Public Statement on Orthodox Deaconesses by Concerned Clergy and Laity

American Orthodox Institute ^ | January 18, 2018 | FR. JOHANNES JACOBSE

[Carpe Cerevisi]

WASHINGTON — Fifty-seven Orthodox Christian clergymen and lay leaders, including the heads of two leading Orthodox seminaries in the U.S., have issued a public statement calling on church leaders to defend Orthodox teaching on the creation and calling of man as male and female by opposing the appointment of deaconesses in the Orthodox Church.

The statement comes in response to a public statement issued in October by nine Orthodox liturgical scholars in the U.S. and Greece, expressing support for the Patriarchate of Alexandria’s November 2016 decision to “restore” the ancient order of deaconesses and its February 2017 appointment of deaconesses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The Roman Catholic Church has also taken the first step toward the appointment of deaconesses with Pope Francis’s 2016 establishment of a commission to study the issue. That commission is headed by Archbishop Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Half of the commission’s members are women. One of them, Phyllis Zagano, professor of religion at Hofstra University, is a well-known advocate of deaconesses.

Several Protestant churches, including Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists, and Presbyterians, began appointing women as deaconesses in the nineteenth century. Most have since ordained women to all higher orders such as priest and bishop.

The statement by the Orthodox opponents of deaconesses takes issue with the liturgists’ representation of the place of deaconesses in Orthodox tradition and raises serious doctrinal issues relating to the appointment of deaconesses. It also questions whether Alexandria’s appointment of deaconess in the Congo revived an ancient order or instituted a new order with an old name.

[LouieFisk]

“It’s not that people ‘can’t’ think for themselves, it’s that they simply will not.”
—
If anybody is a member of a church where people don’t think, they’ve got bigger problems than this one to handle!

[LouieFisk]

“Sorry Louie, gonna have to agree with this.”
—
I only posited that Paul designated a woman as deacon, which he did. It’s pretty clear in the cited passage.

“NOT part of the Holy Order.”
—
The idea of a “Holy Order” (or holy orders) wasn’t around among the early Christians. They wouldn’t recognize what organized religion has developed into and organized religion would be equally befuddled by the practices of the first Christians.

People within the various denominations have an understandable, but incorrect, notion that things have always been as they are now - and each one figures they’ve hit on the the “true way”. Again, understandable - who would want be part of something that they thought was doing things wrong?

[Paulie]

You are incorrect my friend.

We will pray for you and those who follow you.

[LouieFisk]

“We will pray for you and those who follow you.”
—
If anybody were dumb enough to follow me, I’d appreciate such prayers!
“Don’t follow leaders, watch the parkin’ meters...”

[FormerLib]

You are correct that the term deacon described different roles for men and women. The liberal radicals are trying to sell the idea that they were one and the same, which simply is not true.

[Mrs. Don-o]

"Catholics forbid their ministers to marry."

For the record, Catholics do not forbid ministers ("people in ministries") to marry.

But throughout the Catholic Church, East and West, men in Holy Orders, once they are ordained, are vowed to celibacy and may not marry unless they are laicized/dispensed from their vows.

Married men, however, can be ordained priest or deacon in any of the 21 Eastern Catholic Churches, except for the Western (Latin) Churche.

And the Western Church does allow married men to become deacons, which means our deacons can be married men when they are ordained. They are married clergy. They receive Holy Orders.

I know this is a little baffling, but it's a matter of who and when.

Married man --can become -----> deacon or priest? Yes

Deacon/priest ---can become ---- married? No.

I trust I have made myself sufficiently obscure?

Maybe somebody with a better-organized mind can express this more clearly.

[ebb tide]

And the Western Church does allow married men to become deacons, which means our deacons can be married men when they are ordained.

Only since the Second Vatican Council:

Third Canon of the First Council of Nicaea

This great synod absolutely forbids a bishop, presbyter, deacon or any of the clergy to keep a woman who has been brought in to live with him, with the exception of course of his mother or sister or aunt, or of any person who is above suspicion.

And now we have Bergoglio exploring the possibilities of womyn deacons thanks to the "god of surprises".

