Hi Monique, this is my point if you could do what you did before Benedict then why are you wrong for doing the same ministry in the same place today?  If our rules don't make sense then people stop following them more & more.

The Deaconate has become an excuse to push laity aside, which we already have proven, always hurts all parishes because the laity become less involved when they are pushed aside.  My personal parish has decreased since receiving two deacons over the last 7 years.  Many of the lectors and Eucharistic Ministers were pushed aside whenever the Deacons decided to show up and participate in a mass.  This made the lay ministers feel less valuable.  Now we also have less lay ministers.

As for the 90% White Deacons & western ethnicity (not priests-many immigrant priests are being shipped into the US from elsewhere), those statistics are correct.  They were not a guess but research from the Church's own global numbers in the last 4 years on the deaconate.