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Vatican Caution Against Preparing Women For Diaconate
VATICAN, Sep 17, 01 (
CWNews.com) - In an unusual document signed by the heads of three Vatican Congregations, the Holy See has cautioned strongly against programs that would prepared women for the ordained diaconate.
The Vatican “notification”-- issued jointly by the Congregations for the Doctrine of the Faith, Divine Worship, and the Clergy-- says that such programs create “hopes which are lacking a solid doctrinal foundation and which can generate pastoral disorientation.” The document is signed by the prefects of those congregations: Cardinals Joseph Ratzinger, Jorge Medina Estevez, and Dario Castrillon Hoyos, respectively. It was specifically approved by Pope John Paul II prior to publication.
The Vatican officials said that there are many other ways in which the Church can promote the dignity of women and their participation in the Church without ordaining women deacons. There has been substantial debate among Catholic historians and theologians as to whether women were ordained as deacons in the past. A Vatican commission has been studying the question of female deacons for seven years, and is expected to conclude that study later this year.
The full text of the latest Vatican notice follows:
"1. Our offices have received from several countries signs of courses that are being planned or underway, directly or indirectly aimed at the diaconal ordination of women. Thus are born hopes which are lacking a solid doctrinal foundation and which can generate pastoral disorientation.
"2. Since ecclesial ordination does not foresee such an ordination, it is not licit to enact initiatives which, in some way, aim to prepare candidates for diaconal ordination.
"3. The authentic promotion of women in the Church, in conformity with the constant ecclesial magisterium, with special reference to (the magisterium) of his Holiness John Paul II, opens other ample prospectives of service and collaboration.
“4. The undersigned Congregations-- within the sphere of their proper authority-- thus turn to the individual ordinaries, asking them to explain (this) to their own faithful and to diligently apply the above-mentioned directives.”