101 Questions & Answers on Deacons by Ditewig William T

Author:Ditewig, William T. [Ditewig, William T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL011000
ISBN: 9781616431112
Publisher: Paulist Press
Published: 2012-06-11T00:00:00+00:00

35. I have heard that there were deaconesses in the ancient Church. Who were these women, and were women ever ordained as deacons?

There are two groups of women associated with the diaconate in the ancient Church. It would appear that some women, such as Phoebe (see Romans 1:1), were deacons, although we don’t really know what that might have meant at that point in history. Certainly in the case of Phoebe, St. Paul refers to her as a diakonos (the Greek word from which we get the English word deacon), using a masculine form of the word, not a feminine form. This has led some commentators to suggest that he was using the word diakonos as a title, just as we might today.

A short time later in history we encounter a group of women known as “deaconesses,” and they seem to be a distinct group from the “deacons.” Whereas Phoebe was referred to as diakonos (and we don’t know too much more than that) these women were referred to in the feminine as diakonissae and we have some record of their liturgical “commissioning.” There is scholarly debate over whether this was an actual ordination or some other sort of commissioning ceremony 28 The role of the deaconess was to assist with the baptism of female catechumens and other types of ministry in which it was more appropriate for women to minister to other women. In the case of catechumens, for example, baptism was still done by full immersion, and it was deemed far more appropriate for another woman to be in the pool with a female catechumen than for a male deacon, for obvious reasons.

Modern Christian churches that ordain women seem to prefer the term deacon over deaconess; in such churches, such as the Church of Sweden or within the Anglican communion, there is no functional distinction made between deacons who are men and deacons who are women.

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