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...
I wonder if he prayed for those persecuted Christians from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church which he threw under the bus.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlM3CKXJs5k
DeleteI do have to wonder, how will this long defeat of the Imperial Church of the East end? With a real council that "normalizes" (searching for a word here) it's ecclesiology for the new situation of the fall of the Empire, Ottoman captivity, so called diaspora, etc. Or in some sort of whimper populated with acts such as these?
ReplyDeleteIt's one thing to remember - your past, where you come from, how you got to where you are, etc. It's another thing to *dwell* in or in the past, which is a kind of delusion and effort to be something you are not.
Even in the best of light, how does this remembrance in any way connected to the salvation of Orthodox here in N.A, or anywhere else for that matter? Is it not in truth a kind of cultural tit-for-tat with "the Turks" who have, quite literally, conquered the Imperial Church of the East and it's "culture"? Is it also not a play to the western consciousness of liberality and "religious freedom", by a patriarchate who depends upon westernized moral sensibility, western $, and western political weight for his very existence in Turkey and thus the Church itself?
Sometimes (thankfully not all the time) I feel rightly foolish for being associated (via formal religious communion and more importantly, in spirit) with men such as these...
Jake, I hate to sound like I'm bashing the West, but Russia was never allowed to liberate Constantinople from the Turks. I had a Ukrainian great-grandfather who fought against the Turks in the Tsar' s army. I can't tell you which war, but his grandson, my father, described it to me. The Turk's were actually armed with American Winchester rifles against the Russians with single shot rifles. My great-grandfather returned from the war and made a pilgrimage on foot to the Kievan Caves Monastery.
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