What the Guardian gets wrong about female deacons

A recent Guardian editorial attempted to address a perceived issue within Catholicism: the absence of female deacons. The editorial lamented how the recent Synod of Bishops and Pope Francis had missed a wonderful opportunity to rectify this absence.

I would guess that whoever put the editorial together doesn’t fully understand what a deacon is or does, but rather, having discovered that Catholics do not have female deacons – which must most definitely be wrong, especially given the involvement of an anachronism such as the Catholic Church – decided to set about fixing the institution’s problems with gusto.

Through what I imagine was a gloriously swift Google search, the composer of the editorial managed to find examples of female deacons in the Bible. “Hurrah,” the internal monologue of the editor must have gone, “this settles it – the Bible, a popular book among Catholics, has these women being these things called deacons, so clearly it can and should happen.”

The editorial laments upon how this arrangement didn’t last. As the Mediaeval period emerged, “women were sidelined from the ecclesiastical roles and formal hierarchies that became established over the centuries.” With the Guardian as our guide through ecclesiastical history, we are in for some hard truths, such as the groundbreaking discontinuity between the early Church – the best type of Christians – and the Mediaeval Church – the worst type of Christians – apparently coming to light.

However, there are several things the Guardian gets wrong. The first is explicit: it incorrectly assumed that the deaconesses in the early Church necessarily correspond to today’s deacons.

As Jim Russell of Catholic Answers points out, in the early Church “deaconesses” had roles distinct from ordained male deacons and thus distinct from today’s deacons. They were primarily tasked with ministering to women, particularly in baptismal and pastoral care contexts, rather than fulfilling sacramental functions.

The terminology matters here. Pope Francis has commissioned studies on women becoming deacons, in the sense that they would receive the sacrament of Holy Orders, which confers the ability to administer the sacraments of Jesus Christ.

Holy Orders has always been understood as an exclusively male institution since Jesus chose only men to bestow this sacrament upon. It is an ontological expression of the Catholic belief in gender essentialism: men and women are equal, created in the image of God, but there are some things that either side are naturally able to do that the other cannot.

If the Guardian editors want to become Catholic, create a role within the Church, and call it “deaconesses” (one that does not involve Holy Orders), they can do so. What they will find much more difficult is changing 2,000 years of Church tradition and the understanding of human gender.

The second thing that the Guardian gets wrong is implicit. Throughout the ill-informed editorial, the general implication is that women do not have a big enough role in the Church. It is only the lovely realm of Guardian-reading 21st-century modern society that has somehow, effortlessly, managed to produce real equality. Mean old Catholics, however, have not managed it, and so need the help of the aforementioned group.

However, the idea that women are sidelined in the Church is simply incorrect. When the editorial mentions the early Church, it is important to remember that for Catholics, the most important person during this time was Mary, the Mother of Jesus. Mary’s importance wasn’t marginally greater than her early Church male counterparts; it was much greater than all of them put together. Her leadership, her understanding of God, and her ability to carry out His will was the model for every male (and female) Christian. And she never received Holy Orders.

Today, Mary, as she was in the early Church, is loved, adored and revered more than any pope, bishop or deacon could ever be. The pilgrimage site of Fatima in Portugal, where Our Lady appeared to three shepherd children, hosted 10 times more annual pilgrims than the Holy Land in 2022 (roughly 5 million vs. 500,000), and it isn’t even the most visited Marian pilgrimage site in Europe. Lourdes takes the top Marian spot with six million annual visitors. But even that is dwarfed by the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, which boasts a whopping 20 million annual visitors, making it the world’s most visited Catholic site. In the US, about 25 per cent of all parishes are named after Mary, making her the most popular recipient of parish dedications.

The Guardian rightly points to various other female figures in the early Church – though upon whom it seems to have posthumously bestowed Holy Orders – but refuses to accept that they have value unless they are carrying out functions traditionally associated with men.

The Guardian’s implication that women were sidelined in the past by the Church is just as unfounded in the Middle Ages. From the kingmaker and war-winner that was Joan of Arc, to the mystical writers Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich, the Church, even during this supposedly dark mediaeval period that the Guardian guides us through, made a habit of going against societal norms and placing women at the centre.

St. Catherine of Siena was a powerful diplomat, working to keep the Papal States together and is credited with convincing the last Avignon Pope to return to Rome. St. Hildegard of Bingen is generally considered the founder of scientific natural history in Germany. Before secular society provided emancipation, women had long found emancipation in the Church.

Recent centuries have been no different, and the most important Catholics have more often than not been women. Among many influential figures, perhaps the two most prominent saints of the 19th and 20th centuries could be starting points for the Guardian and its concerns about the Church keeping womenfolk “down”.

Thérèse of Lisieux, the 19th-century Carmelite, has had an immeasurable impact on the Church. Her hidden life, as detailed in her autobiography, has inspired millions of Catholics to enter into a more personal relationship with Jesus. Her book has sold an estimated 500 million copies and has been translated into fifty different languages. Canonised in 1925 and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1997, she achieved this without ever needing to be ordained a deacon.

In the 20th century, we have another “Thérèse”, better known in the secular world but no less faithful –Mother Teresa. The community she founded today has 5,000 religious sisters, as well as religious brothers, all who try their best to live out her mission. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, and in 1982, when fighting between Israel and Palestine spilled over into Lebanon, she successfully called for an international ceasefire. After her death, she was canonised just 19 years later – one of the fastest canonisations, compared to the average time span of 181 years.

The third point the Guardian gets wrong is the assumption that if only the Catholic Church would yield to external pressure, if it would just modernise and “get with the times”, that will lead to a sudden surge in religious fervour.

Consistently, though, where the Church follows societal trends, the result is nearly always mass desertion.

In 1944, Florence Li Tim Oi was the first woman to be ordained to the priesthood in the Anglican Communion. Born in Hong Kong, Li spent much of her ministry in Canada. Today, 80 years after her ordination, the Anglican Church in Canada, according to its own data, has collapsed. The number of Anglicans in Canada has seen a 52 per cent decrease in 20 years. Among Canadian Catholics, the loss is far less severe (15 per cent), while the Canadian Orthodox Church, which also maintains an all-male priesthood, has seen a 25.86 per cent increase.

The Guardian thinks that the lack of women in the diaconate has resulted in “emptying pews”. The Catholic News Agency (CNA) puts the global number of Catholics at 1.253 billion in 2013, increasing to 1.378 billion by 2021. Those pews are a long way from emptying, while for the Church to remain relevant, it has to offer something different from secular culture – as opposed to getting with the modernist program, as per the Guardian’s advice.

In short, Catholics have historically done a much better job of honouring the feminine than society at large has done, and without falling into the trap of assuming that equality requires having the same job title as a man.

So, while the Guardian’s editorial staff may be disappointed that the Catholic Church will not suddenly change its teachings and begin ordaining women to Holy Orders, it should take heart in knowing that the Church does not need to.

The Church does not have a women problem, and if the Guardian would like to do a case study on authentic expressions of femininity and power, I am sure there are many women in the Church who would fit the bill, women who have been doing so long before the Guardian saw fit to tell Catholics and the current Pope what to do.

RELATED: Synod opens with a ‘No’ to women deacons

Photo: detail from a painting of Joan of Arc (file photo).

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