Six years since Fr. Peter Heers and I collaborated in drafting the 2018 Public Statement on Orthodox Deaconesses signed by over 50 other clerics and scholars, we meet again online to talk over the current push for deaconesses, in advance of Ancient Faith’s documentary on deaconesses scheduled to air January 30.

Key take-aways:

• History is not tradition; history only becomes tradition when it is handed down; deaconesses have not been handed down to us, for good reason.
• The whole Church has never had a tradition of deaconesses, but it has had a longstanding tradition of not having deaconesses.
• Advocates of deaconesses today did not intend a revival of the ancient order but something entirely new—clergy women with rank and status comparable to today’s deacons.
• Orthodox priests need to do a better job of explaining what the Church has always taught about men and women.
• Pdn. Patrick outlines a better way based on the Holy Apostle Paul’s analogy of the man and the woman to the Father and the Son (1 Cor 11) and of husbands and wives to Christ and the Church (Eph 5).
• The analogy can be extended to clergy and laity: “The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep” (John 10:11), just as husbands are to “love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it” (Eph 5:25).