It makes you think
The Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate are really pushing for deaconesses. They post about it online almost daily.
All Archons are male.
Let that sink in.
Our "convert" clergy
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20 years ago I assumed the EP/GOA (same organization or "jurisdiction") would already have female ordination by now. If you are at all familiar with the majority "spirit" of the laity and many of the clergy you know that a modern theological anthropology prevails.
ReplyDeleteI still think it is inevitable, and will be the primary cause of a real and permanent schism within Orthodoxy - a deep differentiation of "The Faith" among the already de facto differentiation of ecclesiology that exists among all the "Orthodox" today. I know I will not be in communion with the EP/GOA (or any "jurisdiction" still in communion with them) the day women's ordination is a reality in their church.
The fact is the EP/GOA and may others (e.g. the current Patriarch of Alexandria and his flock) would already have women's ordination if it was not for the "conservativism" of many hierarchs in the Church of Greece, Cyprus, etc.
As for the Archon's themselves, they may be male in the biological sense, but they are very modern in the psychological/spiritual sense. They are "men without chests" as saint Clive Staples Lewis so aptly put it...