Retired auxiliary bishop praises women deacons

In a move likely to further the heated debate over women's roles in the Catholic Church, a retired auxiliary bishop from the Diocese of Rockville Centre says the time may have come for women deacons.

In an article and interview in the current edition of "America," a weekly Jesuit magazine, Emil Wcela said women make up the vast majority of lay church workers and making some of them deacons could be beneficial.

"There seems to be a possibility and a great value in women serving as deacons today," Wcela said in a podcast interview on the magazine's website. "It's something that needs to be looked at. It's something that needs to be considered."

Wcela, 81, former president of the Catholic Biblical Association and rector of the Immaculate Conception Seminary in Lloyd Harbor, wrote that "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."

The comments drew praise from some experts, including a Hofstra University religion professor who called women deacons a "no-brainer." But others scorned the idea, warning that such a move could open the door to women priests.

Permanent deacons are ordained ministers who perform some of the same duties as priests, including preaching at Mass, witnessing marriages and conducting baptisms. They cannot preside over Mass, hear confessions or administer last rites.

There are about 40,000 deacons worldwide, including 17,000 in the United States.

"There is evidence of women deacons going back to the third century," Wcela said. Deacons were largely phased out about 800 years ago, but returned with the 1960s Vatican II reforms, with women excluded.

Wcela said statements from the Vatican in recent years have raised the possibility of women deacons. "Things have changed, certainly not in regard to ordaining them as priests or bishops, but in regard to ordaining them as deacons."

Hofstra's Phyllis Zagano, co-author of "Women Deacons: Past, Present, Future," said Wcela's comments added heft to the argument to bring back women deacons. "He's a significant voice and a serious voice," she said.

But canon law expert Edward N. Peters, of the Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, sees "no possibility that women will ever be ordained to the diaconate" because canon law forbids it.

The Rev. W. Shawn McKnight of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has said the question of female deacons "is not as definitively closed as is the question of women priests. But that isn't to say that it's a likely happening, either."

Sean Dolan, spokesman for the Diocese of Rockville Centre, said Wcela "is entitled to his opinion, but it is just that, his own opinion as a former professor of Scripture who served here as an auxiliary bishop."