PhilippeO:
what about women ordination as a deacon, not as priest ? They have precedent in the bible, could it be accepted earlier ?
There's always been doubt about just what
diakonos means in the context of the New Testament passages that allude to it (Romans 16:1 and 1 Timothy 5:3-10). In the case of Phoebe, it may simply mean, as the Vulgate renders it, that she was "in the ministry [i.e. service] of the Church", without implying any official status.
The view that these were simply that - women tasked with helping of the poor or elderly women, especially during baptism (which was often full immersion, and so risked scandal or near occasions of sin if men were present), in a non-ordained state - is most ably set forth in
Aime Georges Martimort's Deaconesses. That's essentially been the official view of the Catholci Church (and the Orthodox) all along. There are some scholars, particularly progressive ones, who think they were, in fact, an ordained ministry, and therefore that the Church could ordain women as deaconesses now with good precedent. I find Martimort persuasive on this point, but those arguments are out there.
I always thought, Catholic Church with a lot more married men and women as deacon would be easier to endure "priest shortage", the priest could have mass with eucharist in one church, then the Bread delivered to many church where deacon lead mass without sacrament.
Well, married priests and women priests are two different questions - the Catholic Church *has* thousands of married priests already, either in the Eastern Rite Catholic Churches (Melkites, Ukrainians, Maronites, etc.) or among those formerly Protestant ministers (usually Anglican or Lutheran) who converted and were ordained as Catholic priests under the
1980 Pastoral Provision or under the new Anglican Ordinariates. There is also the newly restored permanent diaconate (1970), which is open to both celibate and married men - most deacons are married. Celibacy is a discipline, not a doctrine, albeit a discipline of longstanding normativity. Women's ordination is considered a dogmatic impossibility.
Would relaxing the celibacy discipline help address the priest shortages? Possibly. But there are no guarantees. The Episcopal Church has been ordaining women since the 1970's and married men since, well, the beginning, and has a vocations shortage sufficiently severe that it has had to close three seminaries in the last several years (A big hit, considering their size). So there's no guarantee, just a likelihood.
I think any Protestant minister or Orthodox priest would tell you that married ministry creates new practical problems just as it helps solve others (like vocations shortages). The married priest has to take care of his family, not just his parish, and both are beyond full-time jobs. Being married and a priest or minister is very hard on a marriage. The problem of divorced or adulterous (or even sexually abusive) married priest has to be confronted. Priests with families also cost much more to support than celibate ones.
If anything is likely to happen, you might see a slight relaxation: A limited dispensation to some dioceses to accept and ordain a limited number of
viri probati - older, married, proven, mature laymen. Their children would be adults or nearly so, so support issues would not be so severe. If their wives died, they could not remarry. They could never be appointed as bishops. These are all restrictions that Eastern Rite (Catholic or Orthodox) priesthoods have always operated under, and they would surely hold true here, too.
But most leaders in the Catholic Church is reluctant, I think, to take such a move
now, out of fear that it would stoke demands for expanding ordained ministry further. Bad timing, in short.