Women deacons on agenda at meeting in Rome next week
There is no doctrine regarding women deacons but rather there is significant historical evidence to support the ordination of women as deacons.
Members of the Vatican’s Second Commission on Women and the Diaconate are due to meet in Rome next week to consider the submissions of Synod members on this topic.
The Tablet understands that Commission members will meet between 3 and 7 February, although a spokesman for the Vatican failed to respond to questions about the meeting.
The topic of women deacons was one of the “hot button” issues during the first synod gathering in 2023. Many of the Synod on Synodality delegates and those consulted during the synodal process believe the diaconate should be open to women as a sacramental ministry.
However, in May 2024, Pope Francis took the issue of women deacons off the synod discussion table and assigned it to a study group.
One of those due to attend next week’s meeting is Deacon Dominic Cerrato, Director of the Office for the Diaconate of the Diocese of Joliet.
He did not respond to a question over whether there is room within a more synodal Church to see women incorporated into the diaconate on a more graduated basis, starting in those places that need women deacons and ask for them.
In the past Deacon Cerrato has argued that women deacons in the early Church were not ordained and were not equal to male deacons.
In a recent article on women and the diaconate for OSV News he said diaconal ordination is a question of doctrine.
This is a minority view among scholars, most of whom point out that there is no doctrine regarding women deacons but rather there is significant historical evidence to support the ordination of women as deacons.
Another member of the Second Commission, Dr Caroline Farey, Diocesan Mission Catechist for the Diocese of Shrewsbury, and former adjunct professor at Franciscan University, Steubenville, declined to comment to The Tablet, saying “the work of the Commission is for the Holy Father not for the public”.
Last October Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith announced that the Second Commission, appointed in 2020 to study the female diaconate, would resume its work.
However, he was reported as telling Synod delegates, “Rushing to ask for the ordination of deaconesses is not the most important response to promote women today.”
The remark followed his absence from a meeting for the special study group established to consider questions related to the female diaconate. Membership of the study group has so far not been revealed.
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