Women As Deacons

[Old_Joe]

Were there women who were made deacons in the early church and are there any scripture references?

[CatherineM]

[quote name='Old_Joe' date='21 October 2009 - 07:10 PM' timestamp='1256170215' post='1989296']
Were there women who were made deacons in the early church and are there any scripture references?
[/quote]
That is a question that comes with a can of worms. The word Deacon comes from the Greek [i]diakonos[/i] that means basically a servant. Sometimes the word was used not to denote the ordained ministry, but someone who was simply a helper. There were women in the early Church who assisted in baptisms, when full body immersion in the buff was done. These were older women, widows usually, who for modesty sake were used to help women in and out of the baptismal waters. One mentioned in the New Testament was Phoebe (Romans 16:1). Their investiture was described in several ancient texts, and the Church has clarified for us that those investitures were not raised to the level of a sacramental ordination, but rather more like the investiture you might see at church for new EMHC's.

This is an area where there is confusion and debate. When it was first announced 25+ years ago that we were going to re-establish the permanent deaconate, the Archbishop in Oklahoma City was so excited, that he began formation classes before all the paperwork was done at the Vatican. Half that first class was female. Just before that class was to be ordained, he was informed that women couldn't participate, and the men in the first class decided to start the formation process over again because they didn't want to be ordain as just half a class.

Sometimes the best way for us to know how something in antiquity was done, is to look not at the texts, but at how the people behaved. When full body immersion became less common as infant baptism became the norm, the role of deaconess faded away. If it had been an ordained ministry instead of a role in baptism alone, it wouldn't have.

Bottom line, John Paul II made it clear that the Church did not have the power to ordain women, and therefore the debate about the ordination of women to the deaconate or priesthood was closed.



diakonos