| According to the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs, for every 1,000 births, there are 34 abortions in Russia where the fertility rate is below replacement at 1.53. The legislation would ban private abortion clinics and over-the-counter sale of abortion inducing medication would only be available through a doctor’s prescription. Women considering abortion would be given ultrasounds. One of the sponsors of the legislation, Yelina Mizulina, states that “up to 80 percent of them [abortion minded women] refuse to have the abortion when they see their child on the screen.” Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, is seeking a total ban on abortion. In a speech to the Duma earlier this year, the first ever by a religious leader, he referred to abortion as “evil” and “infanticide.” In regards to the present bill, he believes that “taxpayers must not pay for this.” In response to the proposed legislation, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe tabled [introduced] Written Declaration 594 entitled “Women’s right to access appropriate reproductive health services in the Russian Federation” which states: We the undersigned members of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly are strongly concerned about the three draft laws submitted to the State Duma of the Russian Federation aiming to severely restrict access of women to abortion. They aim: to require women to visualise and listen to the heartbeats of the foetus before being given permission to access a legal abortion; exclude coverage of abortion from the Obligatory Medical Insurance; to prohibit the sale of safe medication that terminate pregnancies. The World Health Organization (WHO) has clearly stated that “ultrasound scanning is not routinely required for abortion”. It only serves to emotionally manipulate women. Excluding insurance coverage for a service that only women need is discriminatory and will affect poor, rural women and women in vulnerable situations. The State medical system must additionally ensure the availability of various methods of abortion suitable at different stages of pregnancy. These proposed measures will lead to backstreet abortions and increase maternal mortality and morbidity rates and are an affront to women’s rights. |
| It is precisely these characteristics of the patristic writings that define that subtle cornerstone of Orthodox life: spirituality. Transferred from written word to personal life, they describe the holy person. Raised from image to experience, they portray the inner life of every Christian. The Fathers shared, in every way, the fullness of the Orthodox life, and it is this completeness which permeates their writings. They express the experience to which each of us is called, and inwardly we see this, if we are attentive and moderate in our own views. It is this spirituality, alas, that is absent in the discussion of the role of women in the Orthodox Church today. So, the discussion has become extreme (immoderate), secular, and worldly—detached from the inner life and spiritual experience. There have developed opposition parties, diametrically opposed views, warring factions, and intemperate antagonists, the latter expressing profound, spiritual issues in the arena of counter-spiritual emotions and dispositions. Let us look at the general reaction among Orthodox thinkers to the modern discussion of the role of women in the Church. On the one hand, we have the very " traditional " view, expressing a conservative attitude toward the social role of women in general. I have often read of, and heard expressed, images of women that are in almost total concord with the old German expression, " Kinder und Kuche " —women are essentially for child-bearing and for cooking. In Greek we think of the notion of " oikokyrosyne, " the woman of the house. " It is argued, from this point of view, that women have an essential " nature " such that they appropriately belong to the home. The things of the home are fundamentally and somehow appropriately suited to the female gender. One senses, in the more extreme advocates of this view, the notion that the social roles of females are perhaps dogmatic, that women are universally relegated, by a God-given command, to the home and its concerns. |