[newberger]

Canon 3 refers to UNMARRIED women, not clerical marriage.

[ebb tide]

The new historical reconstruction, which has had its most notable scholarly proponents in Christian Cochini and Alfons M. Stickler, demonstrates instead that celibacy was already being observed in apostolic times, and was a universally recognized law for centuries in the Church, in both the West and the East. This law was made concrete both in the impossibility for celibates to marry after priestly ordination and in "continentia," meaning the interruption, for married men, of sexual relations with their wives after ordination.

[ebb tide]

Canon 3 refers to UNMARRIED women, not clerical marriage.

On the contrary, it's obvious that Canon 3 refers to no such thing.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Do accept that an Ecumenical Council has the authority to OK married deacons? And are you OK with the married clergy of the Byzantine Greek Catholic churches? The are small, but they are as Catholic and as ancient as the Western Church.

You realize this, of course, but so many people dom't: that the Catholic Church is a communion of 22 Churches, and 21 of the 22 accept ordinandi from the ranks of married men of proven virtuous life, viri probati. It's been that way since way, way before Vatican II.

So it would be interesting to get the perspective of our fellow Catholics --- for instance, Melkites, Maronites and Ukrainians --- on this.

[ebb tide]

I accept married deacons, but not incontinent deacons.

And I'm not talkiing about Eastern Churches. I'm talking about the Roman Catholic Church, of which I'm a member. I'm not a cafeteria Catholic who picks what pleases me.

Summary of the clerical continence debate and response to a recent Roman statement thereon

[Mrs. Don-o]

Well, the Melkites, Maronites and Ukrainians are Catholics, too. And their Sacrament of Holy Orders is legit.

The married male clergy issue is completely separate from the wacky Womynpriest rot. There have been married Catholic deacons and priests for well over a millennium, though not in the West; and no, the married Eastern priest or deacon was typically not abstinent, not separated from his wife nor living with her in the brother/sister mode.

I am not, by the way, personally in favor of changing the discipline of celibate priesthood in the West. I think there are significant spiritual and well as prudential reasons to uphold celibacy. But it's possible to take the other side without heresy, and without being somehow allied with the feminist priestess faction.

The parts of the Church which have married clergy are also pretty sturdily patriarchal, you might notice.

[Mrs. Don-o]

The terms "Roman" Catholic, ":Western" Catholic, "Latin" Catholic -- vs. "Byzantine Greek Catholic," etc. --- have always been a little confusing.

I'm just reminding everybody that the Eastern Catholics are Catholics, married priests and all. In union with the See of Peter in Rome. With not a shade of doubt that their Sacrament of Holy Orders is valid.

[ebb tide]

There have been married Catholic deacons and priests for well over a millennium, though not in the West.

But were they continent?

You keep bring up the East; Francis brought up the Orthodox on divorce and remarriage (on an airplane, of course) and look where he is today.

"The Orthodox have a different practice," he told reporters July 28 during his flight back to Rome from Rio de Janeiro. The Orthodox "follow the theology of 'oikonomia' (economy or stewardship), as they call it, and give a second possibility; they permit" a second marriage.

[ebb tide]

I'm just reminding everybody that the Eastern Catholics are Catholics, married priests and all.

But are the married priests continent, per canon law?

[ebb tide]

...and no, the married Eastern priest or deacon was typically not abstinent, not separated from his wife nor living with her in the brother/sister mode. Did you read Cardinal Stickler's research on deacons?

So the majority of the married Eastern clergy were incontinent? Does that justify the disobedience?

Doesn't sound much different from those Catholics who practice artificial birth control, because "everybody does it".

[ebb tide]

Tracing the Glorious Origins of Priestly Celibacy

The Case for Clerical Celibacy

[Mrs. Don-o]

I’m speaking, then, of our Byzantine brethren.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I’m no canonist, so don’t cite me as an authority (as if!), but I think the Eastern Catholic Churches (Byzantine Greek Catholic, etc. -— I’m not talking about the separated Orthodox) have their own canon law. They’re not covered under the canon law of the West.