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...
Fr. Thomas says:
ReplyDelete"There are no other problems."
This seems almost naive, especially coming from him. For too many, administrative unity is a black box into which go all of our problems, and out of which comes all of our solutions. Here are a few of the other problems (by no means an exhaustive list):
1) Orthodoxy will still be "in" America, not "of" America - it will still be a largely foreign/ethnic experience. Administrative unity does not solve this, and in my opinion is not even a significant step toward solving this. In fact, having "divided government" has been a good in the since that this diversity of jurisdictions has shown us how some integrate into America better than others.
2) Despite the carefully cultivated self image of the OCA, their autocelphaly is not without a few asterisks. Further, their recent crises reveals deep cultural problems (from the top all the way down) that go quite deep. There is a reason I and others don't attend an OCA church (despite the occasional ray of Son-shine like Bishop Job of blessed memory and apparently Metro Jonah).
3) No current "jurisdiction" is a real basis of a truly autocephalous church. Throwing them all together into a pile of administrative unity still does not get you house built on a strong foundation. This seems so obvious but for some reason unfathomable to me needs to be said.
More could be added. As uncomfortable as some of these things might be they need to be discussed honestly...