| On the literary level, Jesus» women supporters form a contrast to the soldiers just described (note the μεν ... δ construction in 19:24–25); but their presence is historically likely as well as theologically suggestive (cf. Mark 15:40–41 ). It is not unlikely that the soldiers would have permitted women followers to remain among the bystanders. 10159 First, they might not have recognized who among the crowds constituted Jesus» followers. Many people would be present merely to watch the execution; 10160 the onlookers could not be immediately beside the cross, of course, but could be within hearing range. Within John " s story world, if anyone pondered the details, more men might be in the temple preparing the paschal lambs, yielding a crowd with more women present; on the more historically likely Synoptic chronology, at least much of the crowd would remain women. But second, soldiers would be less likely to punish women present for mourning; those supposed to be relatives might be allowed near an execution. 10161 Ancient Mediterranean society in general allowed women more latitude in mourning, 10162 and women were far less frequently executed than men, though there were plenty of exceptions. 10163 The Synoptic π μακρθεν must allow a range within eyesight, yet it remains unclear how distant; the Synoptic language might echo Ps 38 (37LXX: π μακρθεν), in which friends and neighbors remain distant from the righteous psalmist " s suffering. 10164 Such factors might render John " s account more historically precise in this instance. 10165 But in any event, John " s language (παρ), if pressed literally (whatever symbolic double entendre John may intend to evoke), requires only hearing distance, and that only for the exchange of 19:26–27. Only historical tradition would seem to account for Jesus» «mother " s sister» and probably for «Mary wife of Clopas» (though cf. a Mary in Mark 15:40, 47; 16:1 ). (Mary Magdalene also appears here without introduction, as if known to John " s audience from other accounts.) 10166 The named women present could be four in number; 10167 if Jesus» mother and brothers are for some reason unnamed, it makes sense that his aunt would be for the same reason. |
| When the biological identity of man and woman is deconstructed, there is nothing that will hinder the deconstruction of social roles and institutions. Since there is no area in society that is free from the influence of bipolar sexuality, all areas are targets to deconstruction: marriage, family, fatherhood, motherhood, upbringing, language, work, culture, religion. This is called undoing gender. At the Fourth United Nations Conference on Women in Beijing 1995, an “action platform” has been adopted which is not binding according to international law, but has been signed and implemented through concrete political steps by 191 countries in the following 10 years. One goal of this platform is the 50:50 equality of man and women in all job-related issues and areas of living. Women ought to take fifty percent of all workstations also to the top positions, and man should be forced to bear fifty percent of childcare. The legitimate concern for equality of chances is turned against the female identity through forced factual equality. Diverseness is being reinterpreted as inequality, and inequality as injustice. The wishes and personal visions of men, women and children do not matter to ideologists. Words like marriage, family, mother, father or children are not even listed in the “action platform” papers. Gender Mainstreaming enforces on every woman the ideal of the employed woman with no familial bounds. The 1999 Amsterdam EU treaty (art. 2 und 3) talks about the “equalization of women and men” and the “elimination of inequalities”; the 2000 Nizza EU basic rights Charta (art. 23) already stated as goal securing the “equality of men and women”. But Men and women are not equal. (But men and women have different natures which are not identical in purpose) On January 11, 2006 the European Parliament adopted a “Resolution on Homophobia in Europe” (B6-0025/2006). Homophobia as “aversion to homosexuality and to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people” is put at the same level as racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism. Unequal things are equated with each other. Sexuality belongs – unlike race, immigration status or religion – to the moral-normative realm, which in a free society every person, regarding one’s personal life, should be free to decide. The resolution continues; “further action is needed at EU and national levels to eradicate homophobia” through “education, such as campaigns against homophobia in schools, in universities and in the media, as well as through administrative, judicial and legislative means”. This criminalizes any opposition to an acitive homosexualization of society. |
