U.S. deacons on Vatican panel tell OSV News why they rejected female diaconate: Christ the Bridegroom cannot be sacramentally imaged by women.
Newsroom (08/12/2025 Gaudium Press ) When the Vatican released the long-awaited synthesis report of the Study Commission on the Female Diaconate on Dec. 4, 2025, the headline was clear: no ordination of women to the diaconate, at least not now.
Behind that decision were two American permanent deacons who helped shape it.
Deacon Dominic Cerrato, director of Diaconal Ministries and former diaconate director for the Diocese of Joliet, Illinois, and Deacon James Keating, professor of spiritual theology at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary in St. Louis, were the only two permanent deacons — and the only Americans — on the 10-member commission appointed by Pope Francis in 2020 and continued under Pope Leo XIV.
In exclusive interviews with OSV News hours after the report’s publication, both deacons opened up about what happened inside the commission — and why they believe the Church cannot move forward with women deacons without distorting the very heart of the Gospel.
“We didn’t vote no because we’re afraid of women in ministry,” Deacon Cerrato said bluntly. “We voted no because this isn’t about ministry in the broad sense. This is about the sacrament of holy orders — and specifically about who can image Christ the Bridegroom at the altar.”
Deacon Keating nodded in agreement. “People keep framing this as a justice issue or a rights issue. It’s not. It’s a Christological issue.”
The two deacons said the commission spent years poring over historical texts, patristic sources, and liturgical evidence. Yes, they acknowledged, the early Church had women called “deaconesses” — but the historical record, they insist, does not support the claim that these women received the same sacrament as male deacons.
“Those women served in a very specific context,” Deacon Cerrato explained. “Full-immersion adult baptism, done in the nude, in a culture that strictly segregated men and women. You needed women to anoint women and assist them in and out of the water for modesty’s sake. Once baptism changed — infant baptism, pouring, clothing — that role disappeared. Those women eventually became the first religious sisters.”
“There’s simply no evidence they ever proclaimed the Gospel at Mass or handled the sacred vessels at the altar in the Western tradition,” Deacon Keating added.
But history, both deacons stressed, was never the decisive factor.
“The report quotes Benedict XVI: a purely historical perspective gives no definitive certainty,” Deacon Keating said. “The real question is doctrinal. And doctrine begins with who Christ is.”
That, they said, is where the nuptial mystery became inescapable.
“Christ is the Bridegroom. The Church is his Bride. That’s not romantic language — that’s revelation,” Deacon Keating said. “When a deacon stands at the altar — proclaiming the Gospel, preparing the gifts, holding the chalice — he is not acting as James Keating or Dominic Cerrato. He is acting in the person of Christ the Head, the Bridegroom giving himself to his Bride.”
“The sacramental sign requires a male body,” Deacon Cerrato continued. “To put a woman in that role would break the sign. It would be a kind of theological confusion — what I called in the meetings ‘theological transgenderism.’ That phrase made some people uncomfortable, but no one refuted the theology behind it.”
Both deacons were quick to reject the idea that this conclusion diminishes women.
“Justice isn’t sameness,” Deacon Cerrato said. “God created us male and female in his image. Equality of dignity does not mean identity of function. The world says if women can’t be deacons, they’re second-class. The Church says: only women can be mothers — spiritual and physical. Only men can be spiritual fathers in the order of holy orders. That’s complementarity, not discrimination.”
Deacon Keating pointed to recent Vatican appointments of women to high-level positions. “Pope Francis put women in places no one imagined twenty years ago. Pope Leo will continue that. There are a thousand ways women lead in this Church that don’t require ordination.”
The deacons also noted that the permanent diaconate itself is still in its infancy in the Latin Church — restored only in 1967.
“We’re still discovering what the diaconate is,” Deacon Keating said. “The fact that the Church convened this commission at all shows she’s listening to the Holy Spirit. But listening doesn’t mean saying yes to every desire. Sometimes the Spirit says: not this. Not now. Maybe not ever.”
As they left the Vatican press hall on Dec. 4, both deacons expressed peace with the outcome.
“We didn’t block something women wanted,” Deacon Cerrato said. “We protected something Christ gave.”
- Raju Hasmukh with files from OSV News
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