Lynne Mapes-Riordan, left, with Father Casmir Damor, attends the Sunday Mass procession at St. Nicholas Church in Evanston, Ill. She wants the opportunity to enter the Catholic Church's deacon formation program, which does not allow women.

CHICAGO — Lynne Mapes-Riordan of Evanston, Ill., hopes women will one day serve as Roman Catholic deacons. After 800 years, she could be one of the first.

Growing up, she never gave ordination a second thought. But then she learned that, unlike the church’s verdict barring women priests, the question of women deacons has never been resolved.

That open question has led Mapes-Riordan, 49, and her fellow parishioners at St. Nicholas Catholic Church in Evanston to seek an answer. If the church finds in favor of female deacons, she could become one of the first women ordained since the 12th century. After meeting last winter with members of the parish, including Mapes-Riordan, Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George reportedly promised to raise the question in Rome during his visit earlier this year.

Scholars say women deacons wouldn’t be a novel or new idea, but the restoration of a tradition abandoned centuries ago.

The idea of female deacons “is being talked about very slowly,” George said earlier this year during a forum at the Union League Club in response to a question about the future likelihood of women priests. “The diaconate is a more open question. At this place, at this time, it is not a possibility.”

Mapes-Riordan, a lawyer, wife, mother of two and longtime parishioner at St. Nicholas, does not take a position on whether women should become priests. Ordaining women as deacons is not the same, she said.

“In a strange way, I don’t see this being about women,” Mapes-Riordan said. “I see it as being about church and mission. We have this part of a puzzle, this piece, that I’m not going to say is missing, but we could have a fuller picture if this (letting women become deacons) was added. I don’t see it as a women’s issue. I see it as a matter for our church.”

“It’s a message of hope. It’s a way to stay within the boundaries of Catholic teachings and have women with real preaching authority within the system,” said Phyllis Zagano, one of the American church’s leading researchers on the subject of women deacons. “I think the bishops need to address this issue directly.”