Will the Church Get Women Deacons?
Saint Phoebe, Pray for Us
At last fall’s Synod on the Family,
Archbishop Paul-André Durocher of Quebec asked that
the ordination of women as deacons be considered. The suggestion didn’t
seem to go anywhere. More recently, however, when a gathering of nine
hundred heads of women’s religious communities from around the world
(the International Union of Superiors General) raised this question
again in May, Pope Francis was interested. He said he would call
together an official commission to clarify the question of the
historical role of women deacons. I was pleasantly surprised.
It was not long, however, before doubts
set in.
Hadn’t such a study already been done, with zero result? And the pope’s
idea of asking the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) to
inform him of the state of the question—wasn’t that the kiss of death?
After all, the head of the CDF, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, is well known
for his opposition to women in the diaconate. Was this just a way to
avoid a tough question—form a committee?
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