- Nov 26, 2019
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@The Liturgist : Do you support the ordination of women? I haven't been sure. You've posted several times about how conservative parishes ought to be able to leave the Episcopal Church more easily, and about how you're unhappy with trends in your own UCC, and I had guessed that part of that was disagreement with the ordination of women.
I have seen you post in defense of Paidiske (thank you!) when people were hurling awful insults in her direction, but that could simply be the principle that we shouldn't be mean to each other online. It wasn't clear to me what you thought of the general policy of admitting women to the priesthood.
The simple answer is yes, because the early Church ordained women to the diaconate, and from antiquity several women have been venerated as Equal to the Apostles, a title also used for post-Apostolic missionaries who converted entire countries, such as St. Gregory the Illuminator, who converted Armenia, and the Armenian princess St. Nino, who converted neighboring Georgia (to be precise, the largest of the ethnic Georgian countries that existed then, Kartvelia), and she is venerated as equal to the apostles along with Saints Mary Magdalene and Theclas, who accompanied St. Paul during some of his work, among others. So that is the simple answer.
The more complex answer is that while I actively support the ministry of devout women like my dear and pious friend @Paidiske , I believe it is wrong to try to pressure or coerce those churches from antiquity which do regard ordination as a sacrament, such as the Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and the Assyrian Church of the East, as well as traditional Lutheran, Anglican and other Protestant churches to change their practices; these matters are the concern of individual churches. And the good news is that in recent years, the Armenian and Coptic Orthodox churches have revived the female diaconate, and this is also being discussed in Eastern Orthodoxy. Deaconesses in the early church had a special and extremely important role, different from male deacons, but one absolutely vital: just as male deacons are ministers of the Eucharist, who can distribute it to the congregation, the ancient Deaconesses were ministers of Baptism, who baptized female catechumens, and brought into the fullness of the Church millions upon millions of souls. So the revival of this office in the Oriental Orthodox churches is a huge step towards reimplementing those aspects of the Early Church which seemingly inexplicably were discontinued. Likewise, I think we should not pressure or criticize those liturgical rites in the Roman Catholic Church which require celibate priests; there are other liturgical rites in the Roman church which do not have this requirement, but the tradition of celibate clergy in the Roman Rite dates back to antiquity.
Also, I am a Congregationalist, albeit one who also greatly respects the Episcopal polity. Indeed, I think the best way to interpret the seeming interchangeability of presbyter or elder and bishop or superintendent in the New Testament is that basically, at first, the churches in cities such as Ephesus, or Colossus, or Thessalonika, or Antioch, were singular, and thus congregational, but as time passed they added more parishes, and thus the bishop became the presiding elder, which we see reflected in the Epistles of St. Ignatius, who had at the time of his arrest and martyrdom presided over a substantial diocese, which was one of the three most important churches in the Ante-Nicene period, along with Rome and Alexandria.
So, I think that what it boils down to is this: if you have an episcopal polity, and you have a parish which was established and whose church building, or temple, in Orthodox terminology, was paid for by the diocese, the bishop can do what he wants. However, in the case of parishes which were founded and constructed at the expense of the parishioners, the most a bishop ought to be able to do is excommunicate them, but they keep the building. Of course, when such a thing happens, it can be a spectaculwr a failure for the bishop and the congregation in the sense that schisms are worse than heresy according to St. Clement. However, they cannot be prevented, and just as some pastors engage in abusive behavior to their congregation, there are bishops who abuse multiple congregations, and an abusive or corrupt bishop, for example, ex-Bishop Bruno of the Episcopalian Diocese of Los Angeles, who resigned after being caught receiving kickbacks on sold church property, and who also attempted to unlawfully sell St. James Church in Newport Beach, contrary to the deed which stipulated the land could only be used for an Anglican church, among numerous other offenses.
One particularly nasty case of episcopal abuse is what happened to the community of St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Alaska, which by the way, does not concern the question of the ordination of women: http://cmpage.org/stpauls.html The story had a happy outcome, in that the congregation, which spent their own money to build a church, only to have it seized by the bishop and sold, for grounds which seem arbitrary and capricious, had the resources to build another building, but not everyone is so fortunate.
Furthermore, in the case of the Episcopal Church USA, I regard as unconscionable the seizure of all properties of entire dioceses which wished to change the dioceses they were in communion with, such as the notorious case of the Diocese of San Joaquin, under the flimsy pretext of Canon 42, which has no basis in the canon law of the early church, under which the equality of all diocesan bishops and the protection of these bishops from invasion by other prelates or the seizure of their church, and the ancient tradition that it is the perogative of the bishop, or in the case of a congregation, the senior pastor, in response to the sentiment of, and otherwise accountable to, the laity he is divinely entrusted to care for, to be sovereign in the church, and to be able to determine who he was in communion with, was well established, the only exceptions being certain heresies or abusive practices (the ancient canon law of the early church is remarkably relevant to many problems now being experienced by Christians of all denominations, around the world). However, as it turns out, in the case of the Diocese of Fort Worth, the Supreme Court agreed with me: the bishop and his parishes had the right to leave the Episcopal Church and join ACNA. ACNA does ordain women, by the way, and so that was not the primary issue by a long shot. So what happened to the other dioceses, such as that of San Joaquin, we can now say, based on the ruling of the US Supreme Court, was wrong, and rather than this being my personal opinion, instead, it is a case where I feel the Supreme Court made the correct decision.
