Many Western theologians will say Pope John Paul 2 made an infallible teaching declaration verifying what has been said before to that effect. It is no longer up for discussion, despite the femi-nazi's.
I am sure you will agree that sub deacons are in fact ordained, as the canons provide and yet, sub deacons “...have no right to a place in the Diaconicum, nor to touch the Lord’s vessels.”
I do not know what a sub-deacon is or whether he is ordained. We don't have those here in the US as far as I know, maybe in the Curia? I do know that deacons are ordained and they do have the right to "touch the sacred vessels of the Lord".
Women may not go to the altar.” Canon XLIV Council of Laodicea
Here's the rub. Is this considered an infallible doctrine to be held by the Church in all times, everyplace and everywhere, or is this a discipline? It is my contention that if something was licitly done at one time, EVER, and then a later Council ordered it NOT to be done any longer, it is not an infallible doctrine, but a discipline. Why? Because the Church judges that ALL of what we believe, even before being officially defined, was INDEED believed "by the entire Church, everywhere and every place". In other words, it was something already practiced or believed. Not having women at the altar, then, cannot be an infallible part of our faith.
If something was "always" practised and believed, it is an Apostolic Tradition, subjected to being called an infallibly declared doctrine if the Church so wills it through the Spirit at a later time. IF women were EVER allowed to "go to the altar" as part of a licit action, is it reasonable to say Laodicea is more along the order of a discipline that CAN be abrogated later?
Now, it is conceivable that deaconesses did bring communion to sick women, but they received from the priest or a deacon outside the altar.
Maybe. It is conceivable that in the first generation, that women were disciples of the Lord and others were not scandalized by receiving the Body from a female.
Today’s Eucharettes, or for that matter the male version, are not ordained in any fashion and therefore are forbidden from even touching the Holy Vessels, much less the Holy Mysteries themselves. In the Orthodox Church, women are not allowed inside the altar and frankly no layman should be in their without a good reason.
The East is rightly emphasizing the Holiness involved in the Eucharist. I think the West is emphasizing the Banquet aspect. Again, this is a matter of discipline, not infallible doctrine.
Regards
“If something was “always” practised and believed, it is an Apostolic Tradition, subjected to being called an infallibly declared doctrine if the Church so wills it through the Spirit at a later time. IF women were EVER allowed to “go to the altar” as part of a licit action, is it reasonable to say Laodicea is more along the order of a discipline that CAN be abrogated later?”
Jo, for at least 1700 years that has been the practice, East and West until you folks decided to change it under the influence, so far as I can see, of the Zeitgeist. That’s the problem. We have zero reason to believe that you will hold to any tradition, even those practiced always and everywhere...until Americans and enlightened Western Europeans decided that the Holy Spirit is doing a new thing.Aside from the fact that +JPII, a pope not at all liked in the East, nor trusted for that matter, declared that women aren’t to be ordained, is there any reason at all that the next pope won;t decide that the tenor of the times demands women priests because that’s what The Church needs to do to remain “relevant”? Jo, how come the liturgy I will attend tomorrow morning, essentially unchanged for 1700 years, is “relevant” in 21st century America, but the Tridentine mass, a comparatively modern liturgical construct, I remember as a child wasn’t? Why is it that the Western Church is falling apart in the face of Western culture while Orthodoxy survived hundreds of years under the Mohammedans and recently 70 under the Reds, survived and now prospers without any attempts at being “relevant” beyond doing what it has always done in the way it has always done it?
“The East is rightly emphasizing the Holiness involved in the Eucharist. I think the West is emphasizing the Banquet aspect.”
The former works, the latter plainly hasn’t.
Of course you don't. You odn't know what the Cathoiic Church was like 50 years ago. You think "this" is the way it always was.
Subdeacons have been abolished by Pope Paul VI in 1972 after at least 1,700 years.