Who can be an icon of Christ? The question haunts me. Documents of the Second Vatican Council teach that all good people who are part of the Church…all these good people relying on the exquisite promise of Christ’s resurrection are the Body of Christ. It would stand to reason, then that ‘all good people’ means precisely that. ‘All good people’ means all good men and…women.
Yet the Catholic Church has excised half its members from the fold. Cut free are all women. How? Women cannot be ordained to Church ministry, even though the clearest and most complete church histories include ordained women. What is the argument against ordaining women? The reduction of the complex reasoning is that women do not image Christ. Women cannot symbolize Christ. Women are not icons of Christ…It’s a scandal. It’s more than a scandal; it’s a disfigurement on the entire body of Christ by those who would deny both history and theology…that it is probably formally heretical.
The above indictment is from Women: Icons of Christ, authored by Phyllis Zagano. This well-respected scholar is arguably the leading advocate for the ordination of women to the diaconate, an issue to which she has devoted her theological career. She was a member of the 2016 Commission for the Study of the Diaconate of Women established by Pope Francis, which was reconvened in 2020. However, the final reports of both commissions have not been made public; and regarding the outcome of the 2016 commission, Francis commented during a 2019 in-flight press conference that “all had different positions, sometimes sharply different, they worked together and they agreed up to a point. Each one had his/her own vision, which was not in accord with that of the others, and the commission stopped there.” One can reasonably assume, due to its lack of publication, that the 2020 commission also failed to reach a consensus.
There are many in the Church who consider the ordination of women as deacons to be an unsettled question and are hopeful that perhaps newly-elected Pope Leo XIV will admit women to the diaconate. The fact is, during the early centuries of the Church women served as deaconesses—with the earliest reference found in St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans when he acknowledges the service of Phoebe “who is a deaconess of the Church of Cenchreae” (Romans 16:1). The question is what exactly was the function and ecclesial status of deaconesses in the early centuries of the Church. Under the pontificate of John Paul II, the International Theological Commission (ITC) produced an exhaustive study of the permanent diaconate, titled: From the Diakonia of Christ to the Diakonia of the Apostles—published in 2002.
The study provides a detailed examination of the history of the diaconate focused on New Testament evidence, the Apostolic Fathers, and early Church documents that include actual rites of ordination. According to this Commission, the three grades of the clergy—bishop, priest, and deacon—were already recognized by Pope Clement of Rome by the end of the first century. St. Ignatius of Antioch, who was martyred no later than 117, also acknowledged the three grades of the ecclesiastical hierarchy in his “Letter to the Trallians” (3, 1): “Let everyone revere the deacons as Jesus Christ, the bishop as the image of the Father, and the presbyters as the senate of God and the assembly of the Apostles. For without them one cannot speak of the Church.”
The three grades of the hierarchy, the “unicity of orders,” was also recognized by St. Cyprian, the third-century bishop of Carthage, when in Letter 15 he had to admonish deacons not to take the place of priests, as deacons “came in third in the order of the hierarchy.”1 This shows that the “unicity of orders”—in other words, the three grades of deacon, priest, and bishop—was not a late development and hardly a “modern accretion” as Zagano claims.2
The Diaconate in the Early Church
It will not be possible in the space of this article to provide a full summary of early Church history on women deacons. If anyone wishes to delve more closely into the history of deaconesses in the Church, I recommend the monumental work of Aimé Georges Martimort, Deaconesses: An Historical Study. But what follows will at least give readers an understanding of the nature of the role of deaconesses in the Church’s early centuries. Outside of the New Testament, the Apostolic Tradition of St. Hippolytus, written no later than 220, contains instruction on the “installation” of widows—as widows were recognized as entering a kind of order within the assembly.
The Apostolic Tradition states that widows were “installed” and “not ordained” and there was no “laying on of hands because she does not offer the sacrifice [προθύματα] and she does not have a liturgical [ λειτουργία] function. Ordination [χειροτονία] is for clerics destined for liturgical service.”3 While this passage concerns the installation of widows, it serves as an indication that women set aside for ministry were not ordained because they were not clerics at the service of the altar. The Apostolic Tradition also verifies that male deacons were ordained by the imposition of hands by the bishop, meaning that the “unicity of orders” was also recognized in this third century document.
