National Directory

6

PREFACE

committee’s document titled Permanent Deacons in the United States: Guidelines on Their Formation and Ministry . 21 These Guidelines served the Church in the United States of America well as it began to assim ilate the new ministry of deacons. 22 In February 1977, the commit tee organized a comprehensive study “to assess the extent to which the vision” for the diaconate had been realized. 23 The results of that appraisal were published in 1981 under the title A National Study of the Permanent Diaconate in the United States . 24 The report acknowledged that the purpose of the diaconate and its integration into the life of the Church in the United States of America had not yet been fully realized. Building on that Study , the NCCB commissioned the revision of the 1971 Guidelines . In November 1984, new guidelines were published under the title Permanent Deacons in the United States: Guidelines on Their Formation and Ministry, 1984 Revision . 25 7. The committee approved and authorized the publication of a series of monographs as part of a structured national catechesis on the diacon ate. In collaboration with the committee, the Bishops’ Committee on the Liturgy issued the document The Deacon: Minister of Word and Sacrament, Study Text VI (1979), which was devoted to the liturgical ministries of the deacon. 26 A second monograph addressed The Service Ministry of the Deacon (1988), 27 and a third monograph, Foundations for the Renewal of the Diaconate (1993), offered an international and historical perspective on the theology of the diaconate. 28 In 1998, the committee sponsored the production of a video, Deacons: Ministers of Justice and Charity , which highlighted some of the diverse service min istries of deacons in the United States of America. 29 III. Subsequent Developments 8. The documents of the Second Vatican Council convey “a great deal about bishops and laity and very little about priests and deacons.” 30 In 1990, St. John Paul II convened an Extraordinary Synod of Bishops