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Dear Easterners,

What are the reasons behind the rules stating that females cannot serve at the altar (I mean such as altar girls, NOT priests). I am not in opposition of this, I would just like to know the reasoning behind the policies. Thanks.

ChristTeen287

Slava Isusu Christu!

Dear friend:

In the Eastern Churches, and in all of the other Apostolic Churches, except the modern Latin Church (the Traditional Roman Rite follows the ancient practice), only males may serve in the Altar. And only men and boys may go through the deacon's or server's doors during Divine Services.

Women cannot be ordained to Major or Minor Orders so there is no reason to have them in the Altar at all. There are many published papers and writings on the theology of the male-only priesthood and many papal writings as well that state simply: the Church has no AUTHORITY to ordain women to either the Major or Minor orders. So it is a non-issue.

It is obvious that having "altar-girls" is a tactic of modernist and liberal bishops or National Catholic Bishops Conferences to gradually bring the Latin Catholic faithful to gradually accept the female priesthood. Many say that it is only a matter of practicality - that there are, many times, not enough males to serve at the Altar in Roman Catholic Churches or that since it is only necessary for the priest to consecrate what is the harm in having altar girls, they question. These are more deceptions. This is an obvious innovation in the modern Roman Rite that will have to eventually be expunged like so many others. For the sake of Christian Unity (organic Unity with the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox, and the reconciliation of irregular traditional Roman Catholic bodies, these liturgical abuses must be discarded and Traditional usages must be restored. We are seeing a trend in the Vatican towards a simple restoration as per the new GIRM (2000) et al, but really the big changes will be up to the next Pontiff. We will have to see.

Again, in Eastern Churches women take active positions outside the altar, but they may never serve in the Altar it is simply verboten.

In Christ,


Robert Horvath

This statement is incorrect. Women were (and may soon again) be ordained to the major order of deaconess. Deaconesses in the Eastern Churches were ordained by cheirotoneia, using the same rite as for the ordination of a deacon. They wore the Orarion, and they received the Eucharist together with the other major clergy, at the altar, following immediately after the deacons. The order of deaconesses was never abolished, but fell into desuetude after the fall of Constantinople. There have been several suggestions about formally reviving it, and I believe a bishop has actually ordained several women to serve as deaconesses at female monasteries at remote locations in Greece. Whatever the reason for not allowing women to serve as acolyte, it is not because women cannot be ordained.

However, it should be noted that the deaconess, though a major cleric, did NOT have a liturgical role outside of assisting at the baptism of adult female catechumens. However, the liturgical role of the deacon is a later development in the Byzantine rite, and this should in no way detract from the reality of the ordination of deaconesses. Rather, it highlights that the principal ministry of the deacon (and deaconess) is precisely diakonia, service--which is why Eastern writers frequently noted that while bishops were typoi of God the Father, and the presbyters were typoi of the Apostles, the deacons (and by extensions, deaconesses) were typoi of Christ, "who came to serve".

The reason, then, why women cannot serve at the altar is not related at all to ordination, but more to Holy Tradition which has always seen liturgical roles as being reserved to men--for reasons that, as Kyr Kallistos has written, have never been synthesized into a coherent and convincing theory. However, until such time as the Church gets around to that, we should conform ourselves to Holy Tradition in the trust that the unbroken witness of the Church is itself a reflection of eternal truth.

1Ti 3:12 Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well.

When a woman can be the husband of one wife, then I will accept their ordination.

Stuart has given the facts of this matter in a much better form than I ever could. Unlike fundementalist Protestants, it is not our tradition to pull a verse from the Bible and consider it the begining and end of an item of consideration.

Not only can women be ordained to the minor orders (which are a creation of the Church, for good order, but not of divine mandate) and, according to many, the diaconate, but the altar servers use in most Roman and many Orthodox parishes are not men in minor orders at all. They are substitutes for acoyltes, not persons actually in this minor order.

We Orthodox generally (though not exclusively) ask men to serve at the altar out of respect to tradition (as Stuart suggests). Contrary to Robert's claim, the fact the Roman Church has a varient practice is NOT a point of ecumencial dispute or division.

Axios

Don't be facetious. The issue of deaconesses has been reviewed by a wide range of historians and theologians, and there can be no doubt that they were truly ordained. It doesn't matter what you accept or don't accept, deaconesses were an historical fact of the Eastern Churches. At the time of John Chrysostom, there were more than 400 of them attached to the Cathedral of Hagia Sophia. Numerous Eastern saints are deaconesses, including St. Olympias, the friend and protege of John Chrysostom, who just happened to be the Protodeaconess of Hagia Sophia, responsible for the management of those 400 deaconesses. The Codex Justinianus and the canons of various Eastern councils all attest to their ordained status.

I'm sorry if this offends your Latin sensibilities.

Dear Stuart,

And the Coptic Church and other Oriental Churches do now have Deaconesses who seem to live lives similar to those of nuns.

There is a school for deaconesses in Athens where, some time back, 40 female (obviously) graduates were ordained as you say.

The problem is not in the fact of establishing the historical existence and legitimacy of deaconesses, the Greek Church and others are already ordaining them.

The problem is to get parish churches in Greece to accept them and they have yet to overcome some mental blocks in this department.

The Copts get over this by simply having them live as nuns doing handiwork, social service with families, orphans and the elderly, and engaging in unceasing prayer and the celebration of the Divine Praises in common.