This all being said, since St. Nino converted all of Georgia, and since other women were entrusted with similiarly massive tasks in the early church, what basis is there for objecting to the ministry of pious and orthodox women like @Paidiske? What she is doing is following in the footsteps of St. Nino, and St. Mary Magdalene, and St. Theclas, equal to the apostles, and St. Mary of Bethany, and St. Martha of Bethany, and Saints Elizabeth and Anna, and many others. So I cannot endorse the criticism of the validity of her vocation, and I found the attacks on her grossly offensive.
Also, we should not forget that the one ordinary human being regarded as the most pious and faithful to God, to the extent that she was chosen to give birth to Him and be his human mother, so that He could become incarnate for our salvation, was a woman, St. Mary, the glorious Theotokos, who has always been the most venerated Christian. I personally believe she was translated into Heaven at the time of her death, as is believed by the ancient churches.
The current trend by a vocal minority of fundamentalist Protestants, non-denominational or otherwise, of criticizing St. Mary or attacking the Roman Catholic Church for venerating her, and falsely accusing other Protestants as well as Catholics and Orthodox of idolatry, for what is the appropriate and ancient veneration of the actual Mother of God, I object to, as much as I object to anything occurring in the United Church of Christ. It is wrong and spiritually harmful. It is a belief system that parallels at least two belief systems classified by the early church as heretical, the Antidicomarians and the Nestorians (conversely, there was also a sect which actually did worship Mary, the Collyridians, and they were also regarded as heretics by the early church).
So, to summarize this particular question, I support what Paidiske and women like her are doing, which is extremely difficult work, on the basis of a Patristic precedent that we see in the ministries of Saints Nino, Theclas, Mary Magdalene, and others, for example, St. Anna, the wife of St. Vladimir the Great, who was instrumental in his conversion to Christianity and consequently, the conversion of Kievan Rus, which was the most civilized and tolerant society in the Medieval period (they did not have the death penalty! Imagine that, in the Middle Ages!). Also, it is widely believed that the majority of early converts to Christianity in the Roman Empire were in fact women, because Christianity forbade the abuses which were inflicted on them under the evil pagan state religion of the Roman Empire which killed so many Christian women, men and children, before the miraculous conversion of St. Constantine. So many women died for our Lord as martyrs over the centuries.
There is no place in Christianity for misogyny of any kind.
However, I believe in the freedom of religion, and in the principles of congregational and diocesan self-determination, and that the traditions and the wishes of the men and women who comprise the various ancient churches which do not ordain women should be respected. That’s it. There should be mutual love and respect, even if there is a disagreement on this issue. And I think in the case of the ancient churches, it is primarily a question of implementation, which is to say, to how to apply the practices and principles of the early church which their tradition was intended to protect, without making the mistakes which were made by the Restorationist denominations in the 19th century, such as the Plymouth Brethren.
If someone wants an example of a church which deserves criticism for its treatment of women, by the way, the Plymouth Brethren is practically the ideal candidate. What is extremely upsetting is that John Nelson Darby, of that denomination, is the originator of the great eschatological misinterpretation of the Rapture and the Tribulation, which we see poisoning Protestants, Catholics and even Orthodox Christians, popularized by the media, for example, the Left Behind books, which I have elsewhere argued are not only wrong but constitute a racist smear against the long-suffering Romanian Christians, who were persecuted so brutally by the Securitate, the secret police of Ceasescu, whose abuses became so horrendous that by the time he was removed from power, many Romanians considered him an anti-Christ (indeed, in his specific persecution of Christianity, he was surpassed only by Kim Il Sung, and Enver Hoxha).
Now, regarding the UCC, there is a vast range of problems, such as distortion of the identity of God, syncretism with non-Christian religions, active support of abortion and spiritually harmful forms of human sexuality not condoned in Scripture, and this is why I left, not due to the ordination of women, which was well established when I started. Indeed, we even edited the Book of Worship, which was published around 1990, because some of its phraseology was so wrong, as early as then. But by the end of the 2000s, it was quite...unbearable.
It is extremely sad because of the historic beautiful churches in New England which were not expropriated by the Unitarians in the 18th century, most belong to the UCC, with a few Episcopalian, and one traditional Congregational church, Park Street Church in Boston, which I greatly admire and which is my profile picture.
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