The Liturgist

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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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PloverWing

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Thank you for the clarification. Your position makes much more sense to me now.

On episcopal vs congregational government: I grew up Southern Baptist and am now Episcopalian, and I have seen both forms of government work well. Neither form is required by Scripture; they're just two of the human-invented ways that churches have chosen to organize themselves, when Christianity grew so large that a large-scale structure was needed. I can see the episcopal form growing naturally out of a society that was used to kings and empires, and the congregational form is a natural reflection of American individualism. They're both fine.

The Episcopal Church inhabits a kind of middle ground between the two. Obviously, we have bishops, and bishops have some authority over the congregations they serve. At the same time, the parishes have a lot of autonomy. The bishop doesn't, for example, assign priests to parishes, and a bishop can't simply remove a priest without the congregation's consent. This makes the whole business of property ownership during schisms rather murky. A Baptist church that decides to leave the Southern Baptists in favor of the Cooperative Baptists or American Baptists or UCC is free to go, and the congregation owns all their own property. (This happened in various congregations during the SBC's conservative shift in the 80s.) But the presence of bishops in our church structure makes it less clear who owns what, in cases of schism.

My own preference is to have the property ownership spelled out, both in canon law and in civil law, so that it's clear to everyone from the outset. Even with that, I can appreciate that it's difficult to leave behind the altar hangings that were handmade by Aunt Mathilda, if one decides that it's too hard to associate with the national church any more. There's a bond that develops with a particular place when one has worshipped there for decades.

As an aside, I hate to confess to ignorance of the legal minutiae of my own church, but what is Canon 42? I'm looking at the 2018 Constitution and Canons (https://extranet.generalconvention.org/staff/files/download/23914), but I don't see anything numbered 42.


On the question of exclusion of women from the priesthood: Back when the Episcopal Church first started ordaining women, there was provision for bishops who didn't want to do that, and it seemed reasonable to me at the time. Maybe it was reasonable, for that particular decade. As I've gotten older, though, I've grown more impatient with the church's willingness to allow the exclusion of women (and some other groups) from worship and service in the church. In that way, I have become genuinely liberal over the years: I am willing to look at the places where the church harms people, and to consider reforming the church in those areas -- even if that means disagreeing with the cultural sensibilities of Christians living in the ancient Roman Empire. I am pretty angry, actually, at some of the conservative bishops in my own Episcopal church and in the worldwide Anglican Communion over their resistance to needed reforms and their willingness to split the church rather than reform.
 
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PloverWing

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By the way, if we're exchanging church pictures, here's First Congregational Church, Middleborough, Massachusetts (established 1694), where my grandparents worshipped and my grandmother served as organist for many years.
fcc_middleborough.jpg
 
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Paidiske

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Without wishing to split hairs, I would note that Anglicans are not episcopally governed, but episcopally led and synodically governed. That does actually make a big difference.
 
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The Liturgist

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By the way, if we're exchanging church pictures, here's First Congregational Church, Middleborough, Massachusetts (established 1694), where my grandparents worshipped and my grandmother served as organist for many years.
View attachment 306242

Beautiful. I absolutely love these churches. I am planning a pilgrimage to New England, where I am going to see if I can arrange with some of my former colleagues and other ministers to celebrate the Eucharist or the Divine Office from Rev. John Hunter’s classic liturgical text Devotional Services, which I use and which the UCC Eucharistic liturgy from 1990 is still influenced by (obviously not at a time conflicting with their scheduled services) at these parishes, and at some of the historically Congregational parishes which now belong to the UUA. I am hopeful they will be tolerant of me, because I and the prospective members of my party really do want to pray in these churches. And we do not have any alterior political motive; I believe I am required to be apolitical on almost all issues (the historic exceptions, where I am proud of my Congregational and Yankee heritage, where our church was political, involve our support for US independence, when our clergy were known as the “Black Robed Regiment”, and in the UK, our support for more freedoms there, and in both countries, our strong and uncompromising Abolitionist stance with regards to the barbaric practice of slavery). Indeed, actually, our opposition to slavery, where in the end we prevailed, is one reason why my group of non-UCC congregationalists wants to visit and pray in these churches.

