Study Commission on the Women's Diaconate

The Study Commission on the Women's Diaconate was established in August 2016 by Pope Francis to review the theology and history of the office of deacon in the Roman Catholic Church and the question of whether women might be allowed to become deacons.

After existing for several centuries, the vocation of deacon was gradually transformed in the Catholic Church into an office reserved to men who were candidates for ordination as priests and were ordained as temporary deacons. Participants in the Second Vatican Council recommended the restoration of the ancient permanent diaconate with votes taken in October 1963 and September 1964. The Council's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen gentium) said that:

...the diaconate can in the future be restored as a proper and permanent rank of the hierarchy. It pertains to the competent territorial bodies of bishops, of one kind or another, with the approval of the Supreme Pontiff, to decide whether and where it is opportune for such deacons to be established for the care of souls. With the consent of the Roman Pontiff, this diaconate can, in the future, be conferred upon men of more mature age, even upon those living in the married state. It may also be conferred upon suitable young men, for whom the law of celibacy must remain intact.

Although the question of including women in the ordained diaconate was brought to the Council, in 1967, Pope Paul VI authorized the establishment of a ministry of permanent deacons, still restricted to men but open to married men. Under the rules he established, both permanent and transitional deacons belonged to a single order and were ordained according to the same rite.

The Catholic Church last examined the question of women deacons in 2002 in a report by the International Theological Commission, an advisory body to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. On 26 October 2009, Pope Benedict XVI modified canon law to clarify the distinction between deacons and priests, noting that only the latter act "in the person of Christ", that the diaconate and priesthood are specific ministries rather than stages the sacrament of order, thereby ending the argument that women can not be deacons because they can not be priests.

Archbishop Paul-André Durocher of Gatineau, Canada, raised the idea of ordaining women as deacons when speaking to the Synod on the family in 2015 and continued to raise the issue following the synod. A few senior prelates who have taken opposing positions on the possibility of a female diaconate, including Cardinals Walter Kasper and Gerhard Müller. Many bishops are supporting the restoration of women as ordained deacons.

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Wikipedia