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...
Admittedly, I've been blessed to meet both Bishop BENJAMIN and Father Eric, but this was an absolutely fascinating article to read. Thank you very much for posting the link.
ReplyDeleteJosephus, your headline is slightly inaccurate: they visited the Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia (which is a single autocephalous church), but did not visit Slovakia. It would be akin to saying "Delegation Visited the United States, Canada and Mexico" when they just went to New York.
ReplyDeleteA point worth making. Odd, considering the make up of the Metropolia that they didn't visit the land where many of their people came from.
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