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.