Deacons and collars - not again

Returning Thursday from our diocesan clergy retreat, I spent some time going through e-mail and Facebook. On a Facebook page for permanent deacons, I came across a short article on deacons wearing clerical collars by Deacon Dominic Cerrato. I found the article a little shallow, but what troubles me more were many of the comments.

Almost five years ago I wrote on this topic (here and here) and was roundly castigated, even accused of not having a good diaconal formation. (I plead partly guilty to having a very different formation process. I can explain that later.)

So it is with some trepidation, that I return to the subject. I want to open a serious discussion with a few key questions and a few of my initial reflections. There are some initial questions that the collar controversy raises for me.

1 - What is the role, the ministry of the permanent deacon in the church? In particular, what does it mean to be a cleric?

I think this question is basic and is essentially a question of ecclesiology. I don’t deny that deacons are clergy – both those who will later be ordained priests and those who serve in the diaconate as a permanent state. But this does not make us above the other members of the church. 

Most of us don’t hold such an opinion. though Archbishop Crepaldi seems to advocate such, if this note is true. 

A few weeks ago, a friend sent me this translated note from the Facebook page of Salvo Coco. I cannot attest to the translation but the note does indicate a rather separatist notion of the clergy and the deacon: 

A typical example of clerical doctrine can be found in these words of Giampaolo Crepaldi dated September 17, 2022. The deacon's ministry is intended as a sacred role that "separates" and constitutes an exclusion from the common, daily, existential dimension of the community. No trace of Jesus' secularism. The identity of the clergy suppresses the common baptismal dignity because it “separates” (or sacralizes) the so-called ordained ministries. In this perspective the deaconate and even more the presbyterate and the bishop are placed on an ontologically different and hierarchically superior level than the faithful. In this doctrine lies the doctrinal-clerical core that hinders any serious and profound church reform.

I much prefer the discussion of the Scott Detish in Being Claimed by the Eucharist We Celebrate, who writes of the ontological claim, rather ontological difference or change as being a more appropriate way of speaking of this phenomenon. Detisch also notes how this is not exclusive for sacred orders.

…being baptized and confirmed must also be recognized as involving an ontological change, yet church tradition rarely spoke of this and almost exclusively reserved the phrase for ordination. (p. 36)

Another way of looking at this is to note how the deacon is ordained to the ordering of the community and to be a driving force for the diakonia of the whole church. according to both Pope Saint Paul VI and Pope Saint John Paul II.

In the early 1960s, Yves Congar, OP, wrote Power and Poverty in the Church. At several points I see him putting the sacrament of orders in a larger ecclesial perspective:

“St. Paul expressly says that ordained ministers organize the ministry of the saints, that is, of Christians, (Eph 4:23). They organize it, but they also invigorate and animate it and drive it forward. The are the drivers and governors of the Body in the condition of responsibility and universal service that is the Christian condition itself.” (p. 45)

With this understanding, one is ordained for the ordering of the People of God in its evangelization, its charity, and its prayer in common (the liturgy, the work [ergon] of the people [laos]). Thus, the sacrament of orders is for ordering the community and assuring that the Church reflects who it is. It is not insignificant that the diaconate is called to be the animator, the driving force for diakonia, and, as Pope Francis puts it, the custodian of the diakonia of the People of God.

But I think a very serious issue in this discussion is a question that is not addressed directly: what do we mean by "clergy"? 

In his article, Deacon Cerrato states “The absence of clerical attire by deacons sends the unspoken message that deacons aren’t clergy, diminishing not only the diaconate in the broader Catholic imagination but also an ecclesial presence.”

I think that symbols are extremely important, even though they may distort the meaning of reality. Clericals do not make the clergy, even though they may indicate that one is clergy. I wonder if at time they might distort the message. Is there something more fundamental than clericals that should enable people to identify clergy? In addition, the wearing of clericals, even though mandated for priests in canon law and often permitted for seminarians and transitional deacons is a custom that can be changed.

