Diocese of New Jersey | Discernment | The Diaconate

The Shift to a Transitional Diaconate As the church experienced dramatic growth following the end of persecution and the conversion of Constantine (313), the diaconate began to be overshadowed. This was due in part to the increased prestige of the role of bishop in the Imperial Church.

As the church grew, the bishop could no longer serve as the primary pastor of the community. More and more sacramental authority and pastoral oversight was ceded to the presbyters, who began to be called priests. Likewise, the church adapted itself to the overwhelmingly hierarchical structures of Roman society.

St. Francis of Assisi
(click to enlarge)

Leadership in the church began to be accepted as a progression of grades through which one passed. Other orders developed 'below' the diaconate (doorkeeper, exorcist, lector, and subdeacon). Would-be clerics passed successively through these orders, to the diaconate, and then to the priesthood. While the other orders eventually disappeared, the order of deacon remained, but primarily as a 'transitional' diaconate, simply as a stepping-stone on the way to the priesthood.

The Diaconate Obscured after Francis of Assisi Throughout the Middle Ages, the diaconate remained obscured as a transitional step to priesthood. The sense of diakonia also slipped away, to emerge in the charism of some of the religious orders which proliferated in those years.

The most notable exception and symbol of this was 'everybody's favorite saint,' Francis of Assisi who remained a deacon during his life as friar in what became an order dedicated particularly to the poor and marginalized.

NEXT: The Deacon in the Reformation and the Recovery of the Diaconate