Where to now for women deacons in the Church?

The Catholic Church has been dealing with the controversial issue of women’s ordination. Dr Phyllis Zagano, a prominent American scholar and advocate for women in ministry, is renowned for her extensive research on women deacons. In this interview with Matthew Howard, she shares her current concerns.

How do you interpret Pope Francis’ distinction between the Petrine principle for ministry and the Marian principle for women in the Church? And what impact does that distinction have on women’s roles in both management and ministry?

It’s not his distinction; it’s a distinction made by a former Jesuit, Hans Urs von Balthasar and has been widely criticised. I don’t know why the pope has adopted it, but it means the Petrine ministry, specifically the pope’s ministry, which extends to the ministry of bishops and priests and male deacons.

Do you see Cardinal Fernandez’s (Argentine prelate and theologian) comments regarding women’s ongoing role in the Church as focusing more on management rather than ministry, particularly sacramental ministry?

Management in the broadest sense is a type of ministry, but formally speaking ministry means ordained ministry, sacramental ministry. I’ve written that the Church seems to be leaning more towards including women in managerial positions and not ministerial positions … that is sacramental ministerial positions.

When speaking to the Synod, Cardinal Fernandez gave the report of “Study Group Five”. No one knows who the members of Group Five are … it’s the only one of 10 study groups that does not name or identify its members.

Cardinal Fernandez digressed from his prepared remarks. He said, “Well we all know what’s in the Holy Father’s mind; we all know what he thinks about this, but we feel the question is not yet mature.” So basically, he said there’s room for more study to develop the question … being the restoration of women to the ordained diaconate.

If you talk about management and ministry in those terms, it’s apples and oranges. Management doesn’t apply when we’re talking specifically about ordained sacramental ministry. We are speaking at this point about the restoration of women to the ordained diaconate, which was requested by nine of 12 language groups in the Amazon Synod in 2019. It was a discussion point in the first, 2023 Instrumentum Laboris for the Synod on Synodality. That is very important because the documents relative to the Synod on Synodality specified there would be no discussion of doctrine. So, the restoration of women to the diaconate is not a doctrinal question; it’s simply a matter of praxis.

So, to take it off the table in the Synod’s second, 2024 Instrumentum Laboris is unusual and significant. I believe the Holy Father did not want the Synod to be taken over by the singular discussion of women in the diaconate. Even so, women deacons is the only one of 18 or 20 issues brought up by the first iteration of the Synod in October 2023. Marked urgent is the question of women in the church and society. I believe if we don’t ordain women as deacons and therefore ratify the statement of the Church that women are made in the image and likeness of God and that women can image Christ, then the Church has no business talking about the way women are treated in the world or the Church.

Many people talk about the ongoing study of this issue, but haven’t we already seen extensive scholarship? Is there really more to study?

The scholarly work has been done, but I don’t know that it’s been read or received in certain quarters. As a member of the first commission on the study of women to the diaconate, I can affirm that I have no idea what was given to the Holy Father in our name. No member of my commission saw the exact transmittal to the Holy Father; I believe the same is true of the second commission.

What we and they did went through the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (now the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith) and we were not given copies of what was sent in our names. One of the sisters who received the materials from my commission said they got a single simple typescript … it had no names on it, it was not signed, and it was not on letterhead.

You probably heard Bishop Anthony Randazzo (Broken Bay Diocese) raising concerns that women in many parts of the world are treated as second-class citizens. He stresses that people who push for women’s ordination to the diaconate, often overshadow the more pressing issues of women’s dignity and inclusion. Do you feel you are somehow neglecting to bring up the plight of women by focusing on women’s ordination?

I think Bishop Randazzo is wrong and I have written him to tell him that. (He has not responded.)

Until women are returned to the ordained diaconate, until a woman is standing next to the Holy Father proclaiming the gospel in St Peter’s Square, vested as an ordained deacon, the Church has no business talking about the other problems of women in the world, because, in effect, the Church is creating the problems that it decries.

I want to know what are the reasons. If the answer is no and if there is a doctrinal reason why women cannot be restored to the ordained diaconate, then give me the reasons why. The main reason I saw for not ordaining women as priests was that women cannot image Christ, in addition to the fact of Jesus’s choice of the apostles. Women’s “inability” to image the Risen Lord was hinted at in the 2002 document from the International Theological Commission where they said, deacons act in persona Christi servi, in the person of Christ the servant, and extrapolation, women cannot act “in the person of Christ”.

There are five liturgies used to ordain women in the Vatican library. I’ve seen them and I’ve studied them, and they meet the criteria for sacramental ordination relative to matter and form. There are two Greek terms; one has been interpreted to mean “blessing” and the other to mean “ordination”. They both signify ordination.

In 1947, Pope Pius XII defined the matter and form of the sacrament of orders, and he said “moral contact” is sufficient. An example of moral contact would be where, instead of the bishop placing his hand on the woman, he would extend his hand over the woman. But whether the “laying on of hands” is touching the head or extending his hands over her head, both actions are part of the larger ordination ceremonies, which include the epiclesis, of calling down of the Holy Spirit. In these liturgies, the bishop also places a stole on the woman ordained to the diaconate, and he calls her a deacon (or deaconess, depending on the language and the translations.)

A counterpoint that some women have said to me is the claim that the ordination of women shouldn’t be the focus and this leads to more clericalism. That this was something to be lauded because it brings about greater participation for both lay men and women and this discussion can somehow pit men against women, clerics against lay.

There has historically always been a distinction between the diaconate and the priesthood.  A deacon is ordained “not unto the priesthood but into the ministry” and we have thousands of women who have been so ordained. I don’t think it’s “either-or”, I think it’s “both-and”. The Australian Synod certainly voted to accept the restoration of women to the ordained diaconate.

Finally, do you believe the Vatican is seriously interested in this issue, or is this just delaying the possibility?

It’s becoming obvious there’s a delay. For 50 years there have been studies about restoring women to the ordained diaconate. In 1973, a sub-commission of the first iteration of the International Theological Commission studied the question. Two members of the ITC, then a Jesuit named Nemeshegyi and a Camaldolese Benedictine named Vagaggini encouraged a positive vote at that time. In 1987, Vagaggini was asked to present before the Synod of Bishops and he said the same thing: there’s no reason not to ordain women as deacons and give them all of the ministries and functions of the diaconate, including altar service.

But we still have on the books a liturgical law that forbids women from entering the sanctuary. Musicum Sacrum (1967) states that a choir including women may not sing from inside the sanctuary. I think people are getting fed up, and people are walking away, and that is the opposite of the kind of Evangelical Focus the Holy Father would like. It is certainly not reflective of the gospel.

Courtesy Common Home TV. Corrected and edited for space. For the full interview go to: https://www.commonhome.tv/2024/10/11/dr-phyllis-zagano-on-the-future-of-women-in-ministry-amid-the-synods-calls-for-discernment/

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