I would be happy if we could celebrate the Eucharist at the Old Ship Church in Rhode Island, and at the Old South Church, the Church of the Covenant, and the Arlington Street Church in Boston (two of those are UUA, but we can ask).

I also want to visit some churches and if possible celebrate the Eucharist in them in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Connecticut. The church you posted is exquisitely beautiful; I would love to see it first hand.

I have to confess I have been historically jealous of Roman Catholic priests who until recently were able to make pilgrimages to Rome and celebrate mass at the side altars at St. Peter’s, and I believe provisions existed for them to do so elsewhere, for example, in some of the exquisite Station Churches, and likewise in Ravenna, but Pope Francis recently banned the celebration of masses at the side altars by pilgrim priests at St. Peter’s, which distresses me, because if ever I went from being what you might call a Congregationalist Catholic to a Roman Catholic, I would have really liked to do that. I have in the past been able to liturgize in particularly beautiful churches, and while all liturgies are special, it is a particular delight to be able to do a service, whether the Eucharist or the Divine Office, in a particularly beautiful church.

Our historic Congregational churches were built more for preaching than for the Lord’s Supper, so the altars aren’t quite what one might otherwise desire, but this can actually be beneficial, in that if a church does, for example, use a movable communion table, there is a particularly common design that is engraved with “This do ye in remembrance of me” which is particularly easy to vest and celebrate on. There is also the added benefit of not having to worry about leaving something out of place or otherwise doing something which might cause misery for the local sacristan and/or altar guild.
 
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SkyWriting

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I am apparently considered a liberal,

If you believe this and follow through:

Matthew 7:12
“So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

then you must become a liberal.
 
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The Liturgist

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On the question of exclusion of women from the priesthood: Back when the Episcopal Church first started ordaining women, there was provision for bishops who didn't want to do that, and it seemed reasonable to me at the time. Maybe it was reasonable, for that particular decade. As I've gotten older, though, I've grown more impatient with the church's willingness to allow the exclusion of women (and some other groups) from worship and service in the church. In that way, I have become genuinely liberal over the years: I am willing to look at the places where the church harms people, and to consider reforming the church in those areas -- even if that means disagreeing with the cultural sensibilities of Christians living in the ancient Roman Empire. I am pretty angry, actually, at some of the conservative bishops in my own Episcopal church and in the worldwide Anglican Communion over their resistance to needed reforms and their willingness to split the church rather than reform.

I am all about the prevention of harm, in that all four of the things which concern me in Christendom are related to situations where people are being harmed, either from within or by external entities.

For example, I have an extreme objection to 9Marks, which is a group of Calvinist fundamentalist churches, a psuedo-denomination, which spans the SBC, the Presbyterian Church in America, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and some non-denominational churches, because of its abusive practices of church discipline, which you can read about here: http://thewartburgwatch.com/?s=9Marks&x=24&y=1

9Marks also, I found out through the Wartburg Watch, which is a wonderful website run by two Evangelical ladies who are deeply concerned about pastoral abuse in churches, which I am also deeply concerned about, published this on their blog, which in my view is borderline hate-speech against the persecuted Orthodox and Catholic Christians of the Middle East, which is another issue I care about to a grave extent. Indeed, the four primary concerns I have in terms of Christian world affairs are :

1. The persecution and attempted genocide or ethnic cleansing of Christians, as well as related ethnic minorities, in the Middle East, India, Pakistan, China, and other countries, and the related ethnic cleansing in the portions of Armenia illegally occupied by Azerbaijan, (which used to be a Christian country, like Asia Minor, known as Caucasian Albania, until the Christians were mostly exterminated). Thus, I believe that world leaders need to pay attention to this continuing trend, which did not end with the defeat of ISIS. It is not just Christians, but also some closely related ethnoreligious groups, like the Alevis and Bektasis in Turkey, the Nazaris in Syria, the Mandaeans, Yazidis and Yarsanis in Iraq, and the Zoroastrians and people of the Bahai faith in Persia; some of these groups either are crypto-Christian, descended from the Syrian Gnostic Christian group, for example, the Yazidis, and others are closely related to Christianity, such as the Mandaeans, Bahais and Zoroastrians (the Magi from the Gospel of Matthew are presumably Zoroastrian priests, as that was the Hellenization of Mobed, the ancient Persian word for a Zoroastrian priest).

