ARE DEACONS THE ANSWER? An evolving ministry
Gaillardetz, Richard R.
ARE DEACONS THE ANSWER? Two assessments Richard R. Gaillardetz One of the fastest-growing ministries in the United States and Canada is the restored permanent diaconate. Not only have deacons...
...The bishop (in Greek, episkopos, meaning "overseer") was so called because he exercised pastoral oversight over the local community...
...The present doctrinal and canonical restrictions regarding who may respond to a call to priestly ministry have led to fewer qualified candidates pursuing priestly ordination...
...Only when the sacrament of anointing became attached to the sacrament of reconciliation administered to the dying did anointing become exclusively identified with presbyteral ministry...
...Unfortunately, by the sixth century, the ministry of the deacon would be reduced from these once vital roles to little more than a steppingstone to priesthood...
...A bishop needs to appoint an administrator for a parish that lacks a resident priest...
...Most assist liturgically at the celebration of the Sunday Eucharist...
...Despite these remarkable developments, the role of the permanent deacon stands at a crossroads, for the very expansion of the various types of ministries in which deacons are now involved has run too far ahead of a developed theology of the diaconate...
...They are not ordained to pastoral and liturgical leadership of a community...
...In its restoration of the permanent diaconate open to married persons, the council was saying that it is possible to respond to an ecclesial call to ordained ministry while fulfilling the universal call to holiness through the vowed life of marriage...
...It was by virtue of his ministry as pastoral leader that he presided at the community's Eucharist...
...A second contribution of Vatican II's restoration of the permanent diaconate was the church's recognition that celibacy need not be a condition for ordained ministry...
...In the early centuries, bishops were frequently chosen from the ranks of the diaconate without first being ordained to the presbyterate...
...Associating the anointing of the sick with priestly ministry was a late historical development without much theological rationale...
...Beyond these two significant contributions, there have been other remarkable achievements...
...The restoration of the diaconate as a permanent ministry recalls a much more ancient tradition, a time when each of these ministries was valued for its own sake...
...The restoration of the permanent diaconate by Vatican II was an initial step toward dismantling the then-dominant view of permanent ministries as constituting a kind of ecclesiastical ladder...
...3. If presiding over baptisms and weddings presents a problematic exercise of forms of ministry more proper to the priest or bishop, there is nonetheless a good case to be made for expanding diaconal ministry to include the administration of the sacrament of the anointing of the sick...
...It could challenge deacons to see their ministry as a vital service to the church in its own right...
...Many of these ancient ministries were reduced to nothing but a formality...
...In a church in which ordained ministry is so often associated with power and authority, the deacon is called to witness to the gospel demand that all exercises of power and authority be measured against the standard of Christ who came, not to be served, but to serve...
...Recognizing that there is no solid ecclesiological reason for requiring ordination to the diaconate would go a long way toward the recovery of the diaconate as a permanent church ministry...
...Anyone who has been involved in the formation of candidates for ordination to the diaconate, as I was for ten years, cannot but be moved by such selfless dedication and commitment to the church...
...The basic insight was that whoever was the defacto pastoral leader of the community was the one who ought to preside over the liturgical life of the community...
...In like manner, one must question the ecclesiological soundness of training deacons to administer parishes...
...The present practice, where a seminarian is ordained to the diaconate approximately a year before his priestly ordination, has reduced the diaconate to a pastoral internship or field-education exercise...
...The number of men eager to enter programs requiring significant time and financial dedication, with little expectation of financial reward, has been a marvelous affirmation of the grass-roots vitality of the church...
...For example, a candidate for the priesthood in the Roman rite would have to move up the ecclesiastical ladder of porter, lector, exorcist, acolyte, subdeacon, and deacon before being ordained a presbyter...
...The fact that there are so many Catholics willing to come forward to serve the church, both as permanent deacons and as lay ecclesial ministers, should put to rest the argument that the paucity of vocations to the priesthood is due to a cultural narcissism in which people are simply unwilling to commit themselves to the church...
...They best fulfill their ministry when they give public witness to the Christ who healed the sick, embraced lepers, fed the hungry, and washed the feet of his disciples...
...4. The restriction of ordained diaconal ministry to men ignores the testimony of tradition that women clergy engaged in public diaconal ministry in the early church (affirmed in Phyllis Zagano's study of women deacons, Holy Saturday...
...By the Middle Ages, however, these various ministries were seen no longer as vital to the life of the church but solely as stepping stones for hierarchical advancement...
...The transitional diaconate (the ordination to the diaconate of a candidate in preparation for priestly ordination) is a remnant of the medieval cur-sus honorum, when the diaconate was reduced to a steppingstone to priestly ordination...
...It is time for the church to take a closer look at the ministry of the deacon...
...Until a situation is created in which all who manifest a genuine charism for community leadership are doctrinally and canonically empowered to pursue ordination to priestly ministry, some will continue to look to deacons and others to serve as a stopgap...
...These events should more properly be presided over by the true pastoral leader of the local community...
