[Biggirl]

One is a welcome home in the former and in the later, doing a practice that goes back to the Acts of the Apostles. No novelty there.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Biggirl and ebb tide: It would be good to get a comprehensive view of what the diaconate has consisted of, and now it has been developed and has fulfilled different roles, from the Acts of the Apostles until now. Can either of you recommend a source article on the internet?

As I understand it, during the first Christian millennium deacons undertook, as the bishops' assistants, functions that today would those of chancery officials: vicar general, canon lawyers and tribunal judges, financial officers, directors of the administration of charities and alms, and officers of the Cathedral Chapter (the clerics assigned to serve liturgically in the cathedral.)

"Deacon" comes, of course, from the Greek word for servant: but for most of the first millennium of Christianity, it meant special agents of the bishop (the bishop's servants), not table waiters.

Also --- as I understand it -- the first millennium of the Church saw a gradual decline in the permanent diaconate in the Latin church, with those chancery roles being filled instead by priests (and these deacons were ordained priests.) Thus the "transitional diaconate" come into being.

The permanent diaconate remains, right to the present, a vital part of the Eastern Catholic churches. Their wives were not, of course, ordained, but they had a more-or-less recognized ministry in instructing women and children, and in the choir. They had a title, too: the Slavic churches call the deacon's wife "Matushka," ("Mama"), the Carpatho-Russians call her "Pani" ("Lady") and the Syrians and Arabic-speaking Catholics say "Khouria." Mind you, I am no expert. This is just as I understand it.