From OSV News, two deacons on the commission explain the news that broke earlier this month:
Addressing the issue of women deacons requires “the perspective of discovering what Our Lord would want,” Deacon Dominic Cerrato, one of the American permanent deacons to serve on the commission, told OSV News Dec. 4. “In other words, we simply can’t say, ‘This is what people want.’ This is a theological question.”
The deacon is director of Diaconal Ministries, which works to support deacons in their ministry, and recently served as head of the diaconate office of the Diocese of Joliet, Illinois.
The synthesis report itself, citing Pope Benedict XVI, also affirms the issue is primarily a theological one: “We know, however, that a purely historical perspective does not allow us to reach any definitive certainty. Ultimately, the question must be decided on a doctrinal level.”
Deacon Cerrato and Deacon James Keating, spiritual theology professor at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary in St. Louis, have written and consulted extensively on the permanent diaconate and seminary formation. They noted that simply pointing to historical references of women deacons in the early church can obscure the extensive theological dimensions of the issue.
In fact, those historical references aren’t always well understood by many in the first place, they said.
While the diaconate traces its roots to the commissioning of seven men as such in Acts 6:1-7, deaconesses “didn’t appear until the fourth century,” explained Deacon Cerrato.
Their emergence was due to “cultural conditions which tended to segregate the sexes more than we do today,” said Deacon Keating — and, said Deacon Cerrato, due to the fact that at the time, baptism, then performed as a full immersion into water, “was done in the nude.
“And so it was important that bishops, for modesty’s sake, didn’t see the women who came up for baptism,” said Deacon Cerrato.
“There is no evidence that I have seen which places these women deaconesses within the liturgy of the Western church functioning as the proclaimers of the Gospel and serving at the altar during the preparation of the bread and wine,” said Deacon Keating, who also served on the commission.
“The question is not whether or not there were deaconesses in the early church. There certainly were; can’t be denied,” said Deacon Cerrato. “The question is whether they were the equivalent to the male diaconate.”
Yet “they related to the bishop very differently as well as to the presbyterate. … There was no hope of them going on to the priesthood,” he said. “So fundamentally, they were a … different kind of thing than the male deacon.”
