Now I know that most people here are against women’s ordination (as am I), but in my researches of the eastern orthodox, I discovered a nascent pro-WO tradition bubbling just under the surface firstly, the Patriarch of Constantinople, of course, has been known to make favorable statements (when he isn’t equating Recycling with moral virtue...) But just this evening I discovered that Fr John H. Erickson has been a WO advocate, as related with alarm on a conservative RC podcast: https://youtu.be/zjNrncaK9Z8 Fr. Erickson is a Professor at St Vladimir Seminary, described as the most prominent Orthodox seminary in America Then there are wider Orthodox theological texts which really opened my eyes, such as,- The Place of the Woman in the Orthodox Church and the Question of the Ordination of Women, ed. Gennadios Limouris (Katerini: Tertios, 1992) Is anyone else as surprised as I was? the world is a pretty complicated place....
Sure is, but Jesus coped with it and said we would be able to too. John 16:33. Eventually, sans misogyny! .
Any issues the Romans, Anglicans, or Lutherans are having exist in Eastern Orthodoxy. They are just better at cloaking them under a cloak of ethnic exclusivity. Also, the Orthodox have a range from Conservative to rather Progressive, just as all of the traditional churches do.
Doesn’t the Greek Orthodox Church already ordain women deacons? I could look for an article on this, if somebody wants. And here are the girl-altar-boys in Greek liturgies:
I am not sure. I would have no problem with women deacons as they are mentioned in the Bible. ( I know there is a debate among that about their orders being different compared to male deacons.) I would hope the the EO's stand strong though. Don't want to see another group fall
I believe you're talking about the distinction between women deacons, and deaconesses. There are many traditionalist Anglican jurisdictions which reject women's ordination that promote deaconesses. In the REC we have many deaconesses, and it is a wonderful and fulfilling ministry. It is a lay religious order, falling closely with the instructions in the 4th century Apostolic Constitutions which recommend women deaconesses, but strongly instruct that they should not be seen as in the holy orders.
Wouldn't 'girl-alter-boys' be equivalent in misnomerism to 'lady-doctor-man' or 'woman-dentist-bloke'? What's the matter with 'altar servers'? .
It's not going to happen. There's this thought among progressives in the developed world that somehow the rest of the world will come around to their style of thinking, but it's DOA.
There are probably some Orthodox people who want to ordain women, but if so they're a tiny minority. The structure of the Orthodox Church, combined with the fact that most of the Orthodox world is so resistant to change that they won't even use the Gregorian calendar, makes women's ordination very unlikely. Deaconesses exist in the Orthodox Church (though I have yet to meet one), but as you mentioned above they're distinct from Deacons and do not receive the mystery of Holy Orders.
With all due respect, that's more Orthodox self-mythology than anything else. Just as the Latin Christians have discovered that there is no supernatural protection against modernism, so the Greeks are learning as well: Patriarch Bartholomew: “Orthodox ecofriendly values are an embankment against the culture” https://orthochristian.com/133650.html In a new message on the occasion of the ecclesiastical new year, marked tomorrow on the New Calendar, Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, widely known as the “Green Patriarch,” calls upon Orthodox youth worldwide to recognize the significance of their Orthodox faith and its “ecofriendly values” Green Patriarch, Green Patristics: Reclaiming the Deep Ecology of Christian Tradition https://www.researchgate.net/public...iming_the_Deep_Ecology_of_Christian_Tradition In environmental circles, there is an increasing awareness of the Orthodox tradition, largely thanks to the speeches and initiatives of Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople. Less widely known is the considerable body of other Orthodox writing, which is less concerned with specific ecological problems, but addresses in greater depth the theological themes found in his pronouncements. This paper looks at the continuing development of Orthodox thinking in this area, and the increasing tendency to go deep into the sources of Orthodox tradition—theological, ascetic, liturgical, and hagiographic—to address underlying questions of the spiritual significance of the material world and the rôle of man within God’s purposes for it. It takes as examples four themes: the unity of creation and divine presence; cosmic liturgy/eucharist and ‘priest of creation’; ‘ecological sin’; and asceticism. It concludes that the Orthodox tradition goes beyond the dichotomy of man and nature to offer a ‘deeper ecology’ in which the physical interrelations between creatures are set within the divine economy for all creation.