The presence of women as deacons would allow women’s spiritual gifts to reach more people. The gifts of women’s preaching, pastoral care, social justice and faith formation ministry are greatly needed in our Church today.

In my local diocese, the Diocese of Rochester, in 2014, unfortunately our bishop retired and the new bishop at that time revoked the authorization for qualified lay women to preach.  For 40 years, women were able to preach in our diocese.  Women’s preaching was so greatly appreciated in our diocese that 1700 people signed a petition asking for their reinstatement.

I believe Discerning Deacons’ mission is an important reflection of our desire to model Christlike listening to God similar to the way Teresa of Avila found God in the core of her being.

Discerning Deacons invites us to respect our deepest selves and our deepest desires to do the kind of pastoral care that ministers to people’s needs, to not confuse passivity with conformity to God’s will and to trust the insights that come from our community’s informed discernment. The mission to restore women’s diaconal ordination allows us to be more aware as a community of our social conditioning, to take account of the cost to not change for the better and therefore, to be open to changing for the better. Together, we can continue to embrace this call by deepening prayer and study, accepting ourselves and our limitations, dying to any false sense of self given to us by patriarchy or others.

Because so many people (of all ages, educational, socioeconomic, cultural and ethnic backgrounds) told me I should be a priest or deacon, I earned a Master’s degree in Divinity. Before that, I earned a Master’s degree in Biblical Theology because people invited me to lead prayer and bible study groups. Our diocesan office sent me to teach volunteer catechists how to teach religion in many parishes before I had graduate degrees. And because people were asking me for spiritual direction, I earned a Doctorate in Ministry with concentration in Spiritual Theology. I’ve been asked to preside at many weddings and funerals, and a priest I worked with recommended me to a couple who asked him for my contact info to marry them!  I was asked by a diocesan official to preach at a parish where their priest could not be understood.

Even just recently I received an invitation to speak at a local college on how faith motivates social justice. At high school baccalaureates and other interfaith and ecumenical events, I’ve been introduced as a “pastor.” I hastened to correct them. Each time the response used words to the effect of, “but you are.”  When I was leaving one parish to work at one closer to home, at my last Sunday mass, where I preached every other weekend and every other funeral for six years, I was referred to as “associate pastor.” The community stood and clapped.

Our four children and their spouses, and eleven living grandchildren would say, “It’s about time; she’s been doing the work, with love, all our lives.” The people who tell me they’ve left the Church because people like me cannot be ordained, might return. Many have repeatedly said they would come to hear me preach. We would have a vibrant social ministry proclaimed from the pulpit in keeping with our Catholic tradition of social teaching. I would feel more free to be me than I do now. Seeing and hearing a woman preach and preside at weekend liturgies, weddings, funerals and baptisms lifts all women and girls up. In my 47-years of ministry, I was the only person some women told of their abortion, a person others asked for guidance about issues of fertility, marriage, children, family life, in-laws, etc. This trust being honored and uplifted by the Church through the inclusion of women in the diaconate would be profoundly significant. I would be proud to be a deacon to embrace both my own calling and to be a part of greater change.

Dearest, most gracious God, thank you for nudging many gifted people to equip the saints for ministry. Thank you for your compassion flowing through us as we work shoulder to shoulder with people closest to the pain of injustice to analyze systemic injustices and move together towards correcting what we can in your good time. Thank you for our desire to apply biblical imperatives and see in the People of God a potential for goodness they did not know they had. Help us never give up trying to lovingly radiate your message of love, hope and peace to a sorely troubled but beautiful world.