The Orthodox Churches

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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ordination rite, which is still contained in the official pontifical ritual, the so-called euchologia, has never been withdrawn.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.

For related online Libraries see: Equality for Women The ORDINATION OF WOMEN in the Catholic Church Catherine of Siena VIRTUAL COLLEGE THE BODY IS SACRED MYSTERY AND BEYOND We hope that you have found this document helpful. It costs our small charity - HOUSETOP CARE - on average £10 / $20 / Euro15 to make such a document freely available to you. This is because we have to identify the best scholarship available, retrieve texts, obtain permissions, scan, edit, link and convert documents to html format and run a small office to make this all possible. Having benefited from the online library, any donation, small or large, that you can make to support our work would be gratefully appreciated. Click here to make a donation now.

On women, natural law and sexual ethics.

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