| Иоанн Дамаскин, прп. Три слова в защиту иконопочитания. М.: Азбука-классика, 2008. С. 174. The Dublin Agreed Statement 1984. P. 39. Апостольские постановления. URL: (дата обращения: 02.03.2023). Правила Православной Церкви с толкованиями Никодима, епископа Далматинско-Истрийского. Т. II. М.: «Отчий дом», 2001. С. 87–89. Там же. С. 108. Епифаний Кипрский, свт. Против Коллиридиан//Творения святых отцов в русском переводе, издаваемые при Московской Духовной Академии. Т. 50. М.: Типография М.Н. Лаврова, 1882. С. 279. Иоанн Златоуст, свт. О священстве. Слово третье//Полное собрание творений святителя Иоанна Златоуста. Т. 1. Ч. 2. СПб.: Издание Санкт-Петербургской Духовной Академии, 1898. С. 429. Послание Священного Синода о V Ассамблее Всемирного совета церквей и ее результатах//Журнал Московской Патриархии. 1976, No 4. С. 9. Women Bishops in the Church of England? A report of the House of Bishops’ Working Party on Women in the Episcopate. London: Church House Publishing, 2004. P. 137–156. The Ministry of Women: A Report by a Committee Appointed by His Grace the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1919. P. 21–23. Кураев А., протодиак. Женские вопросы к Церкви. М.: РГ-Пресс, 2018. С. 219–220. Бер-Сижель Э. Служение женщины в Церкви. М.: Библейско-богословский институт св. апостола Андрея, 2002. С. 168–169. Kallistos (Ware), bishop. Man, Women and the Priesthood of Christ//Women and the Priesthood/Ed. by Th. Hopko. New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1999. P. 29. Witt W.G. Icons of Christ: A Biblical and Systematic Theology for Women’s Ordination. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2020. P. 140–145. Goman J.G. The Ordination of Women: the Bible and the Fathers. A professional project in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Ministry. Claremont, 1976. P. 27–34. Kallistos (Ware), bishop. Man, Women and the Priesthood of Christ... P. 30. Постернак А.В., свящ. Женщины в неортодоксальных общинах//Вестник ПСТГУ. Серия 2: История. История Русской Православной Церкви. 2014. Вып. 1 (56). С. 9–15. |
| Note that Dionysius, like the Syriac Didaskalia , refers to the woman with the flow of blood in Mt 9: 20-22, but comes to precisely the opposite conclusion: that a woman cannot receive communion. It has been suggested that Dionysius was actually forbidding women to enter the sanctuary (altar’) and not the church proper. This hypothesis not only contradicts the text of the cited canon; it also falsely presumes that the laity once received communion in the sanctuary. Recent liturgical scholarship has dispensed with the notion that the laity ever received the sacrament in the sanctuary. So Dionysius meant precisely what he wrote, and precisely as many generations of Eastern Christians have understood him : a menstruating woman is not to enter “the temple of God,” for she is “not wholly clean (? µ? π ? ντη καθα =C F? ς ) both in soul and in body.” One wonders whether this suggests all other Christians are wholly “clean,” or katharoi. Hopefully not, since the Church denounced “those who call themselves katharoi” or “the clean ones,” an ancient sect of the Novatians, at the First Ecumenical Council, Nicaea I in 325 a.d. Orthodox commentators of the past and present have also explained Dionysius’ canon as somehow connected to a concern for begetting children: the 12th century commentator Zonaras (post-1159 a.d.), while rejecting the concept of “ritual impurity,” comes to the bewildering conclusion that the real reason for these restrictions against women is “to prevent men from sleeping with them…by way of providing for children being begotten.” So, women are stigmatized as “impure,” banned from the church and Holy Communion to prevent men from sleeping with them? Leaving aside the sex-only-for-procreation premise of this argument, it raises some other, more obvious questions: are men somehow more likely to sleep with a woman who has gone to church and received the sacrament? Why, then, must the woman abstain from Communion? Some priests in Russia offer another explanation: women are too tired in this state to listen attentively to the prayers of the liturgy and therefore cannot prepare themselves sufficiently for Holy Communion. The same reasoning is proposed for women who have given birth: they need to rest for forty days. So should Communion be withheld from all tired, ill, elderly, and otherwise weak people? How about the hearing-impaired? Be that as it may, there are several other canonical texts restricting women as “impure”: Can. 6-7 of Timotheus of Alexandria (381 AD), who extends the restriction to baptism and Canon 18 of the so-called Canons of Hippolytus , regarding women who have given birth and midwives. Both these canons, like Canon 2 of Dionysius , are notably of Egyptian provenance. |
