and per Jean's request:
Back to Jim: Are you surprised how much your role as deacon has made you
a "priest." I know deacons are part of Orders, but I remember a time
when enthusiasm for becoming a deacon among some I knew was focused less
on clergy responsibilities than on "secular" responsibilities....
education, social justice, organizing albeit within the parish or
diocesan compass. As you say the shortage has skewed deacons toward
sacerdotal roles...Is that what you expected. Is it a good thing (except
for keeping Masses or Mass-like liturgies available)?
[It seems from my limited knowledge that deacons in the Archdiocese of New York are more or less "junior" priests...and who are probably mature married men.]
For a couple of decades I have attended Vespers and sometimes Eucharist at the local Orthodox parish. They now have a deacon who has a very strong liturgical role in the services.
ReplyDeleteAbout a decade ago I attended a course by an Orthodox priest who said he loved to serve the pontifical liturgies as a deacon. I now understand why. Orthodox liturgies are full of litanies. The deacon leads them and goes around the church incensing everything while the bishop/priest has only a concluding prayer. Many of the chants of the liturgies are done by the deacon. Having a deacon as part of the service changes the whole choreography and dynamics of the service.
So historically there are good models for deacons as liturgical leaders, although they were not restricted to those roles in the early church.
I have a book which claims that in the early church presbyters and deacons were equal orders, and that the archdeacon (leader of the deacons) often was elected bishop without being first ordained a presbyter.
Before Francis became pope he often questioned ordaining men to the diaconate. He would point out the importance of having good lay leadership functioning with relative independence and self- initiative. What is the advantage to making clerics out of good lay leaders?
At Pope Francis' inauguration all the assorted arches, bishops priests and cardinals were robed pretty much alike, but the deacon (who read the Gospel), while following the color scheme, had a dalmatica that was nothing short of spectacular. I mentioned to Deacon Marty that he should insist on something like that for himself, but he dryly replied that the inauguration deacon was from the Maronite Rite and "they do things like that."
DeleteI'm not sure how the diaconate works in the RCC. Raber was interested in it at one point, but he seems to have found his niche lecturing and serving in the men's club.
ReplyDeleteIn the Anglican Communion (maybe with a few exceptions in some national churches), all priests are deacons, but a few are vocational (permanent) deacons.
Vocational deacons are expected to perform "outreach ministry." They also seemed to advise the priest a lot about parishioners who needed help or advisement. People would usually mull project ideas over with a deacon first. Deacons acclimate a new priest. A lady deacon was assigned to provide instruction for me before I was baptized. They tend not to serve on the vestry (parish council).
The vocational deacon in our old parish had some required liturgical functions. He led the Easter Vigil procession into the dark church, for instance. The idea seemed to be to alb up the deacons occasionally to remind everyone that they were there, but not to weigh them down with liturgical functions.
What deacons do in our local parishes depends upon the deacons, the priests and who the paid pastoral ministers are?
ReplyDeleteMy large nearby parish has three priests, and three deacons. However most of the work including liturgies happens because of a full time pastoral associate and a part time music minister. The three deacons participate according to their interests and time available. All three probably do much more non-liturgical ministry than liturgical ministry.
A medium size parish has one priest and one deacon. However most of the work including liturgies happens because of their full time pastoral associate and full time music minister. They have a well developed choir and excellent liturgies. The deacon participates as he is able.
In both parishes, I do not have the impression that deacons are undertaking more work and especially more liturgical work because the priests are overworked. By and large the priest’s workload is made manageable by full time pastoral associates and full or part time music ministers. The full time ministers are spending much more that 40 hours a week at the parish, and the part time ministers are spending 20 hours a week. I do not see deacons doing that much work. I suspect they put in about ten hours a week. The full and part time pastoral associates and music ministers are managing a rather large workforce of volunteers. Both parishes have large religious education programs which are managed by a combination of paid and volunteer ministers.
The pastoral associates that see that these parishes function well are often not very visible on Weekends maybe even less than deacons. The music ministers of course are very visible.
DeleteSince deacons are often more visible at Weekend liturgies than the pastoral associates, people who are not very familiar with the parish might assume a greater role for deacons than they actually play.
