American bishop suggests ordination of female deacons

In the Jesuit magazine America, Bishop Emil Wcela, an auxiliary of the Rockville Center, New York diocese, suggests that women might be ordained to hte permanent diaconate. 

Bishop Wcela acknowledges that Pope John Paul II wrote in 1994 that the Church "has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful." 

But he questions whether that statement applies to the ordination of deacons, whose role in the Church can be distinguished from that of priests. 

He calls for wider discussion of the possibility.