| “Every day hundreds of fetuses arrive at the morgue,” one of Vink’s sources said. On May 15, 1982, New York Times foreign correspondent Christopher Wren offered an even more devastating exposé. He reported on stories of thousands of Chinese women being “rounded up and forced to have abortions,” and tales of women “locked in detention cells or hauled before mass rallies and harangued into consenting to abortion,” as well as “vigilantes [who] abducted pregnant women on the streets and hauled them off, sometimes handcuffed or trussed, to abortion clinics.” He quoted one Chinese reporter who described “aborted babies which were actually crying when they were born.” The horror became so open that it could not be denied. By 1983, even Chinese newspapers themselves were running stories about the “butchering, drowning, and leaving to die of female infants and the maltreating of women who had given birth to girls.” Unfazed by the press coverage, Qian redoubled the effort. Local Communist Party officials were given quotas for sterilizations, abortions, and IUD insertions. If they exceeded them, they could be promoted. If they failed to meet them, they would be expelled from the Party in disgrace. These measures guaranteed results. In 1983, 16 million women and 4 million men were sterilized, 18 million women had IUDs inserted, and over 14 million infants were aborted. Going forward, these figures were sustained, with combined total coerced abortions, IUD implantations, and sterilizations exceeding 30 million per year through 1985. In celebration of Qian’s achievements, the UNFPA in 1983 gave him (together with Indira Gandhi) the first United Nations Population Award, complete with diploma, gold medal, and cash. In a congratulatory speech at the award ceremony in New York, U.N. Secretary General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar said: “Considering the fact that China and India contain over 40 per cent of humanity, we must all record our deep appreciation of the way in which their governments have marshaled the resources necessary to implement population policies on a massive scale.” Qian stood up and promised to continue “controlling population quantity and raising population quality.” The U.N. |
| Both groups [are] far from the networks of episcopal power and prestige (although it [is] possible for a widowed priest to become a bishop… this [is] not common). In their service and lack of access to power, priests [are] symbolic women in the all-male Orthodox hierarchy. (132-3) A fascinating observation, but one that is probably felt more on a subconscious level, as few if any parish priests consciously think themselves to be “symbolic women.” Similarly, there must have been something else on the minds of Saint John of Kronstadt’s female parishioners when “bevies of admiring women… gazed soulfully at Father John and gave him expensive presents” (146). Others were not as tactful, as one contemporary of Saint John wrote: “…around Father John huddles… a hive of hysterical and psychopathic women glorifying fantastic miracles and miraculous phenomena” (qt. in ibid. 258). The process of the glorification of Father John of Kronstadt among the saints gave credence to at least some of these women’s observations, as they had recognized God’s working in the life of a parish priest from Kronstadt. The “hysterical and psychopathic” part, however, is not so easily dismissed. Another priest, one of Saint John’s contemporaries, “spoke of Father John’s ‘tearing himself out of the grip of his overly excited admirers—especially—admiresses…’”; and another contemporary recalled that “it was mostly women who completely lost their reason [when they learned that Father John’s carriage would pass], flinging themselves under the hooves of his horse with the words, ‘Praise the Lord, I have suffered for Christ!’” (qtd. in ibid. 267). Kizenko argues that one reason some pious women enter into a close relationship with an elder [whether a Holy Elder or an imposter or “young elder”—S.S.], is because this offers them “one of the only legitimate [in certain worldviews—S.S.] venues at their disposal for escaping or subverting the authority of their husbands” (129). A woman can easily find a willing [or, at least, obliged] listener in a parish priest, and many of the spiritual conversations and advice received during such conversations can be kept private from a husband who is often far less zealous or easily excitable when it comes to things religious. The advice received from an elder also easily trumps any opinion that a husband may have on virtually any issue. There is one difference, however: the woman does not have to live with the elder, and can either consciously or unconsciously choose what advice to receive and what to follow. |