DeleteOur deacons (two active, one semi-retired) do most of the funeral vigils. They also lead Stations of the Cross, and Benediction (which seems to get requested a lot). They also do graveside rites if the pastor has a conflict and can't do it. And slso the usual assisting at the altar. So yes, they do fill in for liturgical duties. That's in addition to things such as jail ministry and Baptism prep classes, etc.
ReplyDeleteMore on the ever-changing formation program later.
Our count is a pastor, two parochial vicars (a/k/a assistants)and three deacons among the ordained. The pastor became fluent in Spanish overnight; the others are working on it.
ReplyDeleteThe Spanish-speaking deacon is walking with two canes now, but the Spanish community has a lot of lay leadership. The early Guadalupe service was led by the Spanish cantor after the pastor opened it and went back to bed. One of the Anglo deacons uses one cane and mostly confines himself to marriage cases on which he is somewhat of a national expert. The other is younger and does graveside services and Liturgies of the Word. And visits our many nursing and assisted living homes. And a lot of other stuff. The deacons preach on one Sunday a month, and the Anglos also preach on Tuesday and Thursday weekly at the 8 a.m. daily Mass (where attendance ranges between 35 and 65, with the median around 48; that will sound large to a lot of parishes).
(Deacon Marty, who I mentioned above, used to work in our parish, but he decided a priest from Haiti needed his help more and we have plenty of peoplepower. Marty is a regular, still, at the Wednesday morning men's group that keeps me sane and co-runs our parish's ties to a sister parish in Haiti. His day job is running a construction company; he specializes in churches and banks.)
There is a professional music minister, but he doesn't know (imo) squat about sacred music, and two unpaid lectors, one of whom is now managed by Kelly Clarkson's husband and can do both languages. The other does only Spanish. We also have a professional youth minister (and her unpaid professional youth minister husband) and a full-time sacristan, who I believe is now being paid because he is around all the time instead of most of the time.
The sacristan probably thinks he is "priestly," but the deacons don't. We have three weekend Masses (one Spanish) on Saturday and six on Sunday (including one Spanish, one bilingual and one LifeTeen). Total parish enrollment is a little over 2,500 and as you may have guessed, demographically we are approaching parity between the English and Spanish speaking. We have been through a much upheaval, but we still have a lot of good people (even though we buried a pair of pillars of the church this month).
I just wrote a comment and apparently managed to exceed a character limit which I didn't know existed. So I'm going to split it into several parts. Part 1:
ReplyDeleteHi Peggy, so sorry for being so tardy in replying to your post which was addressed to me.
All of the comments given here ring pretty true to me. On the whole, they accord with my personal experience and my observations of what other deacons do. In brief:
One common taxonomy for what deacons do is to say that they are (or should be) engaged in three types of service: the word, the sacraments and charity. There is a lot I could say about all three. I agree with your comment that, so far in the history of the restored diaconate in the United States, the service to charity has been what has attracted many of the men who have pursued the diaconate - and their track record as laypersons in service to charity is often what drew the attention of the pastor, bishop and others in the institution who, in a very practical way, call these men to the diaconate.
As someone noted above, the service to the sacraments (mass, baptisms, weddings) is, far and away, the duties that are most visible to the parish community as a whole. To the extent that deacons are perceived to be "mini-priests", it's probably because, frankly, they look quite a bit like priests when they are in their vestments in the sanctuary. Also, most of the things a deacon does at mass (lead the penitential rite, proclaim the Gospel, preach, raise the cup, etc.), is done by a priest on those occasions when a deacon isn't around. For that matter, most of us grew up during the time before the permanent diaconate was restored in Roman Catholicism, so our formative expectation is that all these things "belong" to the priest, and it's only in recent decades that the deacon has "encroached" on these priestly duties.
In point of fact, the priest and the deacon each have their defined roles within masses and other liturgies, and when things are done right (and they're not always done right everywhere), each does those things, and only those things, that are proper to the role. Proclaiming the Gospel and leading the Prayers of the Faithful is proper to the deacon. Reciting the Eucharistic Prayer is proper to the priest. Leading the psalm is proper to the psalmist. And so on.
Part 2:
ReplyDeleteThe service to word (outside of mass) and to charity typically aren't as visible to the parish community, but they're visible to those who are being served. For example, I spent this past Saturday morning working in our Outreach ministry, giving food from our food pantry to hungry people and providing various forms of financial assistance (gasoline vouchers, grocery vouchers, car repair, etc.) to those who can't afford those things. Unless a parishioner would happen to be around the parish office on a Saturday morning, they would not see me doing those things.
