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Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults
Question 19: Why does the Catholic Church not ordain women? Were not deaconesses ordained in the early Church?
Answer: Because such ordinations are contrary to the will of God, as manifested in both the Old Law and the New. Our Lord selected twelve men as His Apostles, and they in turn selected men as their successors. St. Paul excluded women from all share in liturgical functions, forbidding them to teach (1 Tim. 2:12) or even to address the assembled faithful (1 Cor. 14:34-35).
The deaconesses of the early Church were specially blessed, but they were never ordained, as St. Epiphanius (315-403) expressly states (Haer. 79, 3). They maintained order in church among the women, instructed them in the faith as Sisters do today, and attended them at baptism, which in the early Church was administered by immersion. They ceased to exist by the eighth century.
