OPENING THE DIACONATE TO WOMENSOME ISSUES TO CONSIDER

Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research

A Small Aspect of A Much Larger ProblemAddressing the admission of women to the diaconate cannot be done in isolation.

It requires addressing the related issues of admitting women to the priesthood and the episcopate.

More fundamentally, it requires addressing the issue of the ordination itself, of the existence of two Christian priesthoods, a universal, baptismal one on the one hand, and an ‘ordained’ priesthood on the other.

A People of PriestsThere was no Christian ‘priesthood’ in the early church.

The letter to the Hebrews suggests that Christians do not need a human priesthood anymore. They now have Jesus acting as the eternal high priest for them.

Romans 5.2 speak of our unmediated access to grace through Christ, and Rom. 12.1 calls all Christians to engage in the priestly act of offering the body as a living sacrifice to God.

A People of Priests – Pt 21 Peter 2 says that Christians are ‘a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God, through Jesus Christ’. It is the entire people who are now called to be ‘priests’ to each other and to the world. What does this priestly service entail more concretely?

Charitable giving, prayer, and more in general every act made in service of the Good News is a priestly offering: see e.g. Hebrews 13, 2 Cor. 9.

‘[T]he conclusion is hard to avoid: Paul saw all ministry and service on behalf of the gospel as priestly ministry, ministry which all believers could engage in and which was not limited to any special order of priests’ (Dunn).

No Sacral JargonThe three main terms the NT uses to designate people who were fulfilling specific tasks within the early Christian communities are borrowed from the ordinary, secular domain of civil administration: ‘episkopoi’ (supervisors) with ‘diakonoi’ (assistants), and ‘presbyteroi’ (elders).

There is also mention of ‘apostles’, ‘teachers’, ‘preachers’, ‘prophets’, ‘evangelists’, ‘pastors’, and so on.

The NT doesn’t offer a fixed list of official ministries, but rather it displays a variety which reflects a very pragmatic approach to office, with no cultic or sacral overtones.

No Theological LegitimationThe NT offers no theological legitimation of these three positions: ‘[They] are assumed to be in existence and are regarded in purely functional terms’.

Circles of elders’ and ‘supervisors with assistants’ are different ways of organizing leadership within communities. They are NOT cultic roles.

The emphasis is quite simply on the function fulfilled, rather than on the ‘order’ or ‘status’ of office-holders within the Christian community.

A Fellowship of EqualsAll are equals, all have gifts, all should use their gifts by ministering to each other and the world;

‘Theologically and practically the distinction between the sexes is insignificant in such a multiform exercise of ministry’

The clearest definition of the purpose of the ministry of church officials is, according to Paul, ‘for the building up of the body of Christ’, and ‘for the common good’ – in short, to support the ministry of the entire church.

In a sense, church officials are less involved in church mission than the rest of the ‘saints’, the laity. For their role is one of support to the front-line workers.

A Fellowship of EqualsThe earliest Christian churches were house-churches, small groups of a couple dozen people maximum gathering in the private houses of well-off patrons.

In those kind of churches, a variety of people are reported to have presided over the common Eucharistic meals: most importantly, prophets, teachers and house-church patrons.

A Fellowship of EqualsThere is unambiguous scriptural as well as historical evidence that all such roles have been fulfilled by women too.

It is therefore almost certain that women who were apostles (Junia in Rom. 16.7, according to the majority of exegetes; probably Philippians 4.2-3), prophets (Acts 21.9; 1 Cor. 11.5), teachers (Acts 18.26; see 1 Tim. 2.12), deacons (probably Phoebe in Rom. 16.1; also probably 1 Tim 3.11), or house-church patrons, would have taught and presided at Eucharistic meals.

Later development of sacral language

The designation of ‘episkopoi’ and ‘presbyteroi’ as ‘priests’ made an entrance into Christian discourse only slowly in the second and third centuries as a metaphorical way of thinking about elders and overseers.

To make the category of ‘priesthood’ the decisive one, then, separates us from the first three centuries of church history, as well as from the testimony of the New Testament.

Ordination in the First Millennium

Ordination meant election by and installation of a person to perform a particular function in a specific Christian community.

Not only bishops, priests, deacons and subdeacons but also of porters, lectors, exorcists, acolytes, canons, abbots, abbesses, kings, queens and empresses were all considered equally ordained. This makes perfect sense.

An ordo (order) was a group in the church (or society) that had a particular job or vocation. In fact, any job or vocation was called an ‘order’, and the process by which one was chosen and designated for that vocation was an ‘ordination’.

Nor was a person’s ordination absolute, thus granting them spiritual and permanent powers. A person was ordained to a specific position for only as long as the community needed them.

The Historical EvidenceOur current understanding of ordination dates back to the thirteenth century, and is a break with the previous understanding of the word which was current throughout the first millennium.

According to this new definition, ‘ordination granted the recipient not a position within a community, but a power that a person can exercise in any community. The central power that ordination granted was the power to consecrate the bread and wine at the altar, and so, over time, ordination was considered to include only those orders that served at the altar, that is, the orders of priest, deacon and subdeacon. All of the other earlier orders were no longer considered to be orders at all’ (Macy).

The Historical EvidenceAs a part of this redefinition, women were excluded from all the orders including that of priest, deacon and sub-deacon.

It seems that the major reason women stopped being ordained deacons in both the East and the West was the gradual introduction of purity laws from the Hebrew Scriptures. Menstruation and childbirth were seen as impediments to women serving at the altar or to their eventually being ordained.

To this we can add the entrenched cultural prejudices against women as inferior beings, physically, intellectually, morally and spiritually.

In fact, it was taught and believed, and still is, that women never performed any of the roles now limited to those three orders.

We know, however, that under the older definition of order, however, women played several liturgical and administrative roles now reserved to deacons, priests and bishops.

Where do we go from here?

Recall what just happened in Killaloe diocese: Laywomen wrote to the bishop asking him to reconsider reintroducing the male-only permanent diaconate, because the future deacons would have fulfilled tasks which are currently largely carried out by women.

Where do we go from here?Do we want to become part of the hierarchy as it is currently conceived?

If not, what chances do we have for changing the mentality, the theological ideology underlying the current structures?

Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza has proposed the to open the cardinalate to women.

It may be even better to ask for the reintroduction of the democratic elections of bishops by the local church