At its 1995 convention in Montreal the Canon Law Society of America (CLSA) voted to present to the American bishops a report on women deacons. The 53-page report suggested that the American bishops seek an apostolic indult to permit women to be ordained to the diaconate in the United States.

The report carefully surveyed the historical evidence of whether women had been ordained to the diaconate and found the historical evidence inconclusive. Everyone acknowledges that in the early Christian era especially in the eastern church women served as deaconesses with a special ministry to women. Because of the traditional seclusion of women there, women could not be attended by male ministers. But there is no consensus as to whether deaconesses were ever technically and in the proper sense of the term "ordained" to the diaconate.

In the debate over women priests no one had been able to show that women had ever been ordained priests except in a few heretical sects. Thus the historical evidence ripened into a serious theological argument from Tradition that the church had not ordained women to the priesthood because she could not do so.

The CLSA report now skillfully turned this argument against the ordination of women to the priesthood into an argument in favor of the ordination of women deacons. In the case of women deacons the report asserts that there is no clear and convincing evidence that women had not in fact been "ordained" to the diaconate. So, the report goes on to say, by the same logic the church is not precluded from ordaining women deacons.

With the possibility of ordaining women to the diaconate now established, the report then moved on to discuss the prudence of doing so. Here the report argues that there is a clear need for women in ministry and pointed to the recent altar girl indult as proof that even the Holy See has recognized this need and supported the cause of women. The report then went on to note what is self-evident in a sacramental church like the Catholic church that it is frankly desirable that those in ministry be strengthened by the grace of the sacrament of orders. This argument, in fact, had been one of the key arguments in favor of the revival of the permanent diaconate at Vatican II.

If the American bishops request and receive the indult to ordain women to the diaconate, it will mean momentous changes on the American Catholic church-scape. We thought <Christifidelis> readers should be aware of these potential changes. Even if not priests, women deacons would nevertheless in canon law, like priests, be clerics. They would no longer be lav persons. To illuminate what their status would be if they are admitted to diaconal ordination, we present the following sketch of the current canon law of deacons.

Three decades ago in 1964 in article 29 of its dogmatic constitution on the church, <Lumen gentium,> the Second Council of the Vatican asked Paul VI to restore the permanent diaconate in the Latin church. He did so by the <motu proprio>, <Sacrum diaconatus ordinem>, which was promulgated on June 18, 1967, the feast of Saint Ephraem, deacon. The apostolic letter permitted episcopal conferences to request that the Holy See allow the ordination of celibate and married men permanently to the diaconate within their territory. In April, 1968, the American bishops made that request, which four months later was granted.

In November of that year the first Standing Committee on the Permanent Diaconate of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops was appointed. The Committee was charged with drawing up a program of studies for the diaconate and in May and June of 1971 it saw the first fruits of its labors with the first ordinations of permanent deacons since the conciliar reform had been mooted.

Numerically deacons have been one of the successes since Vatican II. While the number of women religious in the United States has plummeted forty percent from 160,931 in 1970 to 94,431 in 1994 and during those same years the number of diocesan priests has declined ten percent from 37,292 to 33,204, during that same period the number of deacons has soared. Starting at zero in 1970, by 1994 the number of permanent deacons in the United States had jumped to 11,123; moreover, another 1,724 candidates awaited diaconal ordination.

Of the permanent deacons 92 percent were married, 13 percent were Hispanic and 3 percent were Black. Some 1,740 were salaried church employees and 66 administered a parish or a mission. Interestingly, in the entire Catholic world there were but 19,395 permanent deacons and so the United States, which accounts for six percent of the world's Catholics, had sixty percent of the Catholic world's permanent deacons. (1995 <Catholic Almanac>, pp. 229, 368 E. Echline, <The Deacon in the Church>, New York, 1971, pp. 123-124. If the diaconate were open to women, one expects the number of permanent deacons will soar even more rapidly.

Canon 835 tells us that the sanctifying office of the church is exercised principally by the bishops who are the high priests and the principal dispensers of the mysteries of God. But later that same canon goes on to say that deacons, too, have a share in that office, in accordance with the norms of law. To understand, then, the role of deacons today one needs to survey the revised 1983 <Code of Canon Law> of the Latin church and her reformed liturgical law, but even a cursory survey would take more space than is available here. Perhaps the brief observations in the following article will be useful.

Whether he chooses to express his views verbally or in writing, Duane Galles is an extremely tough act to follow, so all I will attempt to do here is offer some thoughts on "<The Canonical Implications of Ordaining Women to the Permanent Diaconate> (hereafter CIOWPD) and will probably say less but take more words to say it then he.

The words "Canonical Implications" in the title raised the first questions in my mind about CIOWPD. I wondered if the primary implications are not canonical but theological.