Sooner or later, more Christian ethnic minorities, such as the Assyrians, might be driven out of their homeland altogether, which has basically already happened to the Mandaeans; prior to 2003, the 60,000 were predominantly in Iraq; now most have fled. I believe Australia has a larger Mandaean population than Iraq. The Falakas, another religious minority that was brutally exterminated in Afghanistan (they lived in what was called Kafiristan, until their extermination), who live in Pakistan, are also in particularly grave danger, as are the Rohinga Muslims in Burma and the Uighur people of China. Just as we intervened to save the Albanians in Kosovo, surely we can intervene to save the Christians and other religious minorities in some of these lands. And it is not a simplistic situation of Muslims killing Christians, which is the false, Islamophobic narrative, for among the groups I am worried about are Islamic minorities. And in India, Hindu nationalists, with the tacit encouragement of the Hindu Nationalist government, have in the past several years on multiple occasions raped or murdered Christians and Muslims, often based on false allegations of eating meat. And the Communist regime in North Korea continues to completely suppress Christianity, and likewise, Eastern Orthodox Christianity is illegal in mainland China.

2. The abuse of Christian laity in both fundamentalist and mainline churches, which Wartburg Watch provides particularly good coverage on with respect to the United States. The Roman Catholic and Anglican churches have, in my opinion, done a commendable job cleaning up in this respect in the past few years, with the new safeguarding initiatives in the Church of England being particularly impressive. In the US however, there is a looming child sex abuse scandal in the Southern Baptist Convention, and some psuedo-denominations like Sovereign Grace Ministries, which are highly abusive of their laity, to the point of being cult like, have also had notable problems. And there are still more shocking things. I get shocked every time I read Wartburg Watch. Unfortunately, Pastoral Abuse is also a problem in mainline denominations, even liberal mainline denominations, and I have seen it first hand. A minister from what is presently the largest mainline denomination in the United States manhandled a relative of mine on the occasion of the death of her father, for example. And also, I have to regard what the Episcopalians did to departing congregations as abusive, and as a form of harm. No other mainline denomination did that on such a large scale, and it was ruled illegal.

Of still greater concern, however, is the harm inflicted by certain cults which pretend to be Christian, or which prey upon Christians, such the Mormons, who are extremely nice people, who are tragically being economically victimized by the LDS church leadership in Salt Lake City, but, of much greater concern, the Jehovahs Witnesses and Christian Science, and related smaller cults of similar beliefs, who actually kill people, in the former case by falsely asserting that the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 precludes blood transfusions, and in the latter case, by discouraging medical treatment altogether. Jim Henson and several children in the 1990s became high profile victims of either Christian Science directly, or in the case of Henson, by a Christian Science upbringing which had conditioned him to avoid doctors, thus leading to his death from a perfectly treatable throat infection.

And now with Covid 19, we have the new spectre of anti-vaxxer cults, including one which is documented on Wartburg Watch, which declares the vaccine to be the Mark of the Beast, which is pure nonsense.

3. The decline in membership, and growing doctrinal problems such as those that prompted me to leave the UCC, in the mainline churches and the Roman Catholic church, which are as I clarified previously unrelated to the ordination of women.

4. The increasing trend, also a form of harm inflicted on people by churches, of forced de-liturgization in Protestant and Catholic churches, where, contrary to the wishes of many of the laity, traditional worship services are suppressed, the hymnals are set aside, and “Praise and Worship” music of the electric guitar and drum set variety takes over. Related to this, and something I regard as extremely abusive, is what Pope Francis just did both to the laity and priests as well as religious communities celebrating the Traditional Latin Mass, which has led to it being severely restricted in many places, banned in at least a dozen dioceses, and the ability of diocesan secular clergy still in seminary to celebrate the mass in the extraordinary form is now in doubt. Also, for similar reasons, he sequestered a traditional Latin mass Franciscan community, the Franciscans of the Immaculate, in Italy, for over a year, which created a situation where the nuns and brethren were unable to communicate with their relatives! I can’t stand this abuse, and it also gives rise to the spectre of increased power on the part of the SSPX and certain related groups, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has expressed grave concerns about, due to anti-Semitic content, remarks and associations.

