Women deacons? Yep, this should solicit some controversy

A bishop makes the case for women deacons

September 21, 2012 By Deacon Greg Kandra

 

 

>>>Let me acknowledge up fromt this story is lifted straight from the pages of Deacon Greg's amazing Deacon's Bench.  He has had more than an article or two about those who seem to be advocating for women to be ordained to the Permanent Diaconate.  Don't forget, that still means Holy Orders.  This will be very controversial and I can only think continued PUBLIC opinionating on this topic will only serve to help continue to paint the Catholic Church in a bad light.  Authors like the esteemed Deacon Dietwig may also remind us that no one, including the Vatican, has said the subject is not at least open for discussion.  Here's my only opinion at this time, not being a Canon Law scholar or anything:  Where is the need?  Where will the Church universal see this in terms of Holy Orders?  And how much more will these type of discussions, so unecessary in a public forum, steel the backbone of the far conservative Vatican II hating Catholics?  Discuss amongst yourselves!

 

 

From the next issue of AMERICA, retired auxiliary bishop Emil Wcela of Rockville Centre weighs in:

Women already minister extensively in the church. Consecrated religious serve in various fields. Thousands of other women serve in diocesan offices; in parishes as administrators, pastoral associates, directors of religious education, in the whole spectrum of parish life; in hospitals; in prisons. In contrast to the women of ancient times, women today play a very important part in public life, holding high offices in government, business, the professions and education. Cultural reasons to exclude women from the diaconate, at least in the West, no longer apply.
Ordaining women as deacons who have the necessary personal, spiritual, intellectual and pastoral qualities would give their indispensable role in the life of the church a new degree of official recognition, both of their ministry and of their direct connection to their diocesan bishop for assignments and faculties. Besides providing such women with the grace of the sacrament, ordination would enable them to exercise diaconal service in the teaching, sanctifying and governing functions of the church; it would also make it possible for them to hold ecclesiastical offices now limited to those in sacred orders. And as the International Theological Commission document points out, what the Second Vatican Council was proposing was not a “restoration of a previous form” but “the principle of the permanent exercise of the diaconate [italics in the French original and in the English translation] and not one form which the diaconate had taken in the past.” Who knows what new and grace-filled enrichment of that ministry might grow from the ordination of women as deacons?

There’s much more. Read it all.