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Sunday, April 21, 2002

By Ann Rodgers-Melnick, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Women were ordained as Catholic deacons for centuries and should be restored to that ministry, a Catholic scholar told a liberal Catholic group at its statewide meeting yesterday in McCandless.

"I am convinced that ordained ministry by women would serve the needs of the church," Phyllis Zagano told about 50 members of Call To Action.

She did not call for women to become priests. Call To Action, though, supports the ordination of women and married men.

The Rev. Ronald Lengwin, spokesman for the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, said that Zagano had notified his office of the topic of her talk, and had volunteered that she would not attend any Mass that violated church teaching on sacraments or ordination. The diocese had no official comment on her presence here, he said.

Zagano noted that her book on female deacons, "Holy Saturday," will soon be published in Italian and given to key members of the Vatican bureaucracy. Canon lawyers so thoroughly screened it for error, she said, that, "It's bulletproof."

Zagano has credentials on both sides of the theological aisle. She is such a strong opponent of abortion and euthanasia that she has also addressed conservative groups such as Opus Dei.

The ordination of women as deacons -- who preach and provide pastoral care but do not celebrate the Eucharist -- is not an issue of liberals versus conservatives, she said. The late Cardinal John O'Connor of New York was the first person to encourage her to write a book on the topic, she said.

She began her talk by reading sixth century inscriptions from the tombs of female deacons. Female deacons are described in the New Testament books of Luke and Acts, and in the ancient Apostolic Constitution of the church, she said.

Permanent deacons, who were not on the way to priesthood, disappeared after the Middle ages, so female deacons disappeared with them, she said. When Vatican II restored the permanent diaconate, Pope Paul VI asked for a study of whether women could be ordained deacons, but it was never published.

Last year three Vatican officials warned bishops not to train women to be deacons, since the church "does not foresee such an ordination." Zagano called the notice "frightening," but said it does not forbid discussion of the issue.

Vatican officials contradict themselves when they first say that the diaconate is separate from the priesthood, and then say that women cannot be deacons because it would open the door to their ordination as priests, she said.

"Either women can be ordained priests or they cannot. If they cannot, there is no danger in their being ordained as deacons," she said.

It would strengthen the hand of bishops in overseeing pastoral care if women were ordained as deacons, she said. Much of the work that was traditionally assigned to deacons is now done by women engaged in ministry to the poor the the sick. But because they are not ordained, the bishop has no direct supervision over them.

"Ordination as deacons would integrate women in the the public ministry of the church and would create an accountability to the diocesan bishop for their ministry that is currently just not there," she said.

"Why not take the woman in the soup kitchen who has lived the gospel and let her get up at noon Mass and talk about it? We need people in the ministry of the word who know more about the gospel than about golf."

She added that there are many devoted priests, but the preaching and visitation that endear them to their parishioners are the traditional duties of deacons.

Many women are now hired by parishes and institutions to provide pastoral care. Yet because they cannot be ordained, they often cannot be trained in Catholic seminaries, Zagano said. She now provides Catholic spiritual formation to Catholic women enrolled at a Protestant seminary in New York.

"They are coming out of there without Catholic theology. It is very difficult when you are not speaking the same language," she said.

Pope John Paul II has said that women and men are created equal, she said.

"The church teaches that all are equal in the eyes of God, yet in refusing to restore the female diaconate, it argues that women are unordainable. Until the late 18th century, the educated view was that women were a completely different species from men. To refuse to ordain women, for whatever reason, gives the impression that the church has not moved from this belief," she said.