What Pope John Paul II did to try and reconcile the Catholics in those groups with Ecclesia Deil and what Pope Benedict did with Summorum Pontificum to ensure the availability of Diocesan Latin Masses, is now gone, resulting both in immediate harm to the faithful, and a risk of them falling into anti-Semitic cults, and in this case, I am not referring to the SSPX, but rather to a potential new wave of dangerous and abusive non-Christian* cults like the Palmerian Catholic Church. If you are unfamiliar with that group, the Irish television service did an excellent documentary on it and two other cults, which is available on YouTube:


*According to the CF.com Statement of Faith.
 
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The Liturgist

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As an aside, I hate to confess to ignorance of the legal minutiae of my own church, but what is Canon 42? I'm looking at the 2018 Constitution and Canons (https://extranet.generalconvention.org/staff/files/download/23914), but I don't see anything numbered 42.

I may be misremembering the canon number, but I will look into this for you. Perhaps the fact that I have been heavily studying the canons of the Early Church, which were decreed by different councils and early church fathers, and in some cases number more than 100 from a single source, combined with the influence of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, resulted in an accidental transposition of the canon number.

Oh, by the way, speaking of ancient canons, I have been studying the classic Eastern Orthodox nomocanon known as the Pedalion, or Rudder, compiled by St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite, who is better known for the Philokalia, the spiritual anthology on prayer, contemplation, the virtues, the Jesus Prayer and Hesychasm, compiled by himself and St. Macarius of Corinth. It might interest you all to know that I have not found any ancient canon that explicitly prohibits the ordination of women to the priesthood or episcopate, although the early church did not as far as we know do that, but there are several canons relating to the female diaconate, and one could make the argument that whereas there is neither a Patristic injunction against nor a Patristic mandate for the ordination of women to the priesthood or episcopate, there is a Patristic injunction against not having deaconesses.
 
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Paidiske

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It might interest you all to know that I have not found any ancient canon that explicitly prohibits the ordination of women to the priesthood or episcopate, although the early church did not as far as we know do that, but there are several canons relating to the female diaconate, and one could make the argument that whereas there is neither a Patristic injunction against nor a Patristic mandate for the ordination of women to the priesthood or episcopate, there is a Patristic injunction against not having deaconesses.

But then we might have to get into the argument of whether deaconesses are truly deacons or something else, and I think it might be a bit early on Saturday morning for that. ;)
 
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The Liturgist

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But then we might have to get into the argument of whether deaconesses are truly deacons or something else, and I think it might be a bit early on Saturday morning for that. ;)

It’s still early Friday night here, the sun just now setting. :sparkles::cityscapedusk:
 
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SkyWriting

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And furthermore, because I agree with CS Lewis that the gates of Hell are locked on the inside, and with his conceptualization of Hell as a place where people who love the world live in self-inflicted misery, but variously won’t leave voluntarily or will return rather than stay in the heavenly realm...

Putting non-believers into Heaven where a supreme God rules and they don't believe in Him...that would be Hellish. Even God would not subject evil people to that. So they are locked out due to God's being merciful to sinners. It would mess them up.

So they drift in nothing for eternity, unforgiven by choice. Burning in their decision.

Nothing is more painful and hot than the unforgiven choices one has made to not accept the free gift of forgiveness.
 
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The Liturgist

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Putting non-believers into Heaven where a supreme God rules and they don't believe in Him...that would be Hellish. Even God would not subject evil people to that. So they are locked out due to God's being merciful to sinners. It would mess them up.

So they drift in nothing for eternity, unforgiven by choice. Burning in their decision.

Nothing is more painful and hot than the unforgiven choices one has made to not accept the free gift of forgiveness.

Indeed, this post is evocative of a statement by St. John Chrysostom to that effect.
 
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SkyWriting

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Indeed, this post is evocative of a statement by St. John Chrysostom to that effect.
God is not so mean that He would force people to live in Heaven.
Let them stew on their own for a while.
 
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hedrick

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Putting non-believers into Heaven where a supreme God rules and they don't believe in Him...that would be Hellish. Even God would not subject evil people to that. So they are locked out due to God's being merciful to sinners. It would mess them up.

So they drift in nothing for eternity, unforgiven by choice. Burning in their decision.

