The Orthodox Churches

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We are especially looking for the history of women’s inclusion in the ministries!

Women Deacons

Women routinely received the diaconate ordination in the Eastern part of the Church until about the 10th century. The ordination rite, which is still contained in the official pontifical ritual, the so-called euchologia, has never been withdrawn. As Bishop Kallistos Ware has pointed out: “It has just slided into disuse.”

The diaconate ordination for women was truly sacramental.

Here are samples of the ancient ordination rites on our website:

• the Apostolic Constitutions;
• the Barberini gr. 336 manuscript;
• the Grottaferrata gr. Gb1 manuscript
• Vatican manuscript gr. 1872;
• Coislin gr. 213 manuscript
• reconstructed from seven manuscripts;
• Syriac manuscript.

Find here more information on Women deacons in the Orthodox Church, by Dr. Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGerald, Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1998.

There are more than 20 Women Deacons in the Orthodox calendar of saints.

Other texts

We are proud to present a review of an important Orthodox publication: Orthodox Women Speak. Discerning the “Signs of the Times”.

We have acquired an important article by an Orthodox theologian. ‘Patristic elements towards a theological anthropology of woman as a human being and as woman in her difference from man’,, by Constantinos Yokarinis from Greece, lecture in Warsaw 1996.

Please, credit this document
as published by www.womenpriests.org!