Tag: Dr Phyllis Zagano

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Deacons – the diaconate – women deacons

Dr Phyllis Zagano and Dr Joe Grayland discuss the diaconate and the actual need for deacons and women deacons.

When we talk about the diaconate, we’re talking about many, many different things.

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’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.

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Women deacons in the Catholic Church

No issue in the Catholic Church is hotter than the question of women in ministry.

Whether women can, should or will be ordained to the diaconate is what Dr Phyllis Zagano, Emeritus Professor Justin Taylor and Dr Joe Grayland discuss in the latest edition of Flashes of Insight.

Zagano’s starting point is that the past is clear, and no one’s going to argue that women were not deacons.

“Women clearly are clearly in our many churches histories and were ordained (deacons)”, she said.

“In many cases, they were sacramentally ordained to serve as deacons and to serve as deacons fully in different places in different times”.

Zagano said that in ‘recent’ times two bishops began a conversation at the Vatican Council, asking about restoring women to the diaconate.

“The conversation they began is still going on”, Zagano says.

One of the questions is if the Church restored women to the diaconate, whether they would be installed or ordained she pondered.

However, for others in the Flashes of Insight conversation, women deacons are in effect working well in the Church, except it does not call them deacons, and they are not ordained.

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