...ought to establish beyond doubt that women were ordained deacons in the East while the East and West were still the Great Church in the 8th century. There is evidence, apparently, of female deacons in northern Europe as last as the 12th century, but the evidence for the nature of that diaconate as Major Orders is  primarily Byzantine.

This is the third commission on this topic under the auspices of the CDF. The first report, written by an expert in Byzantine theology and ritual, determined that indeed women were "true" deacons, and thus Tradition affirms the Church is free to reestablish that diaconate should it so wish. Ratzinger, then head of CDF didn't like that answer, so he suppressed the report, and ordered another to be written by a Roman theologian known to oppose the female diaconate. Unsurprisingly that report reached the opposite conclusion, and was published. 

So the issues here are very technical. One side argues from the comparison of the ritual with male diaconal...