Could anybody please help me with the roles of men and women in Eastern Churches; for example Maronites?
I read that women cannot access the alter, and men can only be deacons? Could anybody please help as I’m really stuck?
At present, no Catholic Church in Union with Rome ordains women to major orders (Deacon, Priest, Bishop). It is dogmatic that women can not be ordained to the priesthood, and therefore neither can they be ordained to the episcopacy (Bishops).
While historically, the Byzantine churches did ordain women as deaconesses, none in unin do now. Recent (Pp. John Paul II) documents assert that women can not receive priestly ordination, and that is noted as binding upon all the faithful. The ordination of women at all is at present forbidden.
The exact status of Deaconesses in the early church is a matter of heated debate; the Greek and Russian Orthodox hold them as major orders; the Oriental Orthodox hold them as minor orders, and Rome asserts they were neither.
In the Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic Metropolia of Pittsburgh, particular law bars women from all ministry in the altar. (And it’s one of the more liberal of the Byzantine Rite Churches… it allows for non-clerical EMHC’s!)
Women can be lay-cantors and lay-readers. Girls can take up the collection, and ring the tower bells. All our lay catechists for the children are women at my home parish.
