See Scholarship from Women Can Be Priests , Wijngaards Institute

http://www.womenpriests.org/western-ministries-women/

There are at least seven
reasons why women can and should receive Holy Orders!

1. One priesthood in Christ Through baptism women and men share equally in the new priesthood of Christ.
This includes openness to Holy Orders. click!

2. Empowered to preside At the Last Supper Jesus empowered both women and men. Both can be ordained to preside at the Eucharist. click!

3. Cultural bias The Church’s practice of not ordaining women as priests was based on a three-fold prejudice against women. This affected the judgment of Church leaders. click!

4. Women have been deacon Until at least the ninth century the Church gave women the fullsacramental ordination of deacons. This proves women can be ordained. click!

5. The ability for women to be ordained has been present in the Church’s latent Tradition. One example is the age-long devotion to Mary as Priest. It shows that, according to the ‘sense of the faithful’, in Mary the ban against women has already been overcome. click!

6. The wider Church accepts women priests After serious study and prayer other Christian Churches now ordain women as priests. Though not everything other Churches do can be accepted by the Catholic Church, this converging consensus by believing Christians confirms that ordaining women is according to the mind of Christ. click!

7. Women too are, in fact, called to be priests The fact that many responsible Catholic women discern in themselves a vocation to the priesthood is a sign of the Holy Spirit we may not ignore. click!

Conclusion: there are no valid arguments against women priests, and many truly Catholic arguments in favour!

Women deacons in the West

In Western Europe, women deacons became more generally known from the 3rd century onwards when the Didascalia – with its explicit recommendation to bishops: ‘choose women as deacons!’ – gave women’s diaconate a wider publicity.

We know that women deacons ministered in the West until about the 12th century. The evidence is contained in decisions by local church councils, in the ordination rite preserved in 6 sacramentaries & 9 pontificals (all of which published on our website), in historical documents and the life stories of 15 women deacons we know by name. For details, see below!

1. The difference between East and West
2. Ordained women deacons in Gaul
3. Ordained women deacons in Italy, especially in Rome
4. The rite for the ordination of women deacons in the West
5. Other ministries of women in the West

1. The difference between East and West

Three factors militated against a sizeable increase in women deacons: prejudice against women in traditional Roman law, the lack of the strong pastoral demands for women deaconsfound in the East and a cascading of liturgical prejudice against women.

In contrast, in the East women deacons flourished. Practically every parish church had its own local female deacon, more than a hundred of whom we know by name. The ordination rite for women deacons was certainly sacramental and virtually identical to that of male deacons. The rite as been preserved in eight ancient manuscripts all of which are published on our website. Women deacons in the East played a key role in preparing women catechumens for baptism, assisting at their baptism and ministering to them in church and in their homes.