Fr John Michael Hanvey (Letters, 3 January) condemns deacons as irrelevant and ineffectual. Who trains and manages them? Celibate priests.Many permanent deacons are treated by some parish priests as glorified altar servers, with no opportunity to be creative in their ministry. As a deacon who is due to retire soon aged 75, I will be pleased to retire from a ministry whose members are often treated poorly and arrogantly. Father does not always know best, even though he thinks he does! Many priests do not avail themselves of any in-service training and the results are plain to see and hear – poor homilies and parish management coupled with control freakery.(Deacon) Michael D. Phelan Beaconsfield, BuckinghamshireI would like to endorse the Australian deacon Jim Curtain’s response