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The Restoration of the Diaconate at the Second Vatican Council

By Tim Drake

This Rock Volume 16, Number 8   October 2005     Frontispiece By Karl Keating   Letters   What About the Right to Die? By Fr. Frank Pavone   Common Myths By Fr. Frank Pavone   The Role of Deacons: Then and Now By Tim Drake   What Can and Can't Deacons Do? By Tim Drake   The Restoration of the Permanent Diaconate at the Second Vatican Council By Tim Drake   Who Were the "Great" Popes – and Why? By Fr. William Saunders   What's in a Name? By Carl E. Olson   Soteriology: Catholic v. Protestant By Carl E. Olson   Mary, the Ark of the New Covenant By Steve Ray   Mary the Ark As Revealed in Mary's Visit to Elizabeth By Steve Ray   Inside the Ark By Steve Ray   Step by Step Google versus the Pope By Kenneth J. Howell   Fathers Know Best The Real Presence   Brass Tacks The Complex Relationship between Scripture and Tradition By Jimmy Akin   Damascus Road Reincarnation Meant My Loved Ones Would Cease to Exist By Joanna Bogle   Classic Apologetics The Authenticity of the Gospels By Walter Devivier, S. J.   Quick Questions    Subscribe    Permissions

Three decades ago, at the Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church) called for the restoration of the permanent diaconate.

"It may well be possible in the future to restore the diaconate as a proper and permanent rank of the hierarchy" (LG 29).

Pope Paul VI did so on June 18, 1967, the feast of St. Ephraim, a deacon. The Pope’s apostolic letter Sacrum Diaconatus Ordinem permitted episcopal conferences to request that the Holy See allow the ordination to the permanent diaconate of celibate and married men.

In April 1968, the American bishops made that request. Four months later it was granted. The first Standing Committee on the Permanent Diaconate was appointed by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in November 1968. That committee developed the first program of study for the diaconate, with the first deacons being ordained in May and June 1971.