What Is A Deaconess?
Wait, what? If the Catholic Church has been clear about the role of women and the priesthood, why were women permitted to be deaconesses? What even is a deaconess?
To start, let’s look at scripture. In Romans 16:1, we hear of Phebe who was a “diakonos,” though it could be translated as “person in ministry life.” In any case, according to Catholic Answers, there can be no question that before the middle of the fourth century women were permitted to exercise certain definite functions in the church and were known by the special name of diakonoi or diakonissai.
One of the earliest church documents, The Apostolic Tradition, forbade the ordination of widows. This is the first known proscription of women’s ordination and it almost certainly means widows were being ordained, or why the need for a rule?
On the other hand, a late 4th or early 5th century church order, the Testamentum Domini (from Eastern churches in Syria, Asia Minor or Egypt) not only permitted widows to be ordained, but it identified them as part of the Church hierarchy. While it distinguishes between deaconesses, widows and female presbyters, the greatest responsibility and honor belonged to the widows. Clearly, there was significant diversity in the early church about women’s leadership roles.
The Council of Chalcedon in 451 decreed that a female deacon must be at least 40 years old and must not take a husband.
Catholic Answers continues, “There can be no question that the deaconesses in the fourth and fifth centuries had a distinct ecclesiastical standing, though there are traces of much variety of custom.” Female deacons crop up in the writings of, among others, Origen, Clement of Alexandria and John Chrysostom.
There’s also certain evidence that a ritual existed for the ordination of deaconesses by the laying on of hands which was closely modeled on the ritual for the ordination of a deacon.
Pinning down the precise duties allotted to female deacons is trickier. The Didascalia Apostolorum, a 3rd-century text from Syria, provides some useful insights. With houses “where you cannot send a [male] deacon to the women on account of the pagans … you may send a deaconess.” Other responsibilities included showing female worshippers to the correct seats. In short, their duties varied widely from place to place.
So what happened? Why was it that after just a few centuries after Jesus, a woman was no longer allowed to become a deaconess? In August 2016, the Catholic Church established a Study Commission on the Women's Diaconate under Pope Francis in hopes to answer this question.
A short answer to this, however, is simply: deaconesses became nuns. In the Middle Ages, the nursing and teaching religious orders of nuns fulfilled in practice the functions of deaconesses without being ordained for this ministry. Right up until the thirteenth century, abbesses were sometimes called deaconesses. The deaconesses mentioned in the tradition of the ancient Church — as evidenced by the rite of institution and the functions they exercised — were not purely and simply equivalent to the deacons.
Canon 26 of the Council of Orange held in November 441, forbade the ordination of female deacons. Likewise in 517, the Council of Epaon abolished “the consecration of widows who are called women deacons.” Over the centuries it phased out but women still made appearances in history as deaconesses up through the 12th century.
It’s worth stating very plainly again that the Catholic Church has been clear about the role of women and the priesthood. The deaconess is a confusing and scattered part of Church history that needs to be better understood.
