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 think we have reached the point where everything that is relevant to this dispute has already been said, repeatedly. The Russians should just send a polite note announcing the break in communion and move on.
ReplyDeleteAs seems to happen more and more, information was released in haste without proper checks and now things seem less certain. Now some Russian sources are writing about two Greek metropolitans who are indicating that the Church of Greece did not in fact recognize the OCU, but simply confirmed Constantinople's right to grant autocephaly.
ReplyDeleteThis really highlights the limits of our information age: so much information, so little time, so many passions!
Here is the article: https://orthochristian.com/124664.html
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