Proposal: Detach the diaconate from Holy Orders and refigure it as a specific ministry...comparable to catechist, spiritual director, administrator, evangelist, servant of the poor, minster of the Eucharist, youth minister, hospital or jail chaplain, etc...which entails a temporary commitment (2 or 5 or 10 years?), includes women, and for which one is qualified by confirmation. This will:
1. Clarify the spousal nature of holy orders as representative of Christ the Bridegroom of the Church which requires masculinity and ordinarily celibacy. And clarify the lay vocation.
2. Affirm the equality of men and women in lay ministries.
3. Highlight our lay empowerment in confirmation by the Holy Spirit and the range of marvelous ministries which we exercise.
Sitting this morning in Sunday mass I was distracted by a line of thought: I really like our parish deacons. They are strong, good, humble Catholic men. They do a lot of good things. They are more present and visual in our parish life than the priests. But I continue to be annoyed by the diaconate as a clerical status of "glorified altar boys and quasi-priests." These guys are lay, not clerical. They are like me. They are husbands and fathers with professions who live out their lay vocation including participation in worship, prayer, and reception of the Word of God.
There is nothing that a deacon does that a layman, baptized-confirmed-living-a-vibrant- sacramental- life, cannot be certified by the Church to do: witness weddings, preach at mass, do baptisms, preside at communion services, pray at wake and grave services. These actions do not require the spiritual seal given in holy orders. These can be performed by virtue of baptism and confirmation.
About 60 years ago Ivan Illich argued in a controversial article, The Vanishing Clergyman, that an inflated, institutional Catholicism would benefit from diminishment to a disestablished, poor Church of small communities presided over by part-time, temporary, non-clerical priests, who would be ordained for a period of time. As with so much of Illich, this piece is at once piercingly insightful but off-center and exaggerated. In the age of McCarrick we see that the malignant, clerical bureaucracy is a hindrance to the work of the Church. Illich had a deep Catholic reverence for the Eucharist, but his theology of Holy Orders here is erroneous. Orders, along with baptism and confirmation, infuses the soul of the recipient with a permanent, indelible, spiritual seal...one that can never be removed. He himself realized this, I am sure, as he voluntarily requested laicization but remained faithful to his vows to celibacy and the daily prayer of the Church. His argument is, however, pertinent to the clerical status of the deacon. The mission/identity of the deacon does not require this third seal, after baptism and confirmation. He is ordinarily married, with wife and children. The sacrament of marriage is his specific vocation. Whatever services he renders community or Church are entirely subordinate to his spousal union and responsibility to family.
This lower, third-level of ordination is a distraction, a gray area, that obscures the fundamental Catholic distinctions between lay/ordained/vowed. We learn clearly from Balthasar that in Catholic life the surrender to Christ seeks specific expression in three distinct paths: lay life and marriage, ordination to become an image of the Bridegroom, and consecrated poverty-chastity-obedience. The later two are easily combined in the life of religious priests. But the "lay" permanent diaconate is not such a happy combination, but a confusion.
Recall the origin of the diaconate in Acts: the apostles did not want to be distracted from their work of prayer, worship and sharing of the Word of God and so they designated seven worthy men to overlook the distribution of food and eliminate the fighting between gentiles and Jews. This diaconal work was practical, lay, quite distinct from the specifically ecclesial life of study and worship. The work of the deacon, (like that of catechist, minister of the Eucharist, spiritual director and others), participates in the liturgical and scriptural flow of life but it is distinct from and dependent upon the primary priestly ministry of priest and bishop. Priesthood, by virtue of Orders, is a permanent-ontological-indelible change in the soul. The priest is configured to Christ in a most profound, comprehensive manner. This never changes...whatever his activities, canonical status, competence.
The layman, configured to Christ in baptism/confirmation, does not enjoy the specific "spousal" configuration to Christ in Orders (or, in a different manner, in consecration) but expresses a mystical communion in a universe of marvelous engagements: marriage/family, politics, culture, community life, etc.
And so, we see that disengagement of the diaconate from Orders will enrich our understanding of these vocations of lay life (including marriage and engagement with the secular world), priestly configuration to Christ, and consecration in poverty-chastity-obedience.
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