Women Deacons: Why Not Now? Resource Packet
Learn more about Phoebe, Olympias, Macrina, Dionysia, Radegund, and their sisters whose service as deacons in the Church inspires us to advocate for restoration of women deacons today. This downloadable packet contains the tools you need to learn more about this issue and promote dialogue in your own community.
This packet includes:
- A quick look at the issue, to give you the basics about women deacons and provides good answers to the questions and objections most often raised by church officials
- 5 essays and prayer services about women who served the Church as deacons,
- A Brief History of Women Deacons
- A sample education program you can host in your community
- The full text of Archbishop Durocher’s intervention at the 2015 Synod on The Family which called for a discussion of women deacons
- An interview with Archbishop Durocher
- Two articles by women deacons expert Phyllis Zagano, Ph.D. about why restoring the women deacons is both needed and possible today
- A discernment process to find and present women candidates for the permanent diaconate to your bishop.
- An updated “Nine Reasons to Restore Women Deacons”
- A sample letter to your bishop with enclosures
- Recent information on Lay Ecclesial Ministers, the majority of whom are women, well prepared to be ordained deacons