| Christ is the Incarnate Logos, the Second Person of the Trinity. Christ was incarnate as a man. Why? The Holy Trinity is inherently neither male nor female. The Trinity is spirit. However, God the Father has revealed Himself as male. Why? The Father creates all things visible and invisible. The male is the source of creation. The female must be impregnated by the male. As the male is the natural source of creation, the supernatural source is revealed as Father. Christ, the Son, is eternally begotten of the Father. He is the image of the Father. When He is begotten in time, He reveals himself as a male. Therefore, to correspond to Christ as He reveals himself, the priest must be male. This is the economy of salvation, as revealed in the Bible. This is the economy of salvation, as defined in the dogmas of the Universal Councils. If the priest were female, this would destroy the economy of salvation. Only those who do not accept the Revelation, can argue for ordaining women as priests. If the priest is the type of Christ, women are the type of the Mother of God. The Mother of God is the most powerful intercessor among mortals. The ministry of women is maternal: intercession, loving service, education, and so forth. Mothers are not inferior to fathers. But mothers are not fathers. Men and women are created absolutely equal but different. To confuse one with the other is to deny the creative intention of God. Therefore, the movement to ordain women to the priesthood is fundamentally anti-Christian. Code for blog Since you are here… …we do have a small request. More and more people visit Orthodoxy and the World website. However, resources for editorial are scarce. In comparison to some mass media, we do not make paid subscription. It is our deepest belief that preaching Christ for money is wrong. Having said that, Pravmir provides daily articles from an autonomous news service, weekly wall newspaper for churches, lectorium, photos, videos, hosting and servers. Editors and translators work together towards one goal: to make our four websites possible - Pravmir.ru, Neinvalid.ru, Matrony.ru and Pravmir.com. Therefore our request for help is understandable. |
| John Anthony McGuckin Deaconess MARIA GWYN MCDOWELL An ordained female member of the priestly order, at the level of diaconate. The office reached its zenith in the early Byzantine period, though it has never been altogether abandoned. Phoebe, commemorated as “equal to the apostles,” is referred to by Paul as a deacon (diakonos, Rom. 16.1 ) and is the prototype of the later office of the deaconess. The church also commemorates as deacons Tabitha (or Dorcas, Acts 9.36), Lydia (Acts 16.14), Mary, Persis, Tryphosa and Tryphena, Priscilla and Junia ( Rom. 16.3–15 ), the daughters of Philip (Acts 21.9), Euodia and Syntyche ( Phil. 4.2–3 ), all of whom were fellow-workers with Paul and laborers in the gospel; 1 Timothy 3.8–11 presents the requirements for diaconal service. An array of early theologians such as Clement of Alexandria (Stromateis 3, 6, 53.3–4), Ori- gen (Commentary on Romans 10.17), John Chrysostom (Homily 11 on 1 Timothy), Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Theodore of Mopsuestia, all interpret 1 Timothy 3.11 as referring to female deacons. The 4th-7th centuries are rich in archeological, epi- graphical, and literary references in which diakonos with a feminine article and diakonissa are used interchangeably. There is no evidence of significantly different functions between male and female deacons in the earliest church, a time when the diaconate itself was rapidly evolving. By the 3rd century the liturgical function of ordained women mirrored the culturally normative public/private segregation of roles and functions. Early deaconesses assisted in the baptism and anointing of adult (naked) women, and engaged in catechetical, pastoral, social, and evangelistic work among women. Like the male deacon, they were liaison officers for the bishop, specifically with a ministry to the women among whom it would have been inappropriate for a man to venture. The rise of infant baptism reduced their baptismal role but they continued to supervise the liturgical roles of women, to lead them in liturgical prayer, to chant in the church, participate in liturgical processions, and like the other priestly orders, the deaconesses all received the Eucharist at the altar with their fellow clergy. The deaconess did not lead worship in the same manner as male deacons reciting the Ektenies. However, in absence of male clergy, monastic deaconesses read the gospel and scriptures among women, and evidently poured water and wine into the chalice (Madigan and Osiek 2005: 6–7). |
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