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...
The representative of the Ecumenical Patriarchate was fully robed and planned to take part & then disrobed in a huff and DID NOT concelebrate. There are 2 versions of the story goinground round: 1) he refused to concelebrate with the Metr. of the OCA because the EP does not recognise the autocephaly of the OCA. This does not make sense because hierarchy of the EP I am sure have concelebrated with the OCA haven't they? 2) the reason given in this story: http://risu.org.ua/en/index/all_news/confessional/orthodox_relations/57391/
ReplyDeleteno that is true....the EP does not recognize the OCA because of the OCA's claim to be the first and most "universal" north american orthodox church...what bothered me is that this edtition chopped up the most beautiful part of the Divine Liturgy, the Cherubic Hymn! - it doesn't take long at all, and it amounts to a grotesgue censoring of the most heavenly part of the music in Divine Liturgy!
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