Were There Deaconesses in Egypt? (original) (raw)

Restoring the Permanent Diaconate for Women in the Roman Catholic Church

“From the Diakonia of Christ to the Diakonia of the Apostles” A Summary and Analysis of the brief sections of this document addressing the historicity of ordained women deacons in the early Church and the prospects of restoring permanent Diaconate for women in the present day. It also brings into question the traditionally held definition of the “deacon.”

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.