Women Deacons in the Sacrament of Holy Orders

Abstract This essay presents the results of a study on the admissibility of women to the diaconate in Holy Orders. Referring to the International Theological Commission’s (ITC) analysis of the status of the diaconate (2002), the author clarifies some questions at the heart of the debate on the matter as she offers support to her conclusion that there are no theological obstacles to ordaining women as deacons. Highlighting the coexistence of two types of ministries in the single Holy Orders – that of priests and bishops under the Petrine principle and that of deacons under the Marian principle – she argues that women’s ordination to the diaconate is in keeping with the unity of the sacrament of Holy Orders. Based on the ITC’s suggestion that the diaconal sacramental specificity lies in deacons’ status of auxiliary collaborators with apostolic successors, she also argues that woman, whose auxiliary quality is in line with Mary’s surrendering-listening posture, should be admitted to the diaconate so that the feminine signs of God’s image and likeness be as equally present in the clergy as the masculine so to establish an equal gender symmetry in the sacramental and organizational economy of the Catholic Church.