Since, recently, the current occupant of the Roman See has, in the discharge of his chosen ministry of disinformation and the dissemination of historical fantasy, made some remarks about the Diaconate, I am reprinting, from 2016, a series of posts on the Diaconate. I venture to add here my view that this is now gaining in relevance, because, in the Catholic Church, the Modernists will probably attempt to promote the Female Diaconate as a way of getting a foot-in-the-door with regard to the ordination of women to sacerdotal ministries.
Some of us know all about this at first hand, because their Anglican chums used precisely this tactic in the Anglican Communion. It has the immense advantage, from the Devil's point of view, of gradually making the People of God familiar with the sight of women playing at being clerics.
I have not cleaned away the threads. Here goes.
In 1990, Mr John N. Collins published his DIAKONIA Re-interpreting the Ancient Sources (OUP). You can probably fiddle around with Google and discover that its conclusions, more than two decades later, have not been disturbed. If you have queries about details in what I am about to write, a reading of Collins will probably answer them; I am not going to summarise him at any greater length than one paragraph.
Collins began by identifying a particular understanding of diakonia which became fashionable in Protestant circles in the middle of the twentieth century; and then infected the Latin Church too. It saw diakonia as meaning self-giving service to the poor and needy. Based on a misreading of Acts 6, it appealed to Christians at a time when ecclesial structures were losing power and prestige. "OK", it cheerfully claimed, "if you've lost your power and status you can still surreptitiously claw it back by asserting the moral high ground of humble service". Collins demonstrated, from examination of profane and sacred Greek usage, that the word diakonia, and its cognates, have a quite different root sense: that of one person's commissioned service to another person.
So the essence of the concept is not the following of Christ who came to 'serve rather than to be served'. The Deacon's basic purpose is not to be washing the feet of the lowest of the low (just as the nature of the Church is not, as we have so frequently been told, to be the Servant Church). Such things may be worthy in themselves ... may, indeed, be the charism of particular holy people. But they are not what diakonia is fundamentally all about.
What is it about? In its essence it is about serving, being commissioned to serve, the Bishop, the Eucharistic celebrant; about serving him in the administration of the Lord's Body and Blood; serving him in the proclamation of the Holy Gospel. Not a philanthropic service but a cultic, liturgical service. In as far as their duties may extend in the direction of philanthropy, it is instructive to observe the role they have in Pseudo-Hippolytus: the deacons are to attend the Bishop and report to him who are sick so that he, if it seem good to him, may visit them. Their ministry is to the Bishop, the Eucharistic celebrant, not to the needy. This role survives almost verbatim in the classical Anglican Ordinal: the deacons are "to search for the sick, poor, and impotent ... to intimate their estates, names ... unto the Curate".
There are five more posts in this series. If you feverishly write in with "But Father, you've forgotten X", you are almost certainly raising a matter which I am about to deal with!
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Ah, but what of Archdeacons?
Timothy Graham will doubtless deplore my provision here of a hyperlink: The problem with values carried by diakonia /“Diakonie” in recent church documents, but here it is. The link is to a recent article by Collins. Here is the abstract:
"Since Vatican II diakonia has been a commonplace in theology for loving Christian service. The term and its values were imported into Roman Catholic theology from largely German Protestant scholarship of the 1930s [Thus the presence of the German word "Diakonie" in the title]. However, the concept was severely criticised at the 1990 Synod of Bishops by Cardinal Ratzinger for obscuring the true nature of ordained ministry. In more recent years, however, the concept has been represented in some significant documents emerging from the magisterium (Deus caritas est). The development is unfortunate and is a disservice to the theology of ministry at a time of its crisis. Moreover the concept has been exposed by linguistic research as having no basis in what early Christians meant by diakonia."
Pages 3-4 contain a precis of Ratzinger's address to the 1990 Synod. In footnote 17 Collins notes:
"The reference provided by Ratzinger was to my dissertation at the University of London in 1976, “Diakonein and Associated Vocabulary in Early Christian Tradition”. The published version (note 4 above) did not appear until July 1990. How Cardinal Ratzinger came to access the thesis remains mystifying to me, but the published volume would have greatly strengthened the linguistic case he wished to make at the Roman Synod."
Would I be right in surmising, on a related train of thought, that Jesus' characterization as "The Suffering Servant" is similarly misconstrued if it is seen first and foremost in terms of his serving us as a wounded healer? It would primarily be about his identity as the perfect Servant of the Father; one who "learned obedience through suffering", which I take to mean that he lived out continual obedience in the midst of utter suffering, rather than his having to be taught to obey by being made to suffer (like yours truly). So it's above all a title that speaks of his life and death of sacrificial service to The Father on behalf of human nature. It's not that the other aspects of his redeeming ministry aren't true, just that everything else follows from that. If that's right, you must be getting through, Father!
As one who is the same age as Israel (ABS was born in 1948), this atavistic man remembers when it was taught that the Mass was a Holocaust; well, it still is but we call it the Lord's Supper because that is less offensive to protestants (but not to ABS).
If you want to have some didactic fun, politely ask your local Pastor or Priest if the Mass is a Holocaust. He may know the answer (but prolly not) but if he doesn't know the answer his curiosity will likely be piqued and he may well search out the answer and, once having learned the answer, that answer may be the impetus to discover what else it was his seminary training ommitted in the interest of Ecumenism.
Ecumenism is the Universal Solvent of Tradition(tm)
One mustn't disappoint: Mr Mark Wauck! You stoop to the depths of a hyperlink! Deplorable!
Dear Palamède de Charlus, Archdeacons are important because they gave rise to a disputation in the University of Oxford; "whether an Archdeacon may be saved"; better matter than the question of Angels and Pins.
Like ABS, I am a child of 1948. Therefore my memories and convictions are atavistic almost by definition. Having been assaulted by the spirit of Vatican II, I have concluded that here on the West Bank of the pond, no innovation of the last 50 years has been an improvement or help to the faithful. We have 30 million people who say they are former Catholics. Who knows how many millions have died in that state? They abandoned the Church that abandoned them.
At the heart of the collosal failure of the Church to understand her mission is the deformation that our learned host has identified:the social Gospel is not the whole Gospel; in particular, the first duty of a deacon is not direct service to the poor, but service to the bishop, who then provides the fullness of spiritual and material sustenance.
There is a certain worm of self-gratification that must be avoided by directing our first service to the altar, where we learn from the Sacrifice of praise and obedience the true humility exemplified by our Saviour.
Archdeacons ought to be reinstated throughout the Latin church. Then we can get rid of the useless army of auxiliary bishops.
This underscores the importance of accurate scholarship, a rare commodity these days.
I suspect that the "service paradigm" will be invoked in favour of female deacons during the current unfortunate dialogue. Cultic considerations would make the path to priesthood to uncomfortably obvious.
I doubt we will have a real examination of the "deaconess" idea either. Too Protestant.
I am even more atavistic (born 1938). I feel the pain of the Church I knew being almost obliterated. The Mass is a pale shadow as is the priest. It's all gone!
My only help is an old Stedman missal and blogs like this.
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