Pope's 'no' to women deacons puzzles Long Island advocates in Catholic Church

Hofstra University Professor Phyllis Zagano has devoted most of her life to researching and advocating for making women deacons in the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Francis even appointed her to a commission to study the issue.

So when the pontiff recently in a television interview dismissed the idea of women deacons, Zagano and others around the country were surprised. Some saw it as a major missed opportunity to give women more equality in one of the world's largest religions, including allowing them to preach at Masses.

The pope’s comments to Norah O’Donnell on CBS’s “60 Minutes” were “confused at best and confusing to the people of God,” Zagano said. “A lot of people are very angry about the comment. ... Basically the people of God are asking for women to be included in the diaconate.”

Francis has ruled out allowing women to become priests, citing long-standing church doctrine. But he seemed open to the idea of women deacons, who like priests could preach the homily at Masses, baptize people and officiate at weddings. Unlike priests, deacons cannot hear confession, administer last rites or celebrate — that is, preside over — Masses. Deacons can be married because they don't take a vow of celibacy as priests do. Both deacons and priests are ordained.

Since assuming the papacy in 2013, Francis has created two commissions to investigate the idea of women deacons. He also has allowed it to become a topic at a global church “synod,” or meeting, which holds its next session in October in Rome. Advocates considered that his biggest move yet, and believed he was steering the 1.3 billion-member Roman Catholic Church toward approving female deacons.

Mixed signals

To those hoping the pope's openness to the idea signaled a major change to church practice, he appeared to backtrack in his interview with O’Donnell.

“You will have many young boys and girls that will come here at the end of next month for World Children’s Day,” O’Donnell said to the pope in the interview, conducted in Rome.

“And I’m curious,” she continued, “for a little girl growing up Catholic today, will she ever have the opportunity to be a deacon and participate as a clergy member in the church?”

“No,” the pope replied.

O’Donnell pressed the pontiff as to whether a female diaconate was “something you’re open to.” Francis replied: “If it is deacons with holy orders, no.”

Advocates for women deacons have been dissecting the pope’s words, even noting that O’Donnell spoke in English while the pope answered through a Spanish translator. Some have suggested Francis may have simply been describing the current situation in the church, and not speculating about the future.

Comments 'out of character'

“It’s possible that he was saying, ‘Well, here’s what it’s like now,’ ” said Ellie Hidalgo, co-director of the North Carolina-based group Discerning Deacons, which raises awareness about the issue of women deacons. “It felt out of character given the synod process. His comments were a surprise to me and to many.”

She noted the pope made the comments in a television interview, and not through any formal mechanism such as a document.

But some analysts think the pope said what he truly believes, and that the idea of women deacons will remain a nonstarter during the remainder of his papacy.

“I think it’s dead now,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a senior analyst at Religion News Service who, like Francis, is a priest in the Jesuit order.

“I was not surprised by the 'no,' " Reese said. “What I was surprised by was that he said it before the next session of the synod and before that committee that is supposed to look at this has come in with its report. He kind of short-circuited the whole process.”

Reese added: “I think it was wishful thinking on the part of a lot of women” that Francis would include them in the diaconate. “To me, progressives believe that the pope believes everything we do, and he doesn’t. He’s much more moderate. He’s very pastoral in his attitude toward people, but there’s no indication he wants to make any radical change in church teaching.”

Equal footing with men

Zagano, who is considered one of the world’s leading experts on the topic, argues women deacons already existed in the early church, and could easily be brought back. That would put women on more equal footing with men in a church where they already do much of the ministry in parishes, such as running food pantries and catechism classes, even though none are ordained.

One of the first women deacons, St. Phoebe, is named in the Bible by St. Paul, Zagano said. Deacons in general were phased out in the 12th century but brought back in the 1960s as part of the Vatican II reforms, though only for men.

With a shortage of priests, expanding the ranks of deacons is common sense, she and others argue — and would give half of humanity a greater role in the church.

There are about 50,150 male deacons in the world. In some places, such as remote areas of Australia and the Amazon region of South America, women are serving as de facto deacons under a “canonical exception” granted by local bishops, Hidalgo said.

Other religions have embraced the concept. This month, a Greek Orthodox church in Zimbabwe ordained a woman as a deaconess, Zagano said. The Episcopal Church in the United States started allowing women to serve as deacons in 1967 and as priests since 1976.

Talk for decades

Conversations about bringing back women deacons in the Roman Catholic Church have been going on for decades, said Tricia Bruce, a sociologist and author of “Called to Contribute,” a study of Catholic women and the diaconate.

For some, the pope’s comments provoked “a sense of surprise or even disappointment that maybe this isn’t that historic moment that many are waiting for,” said Bruce, who is serving as an official consultant to the synod. “I took his words in a spirit of conversation and recognizing that maybe that’s not where things will always be … I don’t think the pope is treating it as a finished conversation.”

But others think he is.

In the interview, Francis stressed the importance of women in the church. He referred to their preferred role as “deaconesses,” who perform work in the church but are not ordained.

Women “have always had, I would say, the function of deaconesses without being deacons, right?” the pope asked. “Women are of great service as women, not as ministers, as ministers in this regard, within the holy orders.”

The pontiff said women are “the ones who move changes forward, all sorts of changes. They are braver than the men. They know how best to protect life. Women are masterful custodians of life. Women are great. They are very great. And making space in the church for women does not mean giving them a ministry, no. The church is a mother, and women in the church are the ones who help foster that motherliness.”

“Don’t forget that the ones who never abandoned Jesus were the women,” he added. “The men all fled.”

Reese said the pope’s comments indicate that the question of women deacons “is not closed in terms of the future, but it’s clearly closed during his papacy.”