By Thea Jarvis

This past spring when Scott and Eric Dietz were chasing elusive black and white balls across the soccer fields of Marietta, their father Paul wasn’t always up in the stands watching their games. And when their brother Danny finally went for the coveted orange belt in karate this year, he had to do it without his number one fan -- his dad.

Dad, you see, is studying to be a deacon, and every other Saturday since September he has been heading out for classes at St. Pius X High School or Holy Cross Church, hitting the theology books and learning about the Church he is to serve.

Has it been worth it?

“Very much so,” Paul Dietz responds readily when the question arises. The 41-year old electrical engineer, who works for a non-profit organization which serves standards of excellence for nuclear power operations, realized that his family’s schedule has been somewhat disrupted, but “I think it’s helped us grow.” While many of Dietz’s 59 classmates in the current crop of diaconal candidates have a few years on him -- the group includes retirees, grandfathers, and fathers of college age or married children -- he is convinced that the commitment he and his wife Janice have given to the three year program has made an impact on their three boys.

“They just accepted it. It got to be the normal routine,” he explained. What is more, signals received from their offspring, aged 15, 13 and 11, indicate that the family is not just paying lip service to the notion of the diaconate. When Janice was hesitating about attending a recent parish prayer meeting recently, Dietz related, their oldest son chided her that if she didn’t go she wasn’t holding up her end of the bargain.

“I think it’s helped them all,” Paul Dietz observed. “They see us being committed and they try to do the same.”

On his part, the Minnesota native, who moved his family to Georgia five years ago, tries “to be with them at other times” when his Saturday classes come up, aiming for quality time that his children seem to understand and accept.

Dick Johnson agrees with his classmate about the overall effect the diaconate program is having on his family. The 58-year-old father of seven, now proud grandfather of six, claimed, “It’s enhanced our family life, from our spiritual life to our everyday activity.” He and his wife Shirley find they are “much more caring with each other” since becoming involved in the program. Because the Johnsons and the Dietzes are at different stages in their families’ development, both have had to deal with time constraints in different ways. Shirley Johnson was able to join her husband in all but two of his Saturday sessions, which included study of the Old and New Testament, ecclesiology, moral theology, liturgy, catechetics, preaching, church history and spirituality. Janice Dietz, who began fall classes with her husband Paul, had to drop out when spring rolled around and the children’s involvements were priorities.

“The hardest part was on my wife,” Paul Dietz admitted, remembering one frenetic Saturday when Janice drove all the way to Gainesville for a soccer game and then raced back home for another one in Marietta. “If we went for three years without the summer break, we’d all be nuts,” he laughed.

Both men found the studies they undertook to be challenging and interesting. Dick Johnson, a Ph.D. who worked in public education for most of his professional life and now serves as Assistant Superintendent of Catholic Schools for the Archdiocese of Atlanta, said it was “hard trying to keep up with the reading and the work of it all. But I operate under pressure and I didn’t let it bother me.”

Formerly an associate professor of engineering at the University of Notre Dame, Paul Dietz put in several hours of study twice a week to keep current with his diaconal studies. He enjoyed “learning more about my faith and being involved with men doing the same thing.”

All 60 of the men currently enrolled in the archdiocesan diaconate program finished up their studies with a weekend retreat held at the Village of St. Joseph last month. Father Tom Fidelis from the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers directed the retreat, which was attended by many of the wives of the candidates as well. The day-long event included conferences, spiritual direction, the sacrament of reconciliation and a closing liturgy formalizing the end of the first year of diaconal preparation.

Following the retreat, Dick Johnson was looking forward to a relaxing summer. “I don’t remember when I had a weekend off,” he said with a good-natured chagrin. As for next year, both he and Paul Dietz can expect much of the same format as this past year, with a few goal-oriented changes that should enhance the program.

Next October, the men will be officially admitted as “candidates,” the first step in their journey toward the permanent diaconate. “This is roughly what was done as ‘tonsure’ before the reforms,” explained Father Bill Hoffman, director of the Archdiocesan Office of the Permanent Diaconate. In May, the candidates will be installed as “lectors” during a closing retreat scheduled for Forrest Hills near Dahlongea. The remaining steps, acolyte and deacon, will be taken the following year.

Father Hoffman pointed out that next year he hopes to provide opportunities for the men and their wives to get to know each other outside the classroom environment. “There’s so many of them that it’s difficult to get together during Saturday classes,” he realized this year. He also expects to give the men more time to fine-tune their preaching, a task they will be expected to undertake in their role as deacon.

Another goal for the 1985-86 program will be a closer focus on the marriage relationship and its importance to the candidate’s overall approach to the diaconate. Father Hoffman stressed that while two-thirds of the candidates’ wives attended the Saturday classes, it became apparent that many felt they were on the fringe of the program. “We have to deal with that,” he said, emphasizing that a greater effort will be made to involve the women more closely in the process.

This summer, the screening committee which carried out initial interviews with men who applied for admission to the diaconate program will again be visiting with candidates and their families. The committee, composed chiefly of laypersons who assist and advise the director, will, in the future, be augmented by a greater representation of minority Catholics. “The diaconate program currently includes six black Catholics, five Hispanics and one Korean,” Father Hoffman said. Broadening the base of the screening committee will mean fuller representation for minorities, he feels.

In the coming months, Father Hoffman hopes his flock of candidates will concentrate on acquiring some hands-on experience in their local parishes. He has encouraged them to expand the range of their ministry, try new avenues of service and get a feel for what options are theirs for long-range service.

“We suggested a broad experience with a number of different ministries rather than have the men lock themselves into one thing for nine or 10 months,” he said. The object would be to help candidates zero in on an area of church ministry that would be suitable for them.

Deacon Walt Bedard, who serves as associate director of the Archdiocesan Office of Permanent Diaconate, hopes that the candidates will not become too preoccupied with finding their niche in church service.

“Their seems to a concern among the candidates about having something to do. That’s an area that’s got to be addressed. They worry too much about that,” he feels, adding that “they’re all into something, and it’s all good.”

A major stumbling block for diaconate programs in any diocese, he said, is the fact that it’s “really new.”

You can’t go back in history and say this is what a deacon does because each time you’ll find something different. In another hundred years or so we’ll know the answer to that question.” For now, he insists, “I think it’s blossoming.”

Both Paul Dietz and Dick Johnson have a fairly good idea of what they would like to do when they become deacons, although each has expressed a willingness to be open to the needs of the Church at the time of their ordination.

Since Dietz is the only diaconal candidate from his home parish of Holy Family in Marietta, he expects to continue his work in adult education there. Currently Church chairman of the parish board of education, he believes that the diaconate “lends more credibility” to the service he renders to the Church.

Johnson likewise plans to continue in his present work. “I’m fully committed,” he said of his link to Catholic education in Georgia. “This job is a ministry, not just a profession.”

Without ordination to the diaconate, he reasoned, his work could be “open-ended not necessarily a commitment. There would always be the back door you can slide out. I look forward to that commitment.”

Johnson, who, like Paul Dietz and many of his classmates has looked forward to entering the diaconate program for some time, is enthusiastic about his candidacy thus far.

“It’s a great renew program,” he reflected, and “a tremendous asset to the archdiocese. There’s an awful lot of talent out there. We just need to spot it, train it and use it.”