Women Religious Women Deacons

This booklet, comprising five essays, each with questions for discussion, is for anyone interested in the question of women religious and women deacons.

This book discusses from various angels the position of women in the Roman Catholic Church more specifically with regard to the diaconate. Theological, historical, pastoral, canonical and legal considerations are taken into account. The book makes clear that the old discussion is also lively today as only the ordination of women to the priesthood is currently closed for further debate. The thoughts developed in this book are certainly not exhaustive, nor do they all go into the same direction. Yet they can offer stepping stones to a future witch may do right thoroughly to the Church, to women and to the wellbeing of all Christian faithful.

Phyllis Zagano is an internationally acclaimed Catholic scholar and lecturer on contemporary spirituality and women's issues in the Church and is a member of the papal commission for the study of the diaconate of women. Her other books with Paulist Press include Women in Ministry: Emerging Questions about the Diaconate and Women Deacons: Past, Present, Future. She is senior research associate-in-residence and adjunct professor of religion at Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York. Book jacket.

Three related essays by experts on the diaconate that examine the concept of women deacons in the Catholic Church from Thistorical, contemporary, and future perspectives.

The question of restoring women to the ordained diaconate surfaced during the Second Vatican Council and continued to resound in academic and pastoral circles well after Pope Paul VI restored the diaconate as a permanent state for the church in the West in 1967. Available for the first time in English, these two documents by Cipriano Vagaggini, OSB. Cam., on the historical details of women ordained as deacons in the Greek and Byzantine traditions demonstrate that women were sacramentally ordained to the major order of deacon over the course of many centuries in many parts of the Greek and Byzantine East. Vagaggini introduces the conclusions to his study by noting that "in Christian antiquity there were different beliefs and tendencies distinguishing between ministry and ministry, ordination and ordination, with regard to the nature and significance of the respective orders or ranks."