Restoring the Permanent Diaconate for Women in the Roman Catholic Church (original) (raw)

NO WOMEN IN HOLY ORDERS? The Ancient Women Deacons

The book provides ample evidence to show that the women who were ordained to the diaconate during the first millennium had been sacramentally ordained. The second half of the book offers the text of the full ordination rite from six of the oldest manuscripts. Canterbury Press, London 2002; Women Deacons in the Early Church. Historical Texts and Contemporary Debates, Herder & Herder Crossroad, New York 2006; Vrouwen tot diaken gewijd. Historische feiten en actueel debat, Herne Heeswijk 2006 (Netherlands) and Altiora Averbode 2007 (Belgium).

The Disappearing Deaconess, Preface, EREMÍA PUBLICATIONS

The Disappearing Deaconess, 2021

The main body of this book is my master’s thesis completed in 2017 at the University of Winchester. The thesis made significant contributions to the scholarship on both deacons and deaconesses by analyzing the appearance and disappearance of deaconesses in light of the Church’s teaching on male and female and of changes in other Church offices. The book consists of the thesis with a few very minor changes, plus two important appendices that broaden the scope of the book to include both the current issue of deaconesses and the larger issue of male and female as understood by the Orthodox Church. Appendix B is “A Public Statement on Orthodox Deaconesses by Concerned Clergy and Laity,” signed by fifty-seven Orthodox clergymen and lay leaders and released January 15, 2018. This statement was drafted by me with Fr. Alexander F.C. Webster and Fr. Peter Heers as a response to the Patriarchate of Alexandria’s disputed blessing of women for church service in the Congo and to a subsequent public statement in support of these new “deaconesses” issued by several “Orthodox liturgists” on October 24, 2017. Appendix A is the text of my remarks at a conference on “Renewing the Male and Female Diaconate” organized by the St. Phoebe Center for the Deaconess, held in Irvine, California, on October 7, 2017. These remarks go further than both the thesis and the public statement at Appendix B by outlining a theological basis for the distinction of male and female as the key to understanding the natural and economical relationship of the man and the woman, including, among many other issues, the exclusion of women from clerical orders. A fuller presentation of this “theology of gender” is part of my doctoral dissertation, entitled Origen’s Revenge: The Greek and Hebrew Roots of Christian Thinking on Male and Female, which will be published later this year by Pickwick Publications, an imprint of Wipf and Stock.

Deaconesses from early church to modernity

2018

From the 19 th and early 20 th century, a worldwide movement began that would challenge and uproot everything that man had previously thought. That movement is now known as firstwave feminism, and since then, we have had two more waves with the fourth wave being driven by new social media platforms. 1 This global trend has influenced every aspect of our lives and has entirely redefined the socio-political landscape. This process has even infiltrated various religious organizations, and overturned the laws that had been held for millenniums. And today, it is knocking on our doors. Why does the Orthodox Church not ordain women? What do we have against women anyway? This is the question that I wish to expound on in this paper. Alexander Rentel points out that the first steps in dealing with canonical problems is to examine the appropriate canons within their historical context, aiming to understand how they were historically applied, and then constructing their application for the modern context. 2 Furthermore, in light of Rentel's suggestion, the corpus canonum of the Church is understood "as the written law and the civil law and liturgical practice as authentic exemplars of practice and custom." 3 And that true comprehension can only be gained when examined through the entire life of the Church with Christ as both its beginning and its end. 4 For these reasons, I have chosen to analyze the Apostolic Constitutions, the canons of the Councils, Justinian's Novels, and the Barberini Euchologion. The goal will be to draw out insights and perspectives that the early Church had towards ordination in general, and the ordination of women in particular. I will then follow up with some contemporary discussions surrounding this topic with an effort to gauge the general sentiment in the Orthodox community regarding the ordination of women.

FULL PROGRAM of the INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SYMPOSIUM Deaconesses: Past -Present -Future

The person of Deaconess Phoebe in the Work of Church Fathers and Ecclesiastical Writers in Early Christianity Dr. Eirini Artemi (A post doc. Phd and MA, Academic Teacher in Israel Institute of Biblical Studies in Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Lecturer in Hellenic Open University and Academic Teacher in the Orthodox University of Kinshasa- Congo) Abstract Phoebe was introduced to Ephesian Christians by Paul as an important helper of his colleagues. In this paper, we will analyze how Phoebe is presented in the writings of Church fathers and Ecclesiastic writers in the Early Christianity. In these texts, there is the question if Phoebe had been an officially appointed deacon or minister of the church at Cenchrea. It should be underlined that the interpreters of Bible were quite unwilling to describe women ministers using specific ecclesiastic terms as deacon and the same thing have to do with Phoebe. Origen underlines that the role of Phoebe is ministry one of assisting people and exercising hospitality as Lot in the Old Testament. John Chrysostom praises St. Phoebe’s work and calls her as saint and holy person and give emphasis to her work. Also, Chrysostom mentions Phoebe elsewhere, referring to her as an official deaconess. Theodoret of Cyrus refers the name of Phoebe three times in order to speak for her ministry of the topical church. Was the role of Phoebe in these texts presented inferior than it was, because the Church writers follow the general idea for the position of women in the society and in the Church? Or do they afraid of creating different problems with the active role of women in ecclesiastic communities?