A glaring omission at the US deacons congress

This past week I attended the US National Diaconate Congress in New Orleans, celebrating fifty years of the permanent diaconate – or, perhaps better, the diaconate as a permanent state of life – in the United States.

There were several very good main speakers that have given me much to chew on and to help me understand better my vocation and the vocation of the deacon. I will reflect on this later.

This was a time to make contacts but I also had a chance to meet an old friend whom I’ve known since summer camp in the 1950s! Msgr. Tim Shugrue worked with the permanent diaconate in his archdiocese and in the US for a number of years.

I knew that I would be an anomaly – being the only permanent deacon in the diocese of Santa Rosa de Copán and only the third permanent deacon ordained in Honduras. I am also one of the few celibate deacons, for all that’s worth.

Though many presentations made reference to the church teaching on the restoration of the diaconate as a permanent order, there was a glaring omission.

Not one of the speakers I heard in the major sessions or the workshops mentioned a critical passage in the Second Vatican Council’s “Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity,” Ad Gentes, paragraph 16:

Where Episcopal Conferences deem it opportune, the order of the diaconate should be restored as a permanent state of life, according to the norms of the Constitution on the Church. For there are men who are actually carrying out the functions of the deacon’s office, either by preaching the Word of God as catechists, or by presiding over scattered Christian communities in the name of the pastor and the bishop, or by practicing charity in social or relief work. It will be helpful to strengthen them by that imposition of hands which has come down from the apostles, and to bind them more closely to the altar. Thus they can carry out their ministry more effectively because of the sacramental grace of the diaconate.

I am biased because this is a passage that was critical in my discernment in response to the bishop’s invitation to consider the diaconate. I had been working with catechists and visiting remote villages for Celebrations of the Word with Communion and practicing the works of mercy and justice.

When I read this, I nearly fell over backwards and saw that “the sacramental grace of the diaconate” might be a way that God would “strengthen” me in my feeble efforts.

As I continued my discernment process I came across several articles by the Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner on the diaconate. In “On the diaconate,” written before the Second Vatican Council, he noted:

…the diaconate already exists de facto in an anonymous form in the Church of today. In these circumstances, it is right that those who are already vested with this anonymous diaconate should also have the sacramental commission conferred upon them, because in principle it is possible for there to be a sacramental diaconate in the Church, and such a sacramental commission is reasonable and productive of grace.

I believe that this passage challenges the church to understand the diaconate more as the ordination of the diakonia that a person is already practicing, orienting this diakonia to the service of the church, animating the diakonia of the entire People of God,  and serving as making visible the connection between the altar and the daily life of the faithful.

The words of Father Paul Mc Partlan ring true for me:

“The deacon stands at the altar and prepares the gifts with clean hands, but he stands also where the practical need is greatest, getting his hands very dirty.”

I have modified his insight in this way, reflecting on the way I perceive my diaconal vocation:

The deacon stands at the altar and prepares the table of the Lord with clean hands, because he has gotten his hands dirty, serving at the table of the poor.

In this way, the diaconal ministry is not a privileged position in the church but, in part, a way of sacramentalizing what diaconal persons are already doing and who they already are. It is, however, not a reward for service, but a calling to deepen our identity as servants, in the image of Christ the Servant.

I believe that further reflection on this passage from Vatican II’s Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity might help the diaconate in the US and in the world better serve God’s and God’s people – at the table of the Lord, at the table of the poor, and at the table of daily life in one’s work and one’s family.