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...
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ReplyDeleteIt is Cypriot people that convince me that this is a waste of time. I heard several years ago about Cypriot boy scouts at a world jamboree. An OCA priest was doing a liturgy as one of the chaplains and he announced beforehand he didn't know any language but English. He said the Cypriot boys were delighted. They said they knew English but DID NOT know the Greek they heard regularly back home. Another time I read a woman from Cyprus in comments on a blog, asking if anyone knew where she could obtain an English liturgy book so she would have some chance of following the all Greek liturgy. Greeks don't know Greek. Not even in Greece. Certainly nowhere else. This narrator talking about how "essential" it is to know Greek is less than useless.
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