ORDINATION TO THE DIACONATE IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 

Catholicism says that the power to govern the church and teach with authority and give the sacraments, except baptism and marriage, has to be inherited in a physical chain from the twelve apostles.

Holy Orders gives the power to function as a priest.  It has three levels.  Deacon. Priest.  Bishop.  The bishop is the priest in the fullest sense.  Only bishops can ordain priests.

The Deacon is a male who when he receives the laying on of hands by a bishop gets the authority to perform baptisms and marriages and preach. It is impossible to see how this office can be a sacrament because any layperson can do what the deacon does. The sacrament of Holy Orders is about giving priestly powers. However, the deacon has no such powers.
 
Yet the Church is forced to be stupid and say the diaconate is a sacrament.
 
The Catholic Encyclopedia (www.newadvent.org) says,
 
“Although certain theologians such as Cajetan and Durandus, have ventured to doubt whether the Sacrament of Order is received by deacons, it may be said that the decrees of the Council of Trent are now generally held to have decided the point against them. The council not only lays down that order is truly and properly a sacrament but it forbids under anathema (Sess. XXIII, can. ii) that anyone should deny "that there are in the Church other orders both greater and minor as which as by certain steps advance is made to the priesthood", and it insists that the ordaining bishop does not vainly say "receive ye the Holy Ghost", but by that a character is imprinted by the rite of ordination.”

The way the Church cannot ordain women to the Deaconate as men and says that female deacons in the early Church were lay workers not clerics indicates that it thinks there is a sacrament involved that it has no authority to confer on a woman.

That a woman cannot be ordained to be deacon when the word means servant shows rank spitefulness towards womanhood.



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