As for Latin sensibilities, I see so many women ministers in robes serving at Latin altars up here that I sometimes think the Latins may have gone ahead and ordained these as deacons and priests on the sly . . .

Women at the Latin altar are a fact of life today, as are Eucharistic Ministers and other contingency plans in the Latin Church to make do without their ideal celibate priests.

Allowing the Latin priests who left to get married back into the Church would be an easy, wimpish way out of the situation, one would surmise . . .

Alex

Phoebe returns to Egypt.....

www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2000/479/spec1.htm [ahram.org.eg]

[ 09-12-2002: Message edited by: traveler ]

Romans 16:1-3.

In effect, the various female religious orders of the Western Church, by adopting various "apostolates", have coopted at least part of the ministry of the deaconess. However, whereas religious are by definition celibates, deaconesses could be married. And while religious, not being ordained, cannot be regular ministers of the Eucharist, deaconesses could and were regular ministers of the Eucharist with regard to female monastics living in seculusion (as well as with regard to the baptism--by total immersion--of adult female catechumens).

That role seems to have been coopted by unordained and unconsecrated women within many Latin communities, the effects of which remain problemmatic.

Hmmm...if we are to take this as literally as Altar Boy wants, then a celibate person could never be ordained to the diaconate...so much for having presbyters and bishops!

Let's not take this out of context. This was to preclude having womanizers ordained -- it does not mean that women can not be deacons any more than it means celibate males cannot be deacons.

Edward, deacon and sinner

[ 09-12-2002: Message edited by: FrDeaconEd ]

Dear Stuart,

Your point hit home with me.

Nuns now live in the house in which I grew up in and I visited them on my birthday.

Where my mother had her dressmaking salon is where they now have their Chapel with altar and Reserved Sacrament.

It seemed clear that they could administer Holy Communion to their community, even though they made every effort to attend the Church down the street for Mass.

The role of the Deaconess could normalize this role that has been approved for them by Rome under regulations they told me about.

I just wanted to add how moving a moment it was to stand where I played as a child and where I first meditated on God and Christ, drawing Crosses etc.

I told the nuns I would pray out loud the Our Father and Hail Mary I learned in Slavonic there so many years ago - and as I prayed, they stood studying me and amazed at the language.

Alex

Slava Isusu Christu!

Ok, slow down.......a point was obviously missed! And another thing what is all this talk about deaconesses when we cannot have married priesthood as our Orthodox brothers have? Hmmm? I think prioritization is in order here! Reviving female deaconesses is not necessary today; it would only be used by the heterodox to lead the way to female priesthood and not in an Orthodox manner and certainly not in the manner of the usage of Hagia Sophia! I mean come on! Get a grip! Heterodox a few years ago tried to use the word presbytera, which was written on a catecomb wall in Rome, to prove that there were women presbyters in the early Church. They knew it was talking about a priest's wife, but their agenda-driven-pseudo-scholarship hid the truth to promote the WomanChurch movement. We have bigger fish to fry and as I said before it would not be historically appropriate to revive it at this time. There is no necessity for it. It's just being used by promoters of the WomanChurch movement to further the aims of the Devil to remove the priesthood from the Earth. Such as desecration of the Priesthood cries to heaven for vengance!

In Christ,

Robert

Slava Isusu Christu!

Dear Axios:

The issue of liturgical Orthodoxy in the Latin Church will be a major stumbling block to re-union with the canonical Orthodox Jurisdictions when the two Churches move past the Dogmatic points of difference. If unity is to occur then the Latin Church will have to do have authentic restoration of its Liturgy based on the Gregorian Sacramentary. The abuses occuring in the Latin Church at this time proceed from the use of the Pauline Sacramentary and the interpretations of the GIRM and SC. These abuses are even affecting our Byzantine Churches and they are not good. i.e. EEM's, altar girls, et al. Since Byzantine Catholic Churches have the apostolate of being the example of an Eastern Orthodox Church being in communion with the Pope of Rome; we are to be the exemplars. We have in many ways been a very poor example. Although the Western Rite Orthodox use the book of common prayer/Novus Ordo with doctrinal corrections and insertions of an explicit epiclesis these still are not authentic Western Orthodox Liturgies. One is based on the theology of Cramner, Bucer, Luther, and Calvin with cut and pastes from ancient liturgies and sacramentaries the other is the work of "professional liturgists" and "scholars" who did not differ much from Cramner except it may be said that Cramners Liturgy was at least more dignified and welldone. Both are Protestant liturgies if we are to be honest . Even Pope Paul VI himself declared that his Mass was patterned after the liturgy of Calvin. And it does not take a greenhorn in liturgical scholarship to see the similarities between Protestant Liturgical forms and the New Revised Roman Sacramentary. Rome is trying to do damage control, but this will not work. A true return to the more traditional Gregorian Liturgy will be the answer. And Axios aren't you the one who supports the gay and lesbian Orthodox/Eastern Rite group on the web? Hmmm. This isn't an ad hominem thang, but let's get a grip. Ok.

In Christ,


Robert

Stuart,
St.Theosevia--Jan.10--was a deaconess and the wife of St.Gregory of Nyssa. I also believe the wife of Gregory (Nazianzu) the Elder was a deaconess and was canonized.

I also want to mention that pious and God-fearing Russian Orthodox aristocrats and Hierarchs strongly supported the resurrection of the order of deaconesses just prior to the revolution.

Unfortunately, their dreams vanished with them....before a firing squad.