IV. Steps Toward Renewal: 19th and 20th Centuries, and Vatican II
At the turn of the twentieth century, Pope Pius X, initiated the codification of what had
been to that time a fractured, often changing and sometimes contradictory set of rules, laws and
policies of the Catholic church. This effort, after the delays of World War I, would result in the
promulgation of the Codex Iuris Canonici (Pio-Benedictine Canon) by Pope Benedict XV. This
codification would not include a restoration of the permanent diaconate. Instead the canon would
indicate a very limited role for the diaconate. As William Ditewig would point out, the canon
does define a deacon as “a cleric, surely, but a cleric with little or no legal function, and the few
functions available to him were extraordinary.” 43 The code describes the deacon only in light of
his eventual ordination as a priest. The work and result of the Pio-Benedictine canon might lead
the reader to believe that the permanent deacon had disappeared from the Church. There is
evidence though that the permanent deacon still played a role in the Church, that the functions of
Word, charity and service still required a cleric who was part of the community, a cleric
subordinate but separated from the priest.
Where does the renewed discussion of the permanent diaconate start? Deacon William
Ditewig, Ph.D., Edward Echlin, S.J., and others point to Germany. As early as 1840 in
Germany, J.K. Passavant a Frankfurt Physician would write in a letter to Melchior von
Diepenbrock, who would become Archbishop of Breslau,
The priestly state is too sharply separated from that of the laity; the cause in part is in
celibacy…in part [because] the contrast between priest and laity was always that of the
lettered and unlettered. Celibacy has its good sides…The disadvantages, however, can
hardly be denied…many exemplary people disqualify themselves from ecclesiastical
service…Here, it occurs to me, there are two alternative remedies; the Church can either
permit priests to marry in the manner in which the Greek Uniates are permitted to do, or
she can expand the sphere of activity of deacons, so that these men, who would be
43
William Ditewig. Emerging Diaconate, 93.
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