The spirituality of a deacon is that one is a deacon 24x7x365 - one is never "off duty". (This is not the case with a professional lay parish staff member.) So a lot of what a deacon does is done in the family home, the workplace and the community. Somehow, I should be a deacon when I'm being a husband, a father, an IT director, a soccer coach, a shopper for groceries, a diner, and so on. I'd say some of these are more intuitive than others. For example, I've found that bringing a spirituality of service (including servant leadership) to the workplace has been enriching for me, my employees and the organization. But there is no "missal" with black and red print that lays out how to be a servant leader at work; it takes conscientious discernment and prayer, and I'll be the first to admit I don't always succeed. But I know you know already that there are antecedents for this notion of an ordained Catholic minister bringing the Good News out into the workplace and the community, e.g. the worker priest movement that has flourished in some places and times. The diaconate could and should be a sort of variation on that. To be sure, it's an area that's ripe for further reflection and development. But there are many men (like me) who are more or less doing this every day on our own, frankly making it up as we go along.
Jack is exactly right that paid lay parish staff members are around the parish much more than most deacons. This is because youngish deacons like me have to do our day jobs full-time, and very few of us actually are employed by the church. And oldish deacons like one or two of the ones that Tom described don't always have the energy and health to do full time ministry after their retirement from their day jobs. And beyond those factors, cf what I tried to describe in the previous paragraph: a deacon shouldn't necessarily be hanging around the parish all day every day. He should be out in the community and the world, as well as at the parish when necessary. This is one of the fundamental differences between the parish priest and the deacon: the parish priest lives on the parish grounds whereas the deacon should be living in a neighborhood with the people.
Part 3:
ReplyDeleteCircling back to your original point: it is true that the priest shortage is thrusting deacons into some parish roles, liturgically and administratively, that traditionally have belonged to priests. For example: if there is no pastor for a parish but there is a deacon, I believe canon law calls for the deacon to be the parish administrator. This is not the kind of thing that attracted most men to the diaconate - we'd rather be doing charitable ministry, on the whole - but we made promises to serve, and this is service that the church needs. I was in formation from 2000 until 2004, and the priest shortage, although not quite as acute then as it is now, was certainly well known and visible during that time period. Nobody ordained in my cohort, and those that followed, can truthfully claim that they didn't expect that the priest shortage might affect their ministry in some way.
To take that to its logical conclusion: if I'm not mistaken, the Amazon Synod, in one of its working documents, recommended that the married men who could be ordained to the priesthood would be the deacons of that region. That also shouldn't surprise anyone. There are a lot of reasons that this would make sense to a bishop: they know us (somewhat), they trust us (somewhat), and - not incidentally - we've already made promises of obedience. We are, in a very practical sense, examples of viri probati. When it comes to making married men priests, we're the path of least resistance.
Jim,
ReplyDeleteAn excellent overview and integration.
Your description of the deacon as never off duty is an excellent argument for ordaining people even though most of what they do could be done by other laity without ordination. It makes a visible sign of the church in the world. That is also true of women religious.
There are many of us laypeople who in our own jobs such as mine in the mental health system actually serve people without making much of the fact that we are Catholic or Christian (although some of our coworkers may recognize that as a source of our motivation as well as theirs).
Take the example of health care. There are so many people who work in health care in various ways, and then a whole lot of volunteers who take cake of people. If when we celebrate the sacrament of sick as a parish community we invited all these people to join in the celebration we would begin to see the presence of that extensive ministry of lay people.
A number of years ago when I was in the process of being "discerned" to be a member of parish council, I chose to talk about my life in the mental health system rather than my parish experience or my interest in spirituality. When I finished the pastor said "I guess I really don't know you that well." One of the benefits of being a member of a Commonweal Local Community has been to discover that many Catholics practice their faith in their professional and community roles.
In my opinion voluntary ordained ministry, to the priesthood as well as the deaconate, is a way to make us truly a poor (i.e. mostly unpaid) church that serves the poor.
