL POPE FRANCIS AUTHORIZE THE ORDINATION OF FEMALE DEACONS?

 

As with everything Pope Francis, he is ambiguous on this. A high ranking Sister at the Vatican recently captured headlines when she said Pope Francis is in favor of women deacons.

But is he?

There is plenty of evidence that he doesn’t like deacons focusing on the liturgy and their liturgical status, but they should rather be doing pastoral work especially assisting the poor and hungry. 

There is evidence of women “deacons” in the time of the formation of the canon of the New Testament. But many say it isn’t or wasn’t what modern male deacons do in the liturgical realm, but rather more practical and again, focusing on the poor and needy, especially women poor and hungry.

I am not opposed to female lectors and acolytes. I am glad the Church has Eucharistic Ministers who visit the home bound and bring them Holy Communion more frequently than priest alone could do in days gone by.

I don’t have any problem with women serving the altar and distributing Holy Communion at Mass. I just wish they were trained on the diocesan level, and installed in the formal ministry of acolytes and wore appropriate liturgical garb to hide the horrible styles of clothing we see lay people wearing today at Mass and formal liturgical ministries.

I personally believe that Pope John Paul II, in a stunning and truly progressive way, stated that he and no pope has the authority to change the “substance” of Holy Orders in its three expressions of deacon, priest and bishop. It is a dogma of the faith, revealed in the Ordinary Magisterium of the Church, that only men can be ordained to Holy Orders. 

My recommendation is to bring back “Sub-Deacons” rehabilitate the word “sub” to mean subordinated to practical ministry in terms of the poor with a liturgical function, as well with the traditional liturgical garb subdeacons wear.

Let’s keep in mind, when the Church had an abundance of religious non-cloistered sisters, they acted as deaconesses in the clearest sense of the word. Think of the Daughters of Charity and what they do and accomplished in the past along with the other active women religious orders. They founded and staffed schools, hospitals, hospices, soup kitchens and other social ministries, exactly what deaconesses should be doing.

Our active religious sisters were and are deaconesses. Why doesn’t the Church recognize that?