The Hidden History of Women's Ordination

[Hopey]

I do not entirely disagree. I am simply saying that we should not claim that deaconesses were not ordained by the laying on of hands, since there is ample evidence that they were ordained by cheirotonia.

I wonder if the answer came with the laity, anyone, being able to validly baptize in the case of emergency. Removing the need to be naked removed the need to have someone to baptize them in the waters.
It is interesting the priests had to stand close by, etc, meaning they were still attached to the baptism.

 

[Hopey]

I do not entirely disagree. I am simply saying that we should not claim that deaconesses were not ordained by the laying on of hands, since there is ample evidence that they were ordained by cheirotonia.

Out of curiosity, do the Orthodox consider deacons of the ordained order, or are they minor?

 

[SyroMalankara]

The Eastern Churches still use the term “ordination” more loosely than the Latin. When an abbot/abbess is installed, we say “ordained”; a monk or nun tonsured “ordained”, priest elevated to archpriest “ordained”, etc.

Also, there was no universal practice, each local Church varied - how can the professor then say there must be a universal need to ordain women today? Technically, women are already - “ordained” to the choir, “ordained” to assist with ministries, etc

 

[Hopey]

I don’t know what they’ve reported in the past, but that is not what they are saying here.
And in this article, their reporting and “interpretation” is very balanced.
They quote voices from both sides giving their thoughts on the debate and they, as a publication, are not siding with either–just reporting.

(I assume you didn’t read this article, else you would have noted that immediately).

I hope you are not considering healthy, balanced debates in the media and hearing what others have to say on important issues as “spreading heresy”?

.

I do not consider them healthy nor balanced as they, NCR, as they reject what we hold to be true.
But for us, the matter has been answered. We can see not all agree w it.

 

[twf]

The Eastern Churches still use the term “ordination” more loosely than the Latin. When an abbot/abbess is installed, we say “ordained”; a monk or nun tonsured “ordained”, priest elevated to archpriest “ordained”, etc.

Also, there was no universal practice, each local Church varied - how can the professor then say there must be a universal need to ordain women today? Technically, women are already - “ordained” to the choir, “ordained” to assist with ministries, etc

Exactly. The ancient Latin Church, like the East, used the term much more loosely. There are many rites which Latin theology deems sacramentals, rather than the sacrament of holy orders itself, which mimic the imposition of holy orders on some level. The consecration of virgins, which has been resurrected in the post-Vatican II Latin Church, would have once been referred to as an “ordination” to the order of virgins…but the Church today understands it as a very special sacramental quite distinct from the sacrament of holy orders. Likewise, the blessing of an abbot or abbess resembles the consecration of a bishop in many ways, but it is a sacramental of the Church that gives the abbot or abbess the grace necessary to carry out his or her duties, not the imposition of the episcopate. Abbesses, even mitred ones, were no more bishops than are modern abbots who carry the crossier and wear the mitre. Vesting as a bishop doesn’t always mean one is a bishop. These garments are simply signs of authority within the Church. Take the three men who lead the newly established Anglican Ordinariates. As they are married men, they have been ordained to the presbyterate (priesthood) and not to the episcopate, but they wear the mitre and hold the crossier as a sign that they exercise authority *similar * to that of a bishop’s authority without actually being bishops.