Nothing is more painful and hot than the unforgiven choices one has made to not accept the free gift of forgiveness.
The non believers I know would be happy to find that there is really a loving God.
 
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hedrick

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The non believers I know would be happy to find that there is really a loving God.
And the believers I know would find it hard to live in eternity with the kind of God most CF posters seem to believe in.
 
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SkyWriting

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The non believers I know would be happy to find that there is really a loving God.

They are not being honest with you.


Romans 1:18-20
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

Genesis 1:1
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Or
2 Corinthians 4:4

In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
 
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SkyWriting

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I am apparently considered a liberal, I have found out in the past 24 hours, in part for my Evolutionist interpretation of Genesis ch. 1 and in part because I reject the penal substitutionary atonement and satisfaction atonement of John Calvin and Anselm of Canterbury respectively, as well as precursors of the doctrine found in St. Augustine and the Scholastic interpretation in Thomas Aquinas, in favor of a soteriological model based on the Eastern Orthodox concept of theosis and the hypostatic union of God and Man in the incarnation of Christ.

And furthermore, because I agree with CS Lewis that the gates of Hell are locked on the inside, and with his conceptualization of Hell as a place where people who love the world live in self-inflicted misery, but variously won’t leave voluntarily or will return rather than stay in the heavenly realm, and with Metropolitan Kallistos Ware and other Eastern and Oriental Orthodox theologians that God’s wrath is a metaphor for the experience of His omnipresent uncreated light by those who do not love Him, that the suffering of the condemned is essentially because sometimes when we cannot love someone, it hurts us, and the image of God the Angry Father demanding the violent death of his only begotten son as the only possible condition under which He would forgive some of us, selectively and arbitrarily in Fundamentalist Calvinism, is detrimental to Christianity and is responsible for many atheists remaining atheists, because they are horrified by a caricature of Western Christianity as depicted in the media.

For that, two members accused me of being a liberal, one of whom is a flat Earther, who posted a link to the NRSV saying it agreed with my “scientific” interpretation of Genesis 1, which he rejects as he believes science is evil and a source of falsehood.

Also, in the past, I severely criticized members who attacked @Paidiske in an offensively personal way for being a female Anglican priest, and am opposed to conversion therapy, even though I am traditionalist when it comes to sexual morality. So I expect taking heat from that.

But given that I admire classical liberalism as a political system, in the form of the late, great Whig Party in the US and UK, and see conservatism as a derivative of this concept developed by Edmund Burke, MP, I don’t take offense at being called a liberal Christian. To (loosely) quote the computer Alpha 60 from the dystopian science fiction film Alphaville by Jean Luc Goddard, “this is true, if we acknowledge that words change their meanings, and meanings their words.”

I was distressed by @Methodized ’s alarm at an apparent increase in misogyny since he last posted here (if true, we need to do something about it), and I noticed this forum was unusually quiet, so, I figure, without wishing to seem immodest or self centered, but in the absence of other ideas for a topic which covers these points, we might as well seek to start it up by evaluating the extent to which my theology corresponds with liberal theological concepts. And concurrently, since I refuse to condone personal criticism of pious female clergy such as @Paidiske, and I venerate the St. Mary as the Mother of God and St. Nino, the female Armenian Apostle to the Georgians, with particular devotion, and am opposed to misogyny generally, what forms of misogyny liberal members are encountering in addition to the shameful abuse that was hurled at @Paidiske in threads on the ordination of women, so that we can respond to those threads with a loving Christian egalitarianism.

Ah... The study of eagles.
 
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The Liturgist

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Ah... The study of eagles.

Most amusing, but I think that would be aetology? From the Greek aetos, meaning Eagle. Or maybe Aquilology to avoid confusion with Aetiology?

applied to Eagles, “Eagleitarinism” sounds like a New Age religious movement, which the Early Church Fathers would doubtless refer to as aetolatria. And the high priest of Eagle Worshippers would surely be an Aetolatriarch.

But Americans in their legitimate veneration of the Bald Headed Eagle as a national symbol, and likewise Germans, Austrians, Poles, Russians, Montenegrins, and Mexicans as well, are engaging in Aetodoulia, which is completely acceptable.

I can’t resist...
 
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