 

2 - Where is the deacon to be found? With whom does he identify? 

Pope Francis has been insistent that the place of the deacon is with those on the margins. the margins of society.

I would suggest that the deacon should be in direct contact with the physically poor. This does not only mean that people come to him but that he is a driving force for the church going out and immersing itself in the poor. 

I am writing this post on the feast of St. Oscar Romero. I believe his ministry can give us a hint of what might be important for us deacons.

At first, he was somewhat of a closed cleric who did respond to the poor and even, at one point, gave away new pants that some had gifted him. But he was noted for his close contacts with people in power.

Yet, when he became bishop of Santiago de María he began listen more closely to poor people who came to him.

While archbishop of San Salvador, he did not wait for people to come to him, but went out to meet them, even eating in their homes. Images of him walking along the railroad tracks amid the shacks surrounded by sisters and the poor. He went out to be among the marginalized.

So, where is the deacon to be found? Among the poor, the marginalized, those cast-aside by society.

Yes, he is with the suffering middle class, but I believe he must be among the poor, the victims of a society in which we, the middle class, profit.

I believe that if a deacon is not in direct contact with the physically poor, something might be missing in our ministry. As Thomas Halik writes in Touch the Wounds:

The painful wounds of our world are Christ’s wounds. If we ignore pain, poverty, and suffering in our world, if we turn a blind eye to them out of indifference or cowardice, if we are unwilling to acknowledge the injuries we inflict (including the injuries inflicted in our churches), and conceal them from others and ourselves with masks, cosmetics, or tranquilizing drugs, then we have no right to say to Christ, like Thomas the apostle when he touched Jesus’s wounds : “My Lord and my God.” (p 10)

And so I continually ask myself, “When was the last time I was in the home of a poor person?” It’s harder for me now, since I’m in treatment for cancer, but I feel it’s a crucial question for a deacon. 

3 – How to be among the marginalized? 

But how are we to be there? 

Not as one who comes from without, but as one to listen, to share, to be a brother to those who are poor, suffering, marginalized. 

For this we need a kenotic spirituality. We need to lower ourselves, become one with the poor and marginalized. We need to recognize that we don’t come as one with the answers, as the well or well-off person to rescue the poor. We come as brothers who share in the fragility of our human condition. 

Sheila Cassidy, a doctor who was tortured in Chile and who later became involved in care for the dying, writes in Sharing the Darkness: The Spirituality of Caring:

More than anything I have discovered that the world is not divided into the sick and those who care for them, but that we are all wounded and that we all contain within our hearts that love which is for the healing of the nations. What we lack is the courage to start giving it away. (p. 11)

We are all wounded - and God can use our wounds and the wounds of others to heal all of us.

Ann so we deacons need to offer a different spirituality, a different way of being and living. 

I would suggest that we need to move away from signs of power and privilege, to be servants of God and the poor. ;

In an essay on the priesthood, “The Man with pierced heart,” Karl Rahner notes that, “Tomorrow's priests will not be those who derive their power from a socially powerful Church, but who have the courage to let the Church make them powerless.” 

This is also a challenge for us permanent deacons. 

4 – What is the right question? Who is the deacon to be? 

I think we are asking the wrong question.

Maybe we should not be spending so much time and energy asking if deacons can and should wear collars.

Maybe we should be asking what is there in our life, our style of living, our ministry that brings us in contact with the marginalized and opens among us a place for grace

I think that when we do this, the question of collars and clericals will become superfluous – or will be easily discerned in individual pastoral circumstances. For the questions will be: 

• How do we stand at the threshold of church and world? 
• How do we live so that the grace of the altar of the liturgy where we serve penetrates the lives of the poor?
• How do we open the doors of the church, enabling the joys and griefs of the marginalized (Gaudium et spes 1) to penetrate the walls of the church gathered in prayer? 

 The central question for me is this:

How do I become an icon of Christ Jesus the Servant, who came not to be served bur to serve and to give his life for the ransom of many? And how can I be this amidst the wretched of the earth?