If there’s a shortage of priests in Ireland, why not ordain women to the diaconate?

If there’s a shortage of priests in Ireland, why not ordain women to the diaconate?

 

12 September 2014 by Michael Phelan

Catholic women in the Irish Diocese of Killaloe oppose the ordination of male permanent deacons in their parishes. Although I think that Irish dioceses do need to ordain permanent deacons because of their grave shortage of priestly vocations, I do have sympathy with the women in the diocese who have protested at yet another male-only ordained ministry. 
There were of course many ordained women deacons in the early Church, including the fourth century St Oympia, who I included in the litany of saints for my own diaconal ordination. Olympia (or Olympias) was a wealthy woman from a noble family who gave away most of her inherited fortune to the poor and needy and for the building of churches. She served the Church as a permanent deacon and was close to many Fathers of the Church, including St John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople and a Doctor of the Church.
Thousands of women served as fully ordained deacons in Catholic parishes during 10 long centuries. Some of them ministered in Italy and Gaul, but the vast majority lived and worked in Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine and Egypt. At that time, the Orthodox East was still fully part of the Catholic Church. Interestingly those early women deacons fulfilled pastoral ministry at baptism, communion, and the anointing of the sick.
When St Augustine arrived in England in 597, at the request of Pope Gregory the Great, it is thought that he brought with him the sacramental ordination rites for both women and men deacons that were substantially the same.
Why was the permanent diaconate restored after the Second Vatican Council to men only?  I would guess that this was because the transitional diaconate had been merged into the process of men being ordained priests.  Our church leadership would have been mistakenly concerned about creating a slippery slope to demands for the priestly ordination of women. Paul VI had removed consideration by the Second Vatican Council of contraception, ordination of married men, and the ordination of women priests.
Michael Phelan is a permanent deacon