The basic statutes governing the sacrament of orders can be found in Book IV, Part I, Title VI (cc. 1008-1054) of the Code of Canon Law. Canon 1008 begins by summarizing the theology of orders and the following canon defines the grades of order. Both are so basic to the consideration of the issue in question here that the texts ought to be given:

Canon 1008�<By divine institution some among the Christian faithful are constituted sacred ministers through the sacrament of orders by means of the indelible character with which they are marked, accordingly they are consecrated and deputed to shepherd the people of God, each in accord with his own grade of orders, by fulfilling in the person of Christ the Head the functions of teaching, sanctifying and governing.>

Canon 1009�#1 <The orders are the episcopacy, the presbyterate and the diaconate.>

After these two introductory canons, Chapter I of Title VI (cc. 1010-1023) sets forth the norms concerning the celebration and minister of ordination. We then turn to the Chapter II "Candidates for Ordination," the opening canon of which brings us to the heart of the issue by stating simply: <Only a baptized male validly receives sacred ordination> (c. 1024.)

When the law deals with validity, as in the case of the requirements for a valid marriage or valid matter for the Eucharist, the fundamental considerations involving the subject are usually governed more by <theological> principles than merely legal ones. Nonetheless CIOWPD, on page 38, without qualification proclaims: "Notwithstanding the relative consistency (some historical exceptions have been examined above with regard to the ordination of women to the diaconate) and the long duration of this restriction, the limitation of diaconal ordination to males is a 'merely ecclesiastical law' (c. 11). Its modification is within the authority of the Church." Perhaps the modification of ecclesiastical law so desired by CIOWPD <is> possible, but I would submit that two questions must be first settled by authorities far higher than CLSA or even the national episcopal conferences.

The first question to be answered by the Church is whether deaconesses, whose existence is unquestioned, were truly ordained according to the sense of cc. 1008 and 1009. If the answer is in the affirmative then, and only then, is the above assertion of CIOWPD tenable. And, in my opinion, an affirmative answer would have to rest upon far more evidence than was cited by CIOWPD.

If the answer to the historical question is negative, one must still deal with the question as to whether a baptized woman could validly receive diaconal ordination. That answer, like the answer to the question as to whether women can be ordained to the priesthood, would have to come from the highest level of ecclesiastical authority. Since c. 1024 repeats the language of c. 968 of the 1917 Code, I have checked all the commentaries on the earlier code (Abbo-Hannan, Augustine, Bouscaren-Ellis, Gasparri and Woywood) which we have in the Foundation's library and all say essentially the same thing. The following example is typical:

<The two invalidating disqualifications arising from the subject himself are thus stated to be lack of baptism of water and lack of male sex. Ecclesiastical tradition, interpreting divine law, is witness that the latter excludes women from the diaconate and higher orders; as to the lower orders, the incapacity of women arises from ecclesiastical law.> (John J. Abbo and Jerome D. Hannan, The Sacred Canons, B. Herder Book Co., St. Louis, 1952,Vol.II,p.93)

While I would not claim that the opinions of learned commentators are declarations of the teaching Church, I cannot see how they can be simply brushed aside, as CIOWPD appears to do. If the Church does admit women to diaconal ordination, it seems to me that this action�given the definition of the sacrament of orders we see in c. 100�would give rise to the formidable challenge of performing the difficult mental gymnastics involved in asserting that women can validly be admitted to one grade of orders while at the same time reaffirming the infallible teaching of the Church that they cannot be admitted to the others.

Even though I disagree profoundly with its central point, CIOWPD makes some very useful observations on the diaconate in general, especially in its treatment of the distinction�or, more properly stated, the lack of it�between the so-called "transitional" and "permanent" deacons. Many Catholics think of permanent and transitional deacons as being distinct�to the extent that we sometimes hear the former identified by the absurd self-contradictory term, "lay deacons," when in truth both receive the same sacrament.

Although it is anticipated that those who are ordained as permanent deacons will not become priests, some have, and even if it is assumed that transitional deacons will be ordained priests, some have not. After all, we know that about ninety-nine out every one-hundred men ordained to the priesthood will not become bishops, yet we do not call them "permanent priests;" and if a priest exhibits qualities that would lead us to expect that he might someday become a bishop, we don't call him a "transitional priest." Some reasonable distinctions have been made between the ways permanent and transitional deacons live and exercise their office, but, as CIOWPD properly notes (p. 34): "They share the permanent sacrament they have received."

Nonetheless, despite the valid points and distinctions it makes, my general assessment of CIOWPD is that it is a political rather than a canonical essay. Whatever the Church may decide with regard to the possibility of admitting women to ordination to the diaconate, I doubt that CIOWPD will weigh heavily in that decision.

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