I suppose it’s because I’m in ROCOR that I am not terribly bothered by the push now on in the Greek Archdiocese to make women deaconesses. Many of us in ROCOR tend to assume the Greeks have become unhinged and now feel themselves free to do as they please as the master race of the Orthodox world. Making women deaconesses will be just another step toward freeing them from the burden of having to respect the traditions of the Fathers and the opinions of other Orthodox churches, with the ultimate and unavoidable result being not the collapse of traditional, apostolic Orthodoxy but a permanent schism ridding the Orthodox Church of the world-worshipping wokesters who only pretend to be Orthodox.

But many Greeks are much more faithful and not at all happy about having clergy women forced upon them, and many other Orthodox are also afraid that if the Greeks start ordaining women their own jurisdictions will feel obliged to follow suit. And so I am besieged this week with requests for information on deaconesses. One such request was for the following public statement signed by 57 Orthodox clergymen and lay leaders and originally published in 2018 on the website of the American Orthodox Institute, where it garnered nearly 300 additional signatures. As the statement is no longer where it was, I am now making it available here, on my Articles page. Just click on the “read more” link below for a pdf version.

“A Public Statement on Orthodox Deaconesses by Concerned Clergy and Laity”

January 15, 2018

The Patriarchate of Alexandria’s appointment of six “deaconesses” in the Congo in February 2017 has prompted calls in some corners for other local churches to follow suit. In particular, a group of Orthodox liturgical scholars has issued an open statement of support for Alexandria, declaring that the “restoration of the female diaconate is such that neither doctrinal issues nor authoritative precedents are at stake.”

We, the undersigned clergy and laity, beg to differ and are writing now with three purposes: to question what was accomplished in the Congo, to clarify the historical record on the place of deaconesses in Orthodox tradition, and to point out the serious doctrinal issues raised by the appointment of deaconesses.

Read more . . .