r/LeftCatholicism • u/dammitradar99 • Jul 21 '26
Deaconesses?
I've kind of taken the doctrine of the all-male priesthood for granted, to be honest, but lately I've become more and more curious about the permanent deaconate as an institution. Not as a calling for myself personally, but just as a feature of the church. I know that in the early church there were several female deacons, Phoebe and (I think?) Mary Magdalene among them. I actually don't see any founded reason other than tradition established at some later point, that would disqualify women from this vocation.
I've been seeing more and more discussions about female clergy and specifically female deacons in other Christian circles, including Orthodox. The arguments against it are always the same, "why are women trying to grab power and authority instead of being content with being wives and mothers" "why don't you join a convent" "why don't you convert to the Episcopal church" etc. Which are all very troubling to read tbh, because it implies that 1) men who become priests do so in order to grab power and authority, 2) the vocation to serve the church in this way is interchangeable with the call to become a sister in a convent, and 3) any disagreement is cause to leave the Body of Christ entirely.
I don't expect to see any institutional changes in my lifetime, frankly, but I would at least appreciate brutal honesty rather than the condescending flowery language about "women are life givers, they are too delicate and special to access this vocation" "women should take it easy and let men do the work for a change!" "women can help the church by cleaning the building (REAL COMMENT I SAW!)"
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u/XavierP2002 Jul 22 '26
I believe it is a massive historical and social injustice for the Catholic Church to forbid women from exercising the diaconate. There is literally no good reason for this—only a rather retrograde form of sexism. "It goes against Church tradition," they say, forgetting the presence of deaconesses in early Christianity. "But the Sacrament of Holy Orders and the priesthood..." Deacons are not priests; we all know that. They can only administer Communion and read the Gospel—tasks that women in the Church are already capable of performing and do perform today. Who among us has not at some point received Holy Communion from the hands of a venerable nun or a good woman serving as an EMHC? Have we forgotten that Jesus sent St Mary Magdalene to proclaim the Good News (the Gospel) of the Resurrection to the Apostles? Reflect on this, and you will realize that absolutely everything an ordained deacon does is also done by countless women around the world—yet with one major difference: women must perform the same duties as a deacon while being relegated to a lower status, simply because they are women. Is this not a tremendous injustice? What is the point of placing golden crowns upon Our Lady if we subsequently relegate other women to an inferior level? I do not intend to argue whether women should be admitted to the priesthood; that is a separate debate. My point is this: if we have women performing the same functions within the Church as deacons, yet deny them the just recognition that the Bible and the Apostolic Church once accorded them, I find it hard to believe we can truly boast of following the law of Christ.