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by Duane L.C.M. Galles

Mr. Duane L.C.M. Galles is a graduate of the William Mitchell College of Law (1977) and of St. Paul University, Ottawa (J.C.B., 1982; J.C.L., 1988).  He is a member of the American Bar Association and the Canon law Society of America. Admitted to practice law before the Supreme Court of the United States, he is currently Compliance Administrator for the Minnesota Department of Commerce.  Mr. Galles has had articles published in Jurist and Sacred Music.

[The Canon Law Society of America has approved the issuance of a report titled "The Canonical Implications of Ordaining Women to the Permanent Diaconate." This report has generated considerable publicity and the Foundation has been asked by quite a few of our friends if we intend to comment. We intend to do so but are still in the process of carefully preparing our observations. In the meantime, Duane Galles has written an excellent article about deacons in general and I believe it will serve also to provide the needed background to our forthcoming observations concerning the possibility of ordaining women to the diaconate. Also, the article is timely since the feast of the proto-deacon and proto-martyr St. Stephen is observed on December 26. CMW.]

Three decades ago in 1964, in article 29 of its dogmatic constitution on the Church, <Lumen gentium>, the Second Vatican Council asked Paul VI to restore the permanent diaconate in the Latin church. He did so by the motu proprio, <Sacrum diaconatus ordinem>, which was promulgated on June 18, 1967, the feast of Saint Ephraem, deacon. The apostolic letter permitted episcopal conferences to request that the Holy See allow the ordination of celibate and married men permanently to the diaconate within their territory. In April, 1968, the American bishops made that request, which four months later was granted.

In November of that year the first Standing Committee on the Permanent Diaconate of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops was appointed. The Committee was charged with drawing up a program of studies for the diaconate and in May and June of 1971, it saw the first fruits of its labors with the first ordinations of permanent deacons since the conciliar reform had been mooted.

Numerically, deacons have been one of the successes since Vatican II. While the number of women religious in the United States has plummeted forty per cent from 160,931 in 1970 to 94,431 in 1994, and during those same years the number of diocesan priests has declined ten per cent from 37,292 to 33,204, during that same period the number of deacons has soared. Starting at zero in 1970, by 1994 the number of permanent deacons in the United States had jumped to 11,123; moreover, another 1,724 candidates awaited diaconal ordination. Of the permanent deacons, 92 per cent were married, 13 per cent were Hispanic and 3 per cent were black. Some 1,740 were salaried church employees and 66 administered a parish or a mission. Interestingly, in the entire Catholic world there were but 19,395 permanent deacons and so the United States, which accounts for six per cent of the world's Catholics, had sixty per cent of the Catholic world's permanent deacons.[1]

Canon 835 tells us that the sanctifying office of the church is exercised principally by the bishops, who are the high priests and the principal dispensers of the mysteries of God. But later that same canon advises us that deacons, too, have a share in that office, in accordance with the norms of law. To understand, then, the role of deacons today one needs to survey the revised 1983 Code of Canon Law of the Latin church and her reformed liturgical rites.

  1)  THE DEACON IN HISTORY

  2)  THE RESTORED DIACONATE