Sr. Vassa: There's no ontological impediment to priestesses
Is the male-only priesthood a discipline or essential to the nature of being a priest? Sr. Vassa (again unflinchingly taking up a contentious topic by climbing up the ladder to the highest platform and then jumping into the deep end head first) dives right in and says there is no reason beyond personal preference to not have female clergy. You know, when people ask me about women in priesthood, they say, 'Sister, why can't women be priests?' And I say, 'Women CAN be priests. We don't WANT them to be priests.' Because you see, God can do anything, and the Church, by divine authority, uh, can do anything, but, the Church doesn't want to - and that's a legitimate reason. What I don't like is when we TRY to pretend that there are other reasons for this, because it's legitimate not to want something, and there are reasons not to want this - right? - but, we shouldn't pretent that there's some... reason, that, for example, the maleness...
UGH.
ReplyDeleteThis has been a bad year for the OCA.
Where are the texts/emails? I want to see them. I bet this has been blown WAY out proportion.
ReplyDeleteAlexander, I thought that might be the case as well but for better or for worse monomakhos.com published the full texts of those messages and e-mails. You can see the article yourself here and make your own decision. I found the texts to be very suspicious if not downright creepy. Make your own decision based on the evidence though: http://www.monomakhos.com/text-messages-reveal-extent-of-bp-mathias-misbehavior/
DeleteMonomokhos posted the texts more than a week ago.
ReplyDeleteOne can see where favor lies. They just pushed +JONAH out!
ReplyDelete"Saint Basil the Great once defrocked a priest because he committed adultery. After many years, this priest was at a funeral. He approached the casket and touched the dead man and the dead man rose. He went to Basil and said to him, “Do you need a greater sign than this of the holiness that I have acquired in order to send me back to my flock?” Basil replied, “Your holiness is between you and God, but I cannot return you to your flock because you scandalized them. It is not right for you to go to them again.”
ReplyDeleteWho will give us the like of Basil the Great so that we feel that the group we are a part of is truly the Church of Christ?" (Metropolitan Georges Khodr, http://araborthodoxy.blogspot.com/2009/10/georges-khodr-on-corrupt-bishops.html)
Of course, I'm not sure the same autocephalous local church coming down hard on one hierarch for what he might have meant and done can do so without acknowledging its wink and a nod approach to its first two Metrpolitans and their scandalous (past?) actions. Even if such intimations are not true, the image of Metropolitan and 'long-time companion' living next door to monastery and seminary is itself scandalous, as has been the long-time silence regarding it. Same with now repentent clerics who went off for a gay marriage ceremony before returning to serve at a sunny climed Cathedral and rooming with a 'retired' bishop.
At a certain point, economia and pastoral discretion become little more than code words for 'I do what I want when it's convenient to me' - which simply asks the faithful to make it less and less convenient, and thus the rise of agitating camps in said autocephalous local church.