In the years since the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) reestablished deacons as a permanent order of the clergy, the diaconate has evolved into one of the most visible and fastest growing areas of ordained ministry within the Church. However, to many who grew up thinking of deacons as merely on a transitional step up the ecclesiastical ladder, the sudden proliferation of permanent members of this order has been both surprising, and mystifying--"and edifying. In Saintly Deacons, Owen Cummings explores the remarkable history and evolution of the diaconate through the lives of six notable deacons over the two millennia of Christian history.
