Called to Contribute

Women comprise the majority of US Catholics and the majority of lay ministers in the US Catholic Church. While the ordained diaconate remains the exclusive realm of men, women engage in expansive service that overlaps core diaconal functions in word, liturgy, and charity. Many women feel specifically called to be deacons or express an openness to discerning such a call should the vocational path become available to them. Escalating global attention to the question of women and the diaconate compels social scientific research to enhance knowledge regarding how contemporary women experience and fulfill their felt call in the Catholic Church.

This report summarizes findings from a sociological study of women whose ministry in the US Catholic Church approaches that of ordained, exclusively male deacons – but for whom opportunities to live out their call fully are constrained by barriers to ordination. A team of five interviewers led by sociologist Tricia C. Bruce, PhD, interviewed forty women in depth to explore the characteristics, contexts, and contributions of women actively engaged in “deacon-like” ministry. The interview sample reflects diversity in age, race/ethnicity, marital status, parental status, region, language, and length and type of ministry involvement. Interviews lasted 75 minutes on average and were recorded, transcribed, translated into English when necessary, coded, and analyzed.

In brief, major findings are as follows:

1. Catholic women feel called to the diaconate – or would image and discern such a call if the diaconate were open to them.

Interviewees describe how gender barriers inhibit their imaginations for how they might serve the Church and restrict their subsequent realities. Some women feel an explicit call to ordination (often kept hidden), noting in particular gifts in preaching, accompaniment, and serving marginalized peoples. Most reconcile themselves to available vocational paths, but long for opportunities to discern different roles for themselves.

2. Catholic women feel constrained in how they use their gifts, respond to ministry needs, and live out their calls as Catholics in the US Church.

Interviewees navigate their vocation within the context of constraint. Specifically, women describe how their calls lead to repudiation, how contingency dictates their access to ministry functions, and how the lack of title, recognition, and authority conferred through ordination results in ambiguity.

3. Catholic women adapt to live out their call by operating as “de facto deacons,” engaging in strategic deference, strategic dissent, and emotional management.

Interviewees approach their ministry through a “do it anyway” mentality, many of them functioning as “de facto deacons” with neither title nor Holy Orders. To do so, women strategically defer to priests and bishops, strategically dissent using tactics such as codeswitching, and habitually manage their own and others’ emotions (e.g., mitigating disappointment and discordance as well as assuaging those who feel “uncomfortable” around women in leadership positions).

4. Catholic women contribute substantially to the US Church through service that is noticed and needed, while biding for roles that better align with their calls, increase their legitimacy, and portend the long-term vitality of the Catholic Church.

Women’s labor fills Catholic ministry needs exacerbated by the shortage of ordained priests and deacons. Lay Catholics respond to women ministers as capable, qualified, and gifted in serving the Church. Even as women serve willingly, most are biding: (im)patiently waiting, uncertain, and cautiously wondering when and whether women will be welcomed to the ordained diaconate. Most resolve themselves to its unlikely occurrence in their own lifetimes but retain hope for the future.