DeleteThere are many lay people like myself who have acquired a great deal of theological education and spiritual formation. We have also lived exemplary lives in our professions and our communities. Beginning in our forties and fifties we could be ordained to the deaconate, and then in our sixties when we retired to the presbyterate.
Personally I have no desire to be dressed in clerical garb or be called "father" but if there were many similarly qualified people (hopefully women as well as men) being ordained for our parishes, I would be willing to do my share of the ministry.
I think many ordained unpaid ministers could be a way to have clergy without so much clericalism. These need to be mature Christians with much experience in the world rather than life long clergy making a living off the church.
Jack, I like your line of thought. I wonder, though, how many bishops could deal with that.
DeleteJack, with you completely on the exemplary lives of many laypeople - there are "probati" everywhere, men and women. In my view, diakonia is rooted in the grace conferred in baptism, not in ordination. Ordination is a fine thing, and no doubt it strengthens the call to service, but it doesn't create something that wasn't already there. Just my view.
DeleteI agree with Tom: I love your idea of different ways of life for different stages of life, but suspect it's several magnitudes too imaginative for many of our senior leaders.
Perhaps somewhat along the same lines: I belonged to an Internet list or some such a number of years ago in which a contributor argued that, when a priest elects to leave the priesthood, to get married or for some other reason, the bishop, rather than treating him as a failure and casting him into the outer darkness, should thank him for his years of service, provide transition services to help him into his new way of life, and ensure that his pension is still available to him at whatever level he's vested at the time he leaves. Would such an approach reduce or increase the number of priests? Only one way to find out!
The first deacons in our archdiocese were ordained in 1979. Of course that was before we were involved. The men who were in those early formation classes called them "cells". Which sounded strange to my ears. But apparently they met in small groups in homes or churches for instruction. By the time my husband had started formation in 1997, they had gone to a more formal class setting. There was an urban group (Omaha) and a rural (everybody else). One thing that was a requirement then was that the wives were required to attend the classes also. If they missed too often their husbands could be suspended from formation. I regret to say that I was not always cheerful about that requirement. Fortunately the classes were not what I would have called academically rigorous. There were reading assignments, but no papers or grades.
ReplyDeleteThe men had widely varied backgrounds, there was a guy with a PhD, and an immigrant man who only had formal education up to a 5th grade level. There was a lawyer, some farmers, a diesel mechanic, and a teacher or two.
Fast forward to the present. The urban and rural programs have been combined. There is a full time person in charge of formation, a deacon from Chicago. The program is now four years, and is more academic, with papers and grades. The wives are no longer required to go, though they are invited. The (valid) point was made that they couldn't ordain the women, so it was unfair to require their attendance. I believe it is preferred that the candidates now have a prior degree, or at least an associate one. Where I see all this pointing is an expectation of a more clerical role for deacons, with the shortage of priests.
I was mistaken about the first deacon ordinations in our archdiocese being in 1979. My husband said it was the early 1970s.
DeleteWhen I was in deacon formation, the program was called a Program (well, duh) - the Deacon Formation Program. We had a lot of reading assigned, and typically we'd have to write a one-page paper (double-spaced) on what we had read. The papers were read and returned with comments but no letter grade was assigned. And the program as a whole was pass/fail.
DeleteAt the end of the program, when ordination was looming, we (both husbands and wives) had earned a graduate certificate in pastoral theology; the certificate is the equivalent of half a master's degree.
Today, what formerly was a Program is now an Institute, and it has become more academically rigorous; I am told the participants are graded.
Re: the participation of the wives: in Chicago, in the earliest days of the restored permanent diaconate, the husbands attended the classes and formation but the wives did not. This caused problems in some marriages (I'm told), as the husbands were experiencing spiritual growth, making new friends, and generally having their horizons broadened while the wives were "left behind". So by the time I was in formation, the wives were strongly encouraged (but not required) to attend. This was viewed by everyone as a very positive thing. Certainly, it was great for my marriage. And I met some amazing women during formation. The joke - and it was only half-joking - was that a number of the men were invited into the diaconate formation program because the church really wanted their wives to get involved. To be sure, the inequality at the terminus of the program, in which the husbands all were ordained but the wives were not, was a contradiction that was visible to all and which nobody tried to minimize or explain away. Both husbands and wives were awarded the academic certificate.
