Pope’s Meeting With Deacons to Spotlight ‘Hidden Ministry’

Anthony J. (Tony) Varesio, a dutiful Roman Catholic, is neither priest nor layman, and yet he appears to be one or the other.

Over the last 12 years in a Goleta, Calif., parish, Varesio has been performing marriages, burying the dead, baptizing babies, preaching and wearing liturgical garb while assisting at Mass.

But the same distinguished-looking man in coat and tie also attends dozens of social service committee meetings and, before he recently retired as a Santa Barbara Savings & Loan Co. vice president, even counseled people at his job.

Not only that, he is married.

Varesio is one of a fast-growing number of permanent deacons, an ordained level of the hierarchy restored by the Roman Catholic Church in the late 1960s after centuries of disuse.

Despite the diaconate’s popularity--there are nearly 8,000 U.S. permanent deacons and 93% of them are married men--it has been called a “hidden ministry,” according to Varesio.

For one thing, permanent deacons neither share the visibility of the parish priest nor his authority to hear confessions and celebrate Mass. Much of the deacons’ work is out of the limelight in chaplaincies, helping migrants, assisting the deaf, or administering a small parish, to name a few ministries. The vast majority are unpaid and are squeezed into time outside the deacons’ regular jobs.

For another, few Catholics regularly encounter a permanent deacon. The 133 permanent deacons in the Los Angeles archdiocese, for instance, are spread over three counties and 284 parishes.

And in an age when the church is faced with diminishing ranks of priests and sisters, little publicity is given to a church vocation that already has people waiting to sign up.

However, the permanent diaconate will not be so “hidden” after Pope John Paul II visits Detroit today. By speaking to 2,900 permanent deacons and their wives, the Pope will be calling attention to a successful program that accounts for 60% of the world’s permanent deacons.

If there is any suspense in anticipation of the Pope’s talk, it is over whether he will drop a hint about the prospects for ordaining women to the permanent diaconate.

Church officials said the subject of women deacons has been discussed thoroughly both in Europe and in the United States.

“We understand unofficially that the question continues to be studied in Rome by the appropriate (Vatican) congregations,” said Deacon Samuel M. Taub, the Washington-based director of the U.S. bishops’ Office of the Permanent Diaconate.

“I would not anticipate it being raised in Detroit,” said Taub, who will welcome the Pope with a short talk and an eight-minute video on deacons’ ministries. A more likely occasion, he said, will be the worldwide Synod of Bishops next month at the Vatican.

Historical precedent--despite the vagueness of biblical and early church references to deacons--provided the needed justification for reviving the diaconate for men. Church officials indicate that the same kind of analysis is necessary to open those doors for women.

For reasons that are unclear, the diaconate began to decline as early as the 3rd Century. By the Middle Ages, it was no more than a step on the way toward ordination to the priesthood--a six-month transition still observed today in Roman Catholicism.

The idea of restoring permanent deacons arose during World War II in Nazi concentration camps. Imprisoned Catholic priests reflected that the church might have been served better in those times with an ordained cadre of married and single men ready to fill the gap.

Pope Pius XII spoke favorably of the idea in 1957. The Second Vatican Council defined what a restored permanent diaconate would be like and Pope Paul VI directed in 1967 that it be done.

The Monterey diocese ordained the first American permanent deacon in 1970, Earl S. Curriran, now deceased.

Last Oct. 31, there were 7,838 deacons and 2,129 candidates. A slightly later tabulation by the Official Catholic Directory lists 7,981 permanent deacons.

The Los Angeles archdiocese last month started training for 24 future deacons--the first classes begun since 1982. “I’ve got (another) 21 people on our waiting list that I would like to start tomorrow,” said Father Lawrence Shelton, director of the permanent diaconate in the Los Angeles archdiocese.

Los Angeles Archbishop Roger M. Mahony has indicated that he will speed up the training of deacons and continue to seek candidates from the minority communities. Nationwide, Latinos account for 13% of the diaconate and blacks for 4%, with 2% from other minorities.

Guidelines require permanent deacons to be at least 35 years old at ordination. If single, a candidate may not marry after ordination, and in fact must take a vow of celibacy. If a married deacon becomes a widower, he is not permitted to remarry--following a New Testament admonition that “deacons may be married but once.” (1 Timothy 3:8-13).

In 57 dioceses, wives are required to complete the training program along with their husbands. The official U.S. guidelines say the wife may become involved in a team ministry with her deacon husband. Taub’s office reports that 1,420 wives (about 20%) do so.

“So far only the men are ordained, but certainly in the function of diaconal service there are no limitations,” Varesio said. Varesio is the associate director of the Los Angeles archdiocese’s permanent deacon program and will attend the Detroit meeting with the Pope.

In some cases, like that of Rosemary Varesio, Tony’s wife, they are engaged in their own ministries. After attending counseling workshops with her husband, Rosemary Varesio said she started helping with the mid-1970s influx of Southeast Asian immigrants seeking church sponsors. She later joined the Catholic Charities office in Santa Barbara and is now the associate director--duties she said will prevent her from going to Detroit with her husband.

“I don’t see myself, as many wives do, as a deaconess,” she said. “This is his vocation. I want to keep my own identity.”

But co-authors Father Patrick McCaslin, permanent diaconate director in the Archdiocese of Omaha, and Michael G. Lawler, a professor of theology at Creighton University in Omaha, in their book on the permanent diaconate, “Sacrament of Service,” said that they saw no argument against the admission of women to the permanent diaconate. “We hope a way will be found to ordain properly talented women to that sacramental office,” they wrote.

Likewise, the deacons’ wives already trained and willing to serve “are being wasted” by the church, feminist scholar Arlene Swidler argued in the August issue of U.S. Catholic. She said the time and place is right for opening the doors to women.

THE POPE’S DAY: DETROIT Saturday, Sept. 19: All times are local to area.

DETROIT 8:05 a.m. Parade to Hamtramck. 8:20 a.m. Address in English and Polish to Polish-Americans, Hamtramck. 10:05 a.m. Meeting with representatives of deacons and wives, Ford Auditorium. 11:35 a.m. Address on social justice issues at Hart Plaza. 3:45 p.m. Celebrates Mass in Ponitac Silverdome. 7 p.m. Departure ceremony at airport.