Survey: Religious superiors support possibility of women deacons

  • Thread starter Thread starter SuscipeMeDomine
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bobperk said:
But unless they recognize the crisis, very few want to volunteer to join what is essentially a woman’s liturgical group
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I guess it varies from parish to parish. The KofC are a very active group in my parish. There’s no shortage of men involved with Mass either.

I don’t know about that whole “man cave liturgy” thing you got going on there, but thanks for sharing.
 
The OP is not that kind of person. OraLabora was just pointing out that some people will use any excuse for bashing the Church or some part of it.
 
Because I know him better than that. He isn’t the type to insult someone that way.
 
It doesn’t look like you talk that much with him. But that’s aside the point.
 
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SeriousQuestion said:
I didn’t think the OP was that type of person.
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No he isn’t and I doubt that was his intent but very quickly the thread was jumped on by the usual suspects bashing religious and clergy who have made vows and promises that few of the bashers have the courage to make themselves, and who bash from the comfort of Internet anonymity.

It riles me every time.

I am truly sorry if I inferred that Suscipe was trying to stir controversy.

Alas the best of intentions on CAF often end up doing just that.
 
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I believe most of the respondents who supported women deacons were from the LCWR, which has a horrible record of recruitment in recent years. In my area they have many convents that have turned over into nursing homes. They obviously have no understanding of the spiritual needs and goals of contemporary young Catholic women.

Thi is the group they are seeking Advice from?
 
catholic1seeks said:
Technically it could happen, depending on what one means by “deacon.”
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Sure, as long as what you “mean” isn’t what the church means by the word . . . (cue the princess diary quotes)

While there were (and in some rites are) deaconesses, they are not, and never have been, female deacons.
mrsdizzyd said:
The early church had female deacons

No, that just isn’t true. They had deaconesses, not deacons, as a couple do to this day.
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Hodos said:
It has already happened in the early church. The question is whether the practice will be returned and what is the scope of responsibility that would be provided to a deaconess.
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No, still not true 🙂

purporting to ordain females as deacons would not be a “return,” but rather an “innovation.”
Hodos said:
Also, during the early church it was a somewhat common practice for deaconesses to be involved in baptism of women and children.
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not “somewhat common”. While baptism was done by immersion while fully nude, it was the norm for deaconesses to perform female baptism.

hawk
 
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Unfortunately many current leaders are not orthodox at all…
 
She was conceived without sin. St. John the Baptist was sanctified in his mother’s womb and was born without original sin. Obviously, Our Lord was miraculously conceived and born of the Immaculate and Ever-Virgin Mary without original sin since He is True God and True Man.
 
I specifically said the female deacons of the early church were not clergy, so…?
 
The survey in the Bible taken by Jesus when he asked, “who do you say that I am” didn’t turn out to great when put to majority vote
 
This is a chicken-and-egg issue. If you had plenty of men stepping up to be deacons (or anything else), then there would likely be fewer women simply because there would be fewer open positions for them to take.

It’s not that a couple of women show up and suddenly men see a “pink-collar ghetto” and flee in droves. If that was the case, we would have few male doctors, few male lawyers, few male engineers, because some women started to enter all those professions. According to the reasoning of some on this thread, men would go, “ugh, medicine/ law/ engineering has become feminized, I don’t think I’ll enter that field” and go do something else.

If men are truly worried about seeing too many women being lectors and EMHCs and cantors and altar girls, and worried that deacons and priests will be next, then the correct response would be to step up and become a deacon or a priest or serve in some capacity. Amazingly, at many of our parishes this is actually happening and we see lots of men serving as well as going to Mass. I haven’t heard any of the K of C members, male ushers, lectors, or servers saying, “There’s too many women on this altar, I’m going to drop out.”

Last Sunday I noticed that the Mass I was at was being served by two altar girls, which was a bit unusual. Then I noticed after Mass while I was going to confession and doing Holy Hour that the two girls were the two oldest siblings of a large Catholic family (also going to confession and staying for Holy Hour) that included three younger boys who seem very likely to become servers themselves once they reach the age to do so. Given that their father was sitting there with them praying, confessing and guiding them through Holy Hour, I can’t see those little boys suddenly saying “ugh, altar serving is for girls”.

But, y’know, if it makes men feel better to blame women for their own lack of motivation, it’s not like that hasn’t been happening since Adam started the trend. Have fun with that.
 
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Correlation is not causation, but since you’ve already made it clear that you think communion in the hand and altar girls caused the priest shortage, it’s pointless to argue with you.

All I can say is if a man has so little commitment to serving the Church that he says, “Ugh, there is a girl on the altar and people are receiving Jesus in their grubby, bacteria-laden hand instead of on their grubby, bacteria-laden tongue” then that man’s commitment is pretty weak anyway.

But like I said, please continue to blame everything except the weak motivation, lack of commitment and worldly distraction of men for the priest shortage. I’m sure it makes men feel better to blame women and everything else for their own shortcomings instead of facing them and doing something about it.

I’m leaving this thread now as I’m starting to repeat myself.
God bless
 
The decline in vocations started earlier. Among the things going on during that time: the “sexual revolution”, the invention of the Pill, social engineering, just to name a few. A period in which mainstream Protestant churches also saw a decline in vocations and church attendance, so that many of their churches and parishes have also disappeared.

Then there were the sexual scandals in our own Church.

There are so many factors involved you need to do a multifactorial analysis to try to parse it all. Altar girls and communion in the hand may be your pet theories but they remain just that, pet theories with no grounding in serious analysis.

Also the increased number of Catholics in the USA in that time period owes more to immigration than to mass conversion of Americans to Catholicism.
 
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Because there are so few men who are becoming deacons or priests, it seems that allowing women to become deacons and priests may some day be a reality.
I also believe that priest may eventually be allowed to marry and have families.
 
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