I wouldn't want a diaconate formation program to become too academically rigorous, because when academic prerequisites are imposed, men with real spiritual and pastoral gifts but without academic attainments are eliminated from consideration. The diaconate isn't intrinsically a particularly brainy undertaking, although deacons must be trainable and formable; intellectual formation is as important as spiritual formation.
I wouldn't want the program to become too academic, either. The immigrant man I mentioned is very involved in Hispanic ministry in his parish. It is in a town with a large immigrant population. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have been admitted to formation now. As it was he had to apply three times, the barrier being his English skills. He improved them enough to finally get in. I greatly admired his perseverance and motivation.
DeleteRe the "brainy" part of pre-existing training, Blessed Solanus Casey, one of Raber's faves, was ordained a priest "simplex" because of his limited abilities. Can you be a deacon simplex?
Delete*pre-existing s/b pre-ordination
DeleteI am not sure how, practically speaking, the Church Ladies differ from deacons. They certainly see their job as a 24/7 dedication to the word, charity, and the sacraments. It's why they lector, serve as EMs, participate in RCIA, organize charity drives, and generally give people advice and direction.
ReplyDeleteIf they are often insufferable and at times misinformed, perhaps it's because their opportunities are limited by their gender, and they have not been afforded the formation opportunities given to deacons and priests.
Hmmm. Unexpectedly, I have a bit more charity in my heart for the Church Ladies today. I'm not going to like them, ever, but maybe I understand them better.
One place I have opined on the lack of spiritual assistance for women is in the arena of problem pregnancy, miscarriage, stillbirth, and special needs children. Raber and I never discussed our miscarriages. As far as I know, he never thinks of them. I would never have discussed this with a male priest or deacon. This is an area where married women deacons might play a role.
DeleteGovernment by a Curia is pervasive in Catholicism at the diocesan and parish levels. Bishops and pastors may have ultimate authority and wide discretion but like the Pope they can't do everything.
DeleteCuria government happens when bishops and pastors give people who report to them wide authority but little supervision. Often in parishes people make themselves indispensable in their little niche. Unless the pastor is a micromanager, he often tolerates a lot of poor behavior rather than trying to manage the person or replace them.
The church ladies sound like they are your local form of a Curia. I suspect your pastor if he were inclined might have as much difficulty reforming them as Francis has been having with his Curia.
That's a good point about the lack of spiritual support in these areas. It seems likely that it would have been one of the functions of the early women deacons.
DeleteOne shouldn't be too sure that men don't think of these areas of loss. They process them differently. My parents lost a son shortly after birth. My dad also had a younger sister who died a day or two after birth. He would never talk about either child. However my sister-in-law shared that he recently became a little verklempt speaking of the sister, saying it would have been his only chance at having a sibling. This was 80 years after the fact, the first time I know of that he talked about it.
P.S. My comment was made in reply to Jean's at 10:47.
DeleteI am sure some men think about this stuff. Jim has written about it. In my family and in Raber's, such things were hushed up and certainly not conversations for men's ears. There was always, when such things were whispered about, a stigma of failure and unworthiness that went with miscarriage, stillbirth, and any baby born "wrong."
DeleteJean, I think that's a great insight re: the Church Ladies. I don't doubt that many of them would benefit from formal training and formation, and some may even become more likable as a result.
DeleteAlthough personally I think the day when women will be able to be ordained to the diaconate (or a diaconate of some sort) is not far away, I'd note that, at least in a large diocese like Chicago, there are formation programs for lay volunteers as well. A person who goes through that program isn't ordained at the end of it but earns an academic certificate. We had many/most of our classes with students in the lay formation program. They were wonderful people.
There are programs in the Lansing diocese, but the Church Ladies seem wary of them. One of them usually attends and reports that she didn't learn anything she didn't already know, it as all too expensive, and the big parish directors are "hoity toity."
DeleteI think outside their element, the Ladies are easily intimidated. When we had to go to the cathedral for our Rite of Election or whatever it was, they were beside themselves lest we wear the wrong thing, not stick with our group, and they insisted on driving us to ensure we would not be late. (We were there 45 minutes ahead of time.)
There's no escaping that these women are loyal and dedicated parishioners, and if our new priest is smart, he will butter them up and move them toward being more open to diocesan efforts.
As for their becoming "wonderful," I'm not expecting miracles.