...As a result, there has been a growing emphasis on presiding over the liturgical life of the church and, in many cases, of exercising pastoral leadership in local parishes, a role not in keeping with the ancient tradition...
...By the middle of the second century, every church was led by an individual bishop...
...The full recovery of the ancient sense that each ordained ministry-deacon, priest, and bishop-possesses its own intrinsic meaning and value would be a wonderful asset for the church today...
...Still, while there may be a default preference for a cleric, there is no ecclesiological justification for it...
...In the early church the practice soon emerged in which Christians took oil blessed by the bishop and stored it in their homes to administer to one another...
...In light of these factors, if the permanent diaconate is to fulfill its promise, it must undergo significant reform: 1. The church must address the present pastoral situation which tempts many bishops to expand the diaconate into ministries more proper to a priest, namely the current shortage of ordained priests...
...Once it is untethered from the sacrament of reconciliation, it becomes difficult to argue against the appropriateness of deacons anointing the sick...
...His most recent book is By What Authority...
...Some work as chaplains in jails and hospitals, others engage in catechetical ministry...
...5. In her recent book, Sacramental Orders, Susan Wood suggests that the church phase out the transitional diaconate...
...Deacons are ordained to stand before the community as living icons of Christ the servant...
...Promotion" was then a matter of the church's recognizing that the gifts an individual exercised in a given ministry might justify his being called to a new ministry of ecclesial leadership...
...It is a proposal with much merit...
...Suffice it to say, diaconal ministry looks quite different today...
...In the fifth century we find a letter from Pope Innocent I specifying that the oil blessed by the bishop was to be used on the infirm in the community, whether administered by a priest, deacon, or lay person...
...Still, I fear the ministry of the deacon has gone beyond the role envisioned for it at the council and has lost its moorings in the tradition of diaconal ministry of the early church...
...By allowing married deacons-not as a dispensation from the law but as part of the permanent ordering of the community- the council rightly understood a distinction lost in the church's current view of presbyteral and episcopal ministry, namely, the distinction between ministerial service to the church (am I called to ordained ministry in the church...
...The life of the early church was rich with a great diversity of ministries...
...The current prohibition of women from exercising diaconal ministry only perpetuates the sexist and clerical tendencies so evident in many spheres of church life...
...and the concrete manner in which one might live out the universal call to holiness (am I called to the single life, to the public witness to evangelical celibacy, or to the vowed life of marriage...
...In many ways, the next four proposals all depend on the church's success in addressing this first issue...
...Such a pastoral circumstance would have been inconceivable in the early church...
...They participated in baptismal ministry within the context of a liturgy presided over by the bishop, but they did not preside at funerals...
...Not only have deacons mushroomed in number, so has their outreach...
...Is the modern diaconate being transformed into a priestly auxiliary, a role that risks losing, or at least obscuring, the unique contributions the office can make to the life of the church...
...There is nothing in the theology of the diaconate to lead the bishop to choose the deacon over the lay person...
...In the absence of resident priests in many parishes in North America, deacons are being transformed into priests, j.g...
...2. The church must consider imposing greater restrictions on the practice of deacons presiding over significant liturgical-sacramental events in the life of the church...
...He is presented with two candidates, a deacon and a lay person...
...Exercise of the diaconate in the early church took various forms...
...If the deacon is the true pastoral leader of the community (the question of canonical restrictions aside), he ought to be ordained a priest...
...A growing number are serving as administrators for parishes without a resident priest/pastor...
...The same holds for the de facto lay leader of a local church...
...In time, this ministry of oversight came to be extended to the priest/presbyter, who then also took on responsibility for presiding at the Eucharist...
...Deacons assisted liturgically at the altar, but they seldom, if ever, presided over the liturgical assembly...
...Unlike priests and bishops, deacons are not ordained to pastor a community, and this fact should call into question the growing number of instances where deacons find themselves engaging in liturgical presidency (presiding over weddings, funerals, and baptisms...
...Finally, they did not serve as administrators over a church without a resident bishop or priest...
...Many preach and preside at baptisms, weddings, and funerals...
...The primary ministry of deacons involved service to the bishop in administering the temporal goods of the local church, and in outreach to the poor and sick...
...Richard R. Gaillardetz is the Thomas and Margaret Murray and James J. Bacik Professor of Catholic Studies at the University of Toledo...
...They proclaimed the word of God in the liturgy, though scholars disagree on whether they also preached...
...Consider the following pastoral decision...
...And since there was no public church ceremony connected with marriage, they did not preside at weddings...
...junior grade...
...The determination of some bishops to put deacons in these positions may stem less from an ecclesiological conviction than from a sense of having greater canonical control over a deacon by virtue of his promise of obedience, clerical title, vestments, and the like...
...The Liturgical Press).(The Liturgical Press...
...It might even help inspire some priests to eschew careerist desires for the episcopate, and bishops to shun aspirations to be transferred to more prestigious sees...
Vol. 130 • August 2003 • No. 14
