August 27, 2013    Martin Mallon  (Ireland)     Martin's previous articles          

(Comments welcome here)

WOMEN DEACONS, A GREAT WOMAN AND GANDHI

Michael Phelan, a Permanent Deacon, has an interesting blog of 16 August in the Tablet, which can be read here , entitled We’re centuries overdue a return to ordaining women as deacons.  

He has no doubt that women were deacons just as men were stating that “In the early church, women deacons had a similar ministry and ordination rite”. One of his personal favourites is Saint Olympia from the fourth century:  

There were of course many ordained women deacons in the early Church, including fourth century St Olympia, who I included in the litany of saints for my own diaconal ordination. Olympia (or Olympias) was a wealthy woman who gave away most of her inherited fortune to the poor and needy and for the building of churches. She served the Church as a deacon and was close to many Fathers of the Church including St John Chrysostom, who was Archbishop of Constantinople and a Doctor of the Church and who had ordained her.  

For those seeking more historical and detailed evidence “on ordained men and women deacons in over ten centuries of the early church” he refers readers to the website www.womendeacons.org.  

In light of Phelan’s blog it was encouraging to read Phyllis Zagano’s article, which can be read here , of 14 August in the National Catholic Reporter wherein she wrote that “I am pretty sure he said “yes” to ordaining women as deacons.”

Speaking of women, John Dear S.J. in an National Catholic Reporter article, which can be read here , of 13 August on the Wildgoose Festival, mentions a poem read out by a young man on the greatest day of his life, which I found to be very moving:  

At one point, for example, I walked by the “open mike” tent and stopped to hear a young man read a long poem he had written about the greatest day in his life. He was working the cash register at the local alternative food coop store in Detroit, he said, and faced a long line of seemingly tough male customers. Suddenly, slowly, they began to back away to allow a short, shy, elderly woman to come forward. She was carrying a little bag of herbal tea. It was Rosa Parks! She searched through her purse and finally handed him her coop membership card. He looked down at her name on the card and then up at her smiling face. The young poet described the overwhelming feelings of grace he felt from her presence, and how his life was changed. The poem was so inspiring that we all felt changed in the hearing of it.  

Dear raises another very interesting discussion point when he reminds us that Dr Martin Luther King “once called Gandhi, a Hindu, the greatest Christian in modern times”.  

Once again it is clear how important it is to constantly keep Pope Francis in our prayers so that he continues to listen to the Holy Spirit as the Church is reformed.