The institution of deaconesses was more prevalent in the Eastern Church than in the West. The Eastern Church document the Didascalia Apostolorum, dating from the first half of the third century, gives evidence of female deacons. The ultimate issue regarding the possibility of ordaining women to the diaconate, as Zagano rightly notes, has to do with whether women can sacramentally image Christ. To this point, it is interesting to note that the Didascalia teaches that while the bishop “is to be honored by you as God himself” it is the deacon “who stands in the place of Christ.” And as for deaconesses “they are to be honored by you as the Holy Spirit”—most probably because in Semitic languages spirit is a feminine noun.”4 In any case, according to this document, deaconesses did not represent Jesus.
The Didascalia provides detailed information on the exact duties of deaconesses, and it appears that they were needed to fulfill practical pastoral needs. Women ministered to other women as it was unseemly for men to do so. Deaconesses assisted in the baptismal ceremony of women who were indeed naked during the rite. Deaconesses anointed their bodies, as well as their heads. The deaconess would hold up a screen or drape to hide the body of the woman about to be baptized while the bishop, executing the baptismal rite, extended his hand over the drape to avoid seeing the woman.
It is important to note that deaconesses could not perform the actual sacrament of baptism. According to the Didascalia, this could only be done by a bishop, priest, or male deacon.5 After the baptism, deaconesses continued to instruct the women, nurturing them in the Faith. Indeed, for the sake of modesty and to avoid scandal, only women could instruct other women, and this ministry was conducted by female deacons.
An Eastern Church fifth-century document called The Testament of Our Lord Jesus Christ reveals the duties of widows as well as deaconesses. Indeed, widows actually performed many of the tasks associated with deaconesses—assisting in the baptism of women and instructing women. Oddly, in this document, the ministry of widows took precedence over that of deaconesses “occupying a very humble place in the scheme of things.”6
Were women actually ordained as deacons? The rite of installation of widows according to the Apostolic Tradition of St. Hippolytus states: “The ordination…of widows is to be carried out in the following manner….” However, he is very clear that this “ordination” did not employ “laying on of hands.” And The Testament, following Hippolytus, indicates that the laying on of hands was restricted to the three sacerdotal orders.7
According to another fifth-century document—The Ordo and Canons Concerning Ordination in the Holy Church—the bishop laid his hand on the woman about to become a deaconess—but for the purposes of praying for her. The document states that this prayer “in no way resembles the prayer used in the ordination of a deacon. The deaconess should not approach the altar; her task lies principally in assisting with the anointing at baptisms.”8 There are occasions when the Greek terms “installation” and “ordination” were used interchangeably when it came to the ceremonies for widows and deaconesses.
According to the Apostolic Constitutions, a text dependent on the Didascalia, dated between 375 and 380, deaconesses were forbidden to teach even other women, nor could they conduct baptisms, as could male deacons.9
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches:
Holy Orders is the sacrament through which the mission entrusted by Christ to his apostles continues to be exercised in the Church until the end of time: thus it is the sacrament of apostolic ministry. It includes three degrees: episcopate, presbyterate, and diaconate. (1536)
Article 1538 states: “Today the word ‘ordination’ is reserved for the sacramental act which integrates a man (vir) into the order of bishops, presbyters, or deacons.” Article 1577 is especially significant. Here we see, quoting Canon 1014 directly, that
“Only a baptized man (vir) validly receives sacred ordination.” The Lord Jesus chose men (viri) to form the college of the twelve apostles, and the apostles did the same when they chose collaborators to succeed them in their ministry. The college of bishops, with whom the priests are united in the priesthood, makes the college of the twelve an ever-present and ever-active reality until Christ’s return. The Church recognizes herself to be bound by this choice made by the Lord himself. For this reason, the ordination of women is not possible.
It can safely be said that at this point in the development of the Church’s doctrine regarding the role and ministry of deacons, women are excluded from participating in Holy Orders. What must be realized is that the reservation of Holy Orders to males is ontologically ordered, meaning that there is an objective relation between what it means to be male and the reception of an “indelible spiritual character” that causes those receiving ordination to sacramentally image Christ.
