Deacon

The diaconate is defined by an exact boundary, and the precision is the point of the order rather than a limitation on it.

What a deacon may and may not do

A deacon is ordained but not to the priesthood. In Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican practice a deacon may baptise, preach, read the Gospel at the liturgy, witness marriages and conduct funerals, and may not consecrate the Eucharist or absolve in confession. For most of the second millennium in the West the diaconate was merely a step passed through on the way to priesthood; the Second Vatican Council restored it as a permanent order open to married men, and permanent deacons are now numerous.

The question of women deacons

Women served as deacons in the early church, Phoebe is called one in the letter to the Romans, and the Byzantine church ordained deaconesses with a rite resembling the male ordination closely enough that scholars argue about whether it was the same order. Whether that office can be restored, and whether it would be the same order as the male diaconate, is under formal study in the Catholic Church and unresolved, and several Orthodox churches have taken preliminary steps. Anglican and Protestant churches ordain women deacons without controversy.

For most of the Latin church's history after the early centuries, the diaconate survived only as a brief stage on the way to priesthood, a transitional deacon typically ordained mere months before ordination to the priesthood itself, so that a deacon who remained one was, in effect, a priest still in training. The Christian East never let the permanent diaconate lapse to the same degree, and Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches have maintained ordained, non-celibate permanent deacons continuously.

The Second Vatican Council's restoration of the permanent diaconate in the West in 1967 changed the numbers substantially: married men can now be ordained permanent deacons in the Catholic Church, and their numbers, heavily concentrated in the United States, now run into the tens of thousands, filling roles in parish ministry that a declining number of priests cannot cover alone.

Protestant usage complicates any single picture of the office further. In Baptist and many congregational churches a deacon is not ordained clergy at all but an elected lay officer, often serving on a board that manages a congregation's temporal affairs and supports the pastor, a role with the same New Testament name as the Catholic or Orthodox order but a substantially different function and standing.