Deaconesses
The title "women deacon" or "deaconess" appears in many documents from the early Church period, particularly in the East. Their duties were often different from that of male deacons; women deacons prepared adult women for baptism and they had a general Apostolate to female Christians and catechumens (typically for the sake of modesty). Women appear to have been ordained as deacons to serve the larger community until about the 6th century in the West and in the East until modern times.
Liturgies for the ordination of women deacons are quite similar to those for male Deacons and the ancient ordination rites have been noted by groups like Womenpriests. Although it is sometimes argued that women deacons of history were sacramentally not "ordained" in the full sense used in the present day in Canons 1008 and 1009 of the Code of Canon Law, some modern scholars argue that the ordination of women deacons might have been equally sacramental to that of male deacons.
Currently, the Catholic Church has not restored women to the diaconate, although Vatican statements have declined to state that this is not possible, as they have in the case of priestly ordination. The Russian Orthodox Church had a female diaconate into the 20th century. The Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church of Greece restored a monastic female "diaconate" in 2004. The Armenian Church has a long history of women deacons, to the present.
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