Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Top Catholic Nun Wants Women Deacons

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Catholic sisters globally would be better-equipped to carry out their work if they could become deacons, the head of a global network of nuns has said, an important marker in the sharp debate over women deacons that Pope Francis opened last week.

“We are already doing so many things that resemble what a deacon would do, although it would help us to do a bit more service if we were ordained deacons,” Sister Carmen Sammut, president of the International Union of Superiors General, or UISG, told RNS.

Francis put a spring in the step of women religious on Thursday (May 12) when, in talking with Sammut and hundreds of UISG delegates, he agreed to set up a commission to examine whether women should be ordained as deacons — something that arguably hasn’t been done since the early years of Christianity.

Read the rest here.

4 comments:

Han said...

Not wearing a habit....not surprised. But she wants to wear vestments instead?

bob said...

I guess one of these days the actual churches will come to the amazing conclusion that the deacon is a liturgical hood ornament and little else. It's a speed bump on the road to becoming a priest, nothing else. It's in the New Testament. So is speaking in tongues. That went away too. The Orthodox deacon is nowadays a 2nd year seminarian who is respectfully getting C's and has stayed out of jail, with any good behavior next year he'll be a priest. I've known clergy who were ordained over a weekend, their "deaconate" was about 24 hours, 12 of it conscious. Women want to be "deaconesses" for the usual reason.

John (Ad Orientem) said...

Bob,
I am guessing you don't know much about Orthodox Deacons. Your description seems to more applicable to Roman Catholics before Vatican II.

Patrick Sheridan said...

Indeed, the restoration of permanent deacons was one of the many wise reforms of the Second Vatican Council.