In This is not Dibley I referred to the MailOnline story: "Remind me, it is 2023, isn’t it?’: Why has the Cornish town Dawn French loves risked such an unholy row by refusing its own Vicar of Dibley?"
The report: 'Cornish church reverses ban on female vicars' has given church feminists and toadying MPs a field day.
These feminists have used the Church for their own political purposes, accusing, scheming and reneging. Promises and agreements that enabled them to reach their goal mean nothing.
Listen to the blatant misrepresentation by the chair of WATCH as she seeks help [to] bring "discrimination" in the Church of England to an end. As did the recently retired bishop of St Davids, WATCH regard difference of opinion, even when based on fact, as discrimination and prejudice
There have also been attempts to redefine gender language used about God. In The Mother Church: Turning God Trans published in Crisis Magazine [a recommended read - AB] it is suggested that a disproportionate number of those pushing for change would appear to be 'left-wing female vicars'.
No honour from certain MPs either, including the the Father of the House, a self-declared WATCH supporter, who appear unable or unwilling to distinguish between equality and theology regardless of measures agreed to,
Anglicanism in this country is dying. The Church in Wales is leading the decline with their one-track strategy of inclusion and diversity which again uses the Church to advance a political cause at the expense of others.
If only a fraction of the effort put into their latest 'outreach-social justice' drive had been devoted to the excluded things may have been different. St Davids diocese is watched with trepidation as they prepare to elect their new bishop. Scripture, reason and tradition must not again be sacrificed to secularism.
Despite denials the Roman Catholic Church is creeping in the same direction in proposing women deacons and Catholic LGBTQ+ advocates. This has arisen as a real possibility through the Synod on Synodality, which was launched by Pope Francis in October 2021.
This is a repeat of the push for Anglican women deacons. It was claimed that it did not mean that they would become priests if made deacons. As deacons they argued that it was discrimination if they could not be ordained to the priesthood followed by the threefold ministry argument that it would be discriminatory not to allow women bishops.
Now that they have achieved their aim and converted Anglicanism to conform with their own desires they want to get rid of anyone who does not share their warped ideas of equality.
There is no honour among thieves.
Arthur Couratin maintained that there were women deacons in the early church for the purpose of helping women undress for baptism by immersion. However when they started to preach the church abrogated the female diaconate. Is this true?
ReplyDeleteThere is plenty of evidence for deaconesses in the Early Church and one of their functions was indeed to chaperone ladies at Baptism. One thinks of Marthana, the friend of Egeria and Olympias, the friend of John Chrysostom. The fact that women deacons are so well attested is one of the reasons that the absence of evidence for women priests is so significant.
DeleteOld Nick
Who knows Frederick, and who cares what happened centuries ago. The sadness is that in the modern time, there are so, so few back-benchers of any Party who care a hoot about the shenanigans of the Church-of-England (no influence over Wales of course) even though the Church Commissioners, a branch of Government, is in their domain. And even if they did muster a yawn to debate the trajectory being taken, the Commons backbenches, like the Church, is now a 'wommin' led lobby well practised in bullying tactics against any voice of reason by those of common sense.
ReplyDeleteAd Clerum - Have you ever heard of tradition? Do not the Scriptures record events which happened centuries ago? Against what background of principles do you judge the "trajectory" which you so rightly deplore?
ReplyDeleteSad that ' the faithful' are weaponised by some who seem to put more store by critical theory than by theology, teaching, tradition.
ReplyDeleteFrederick, see this:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=martimort+deaconesses&crid=2H303Y9XPX50T&sprefix=martimort+deaconesses%2Caps%2C202&ref=nb_sb_noss
the best book on the subject.
William - Thank you. From the comments on Martimort's book it would appear that there is evidence to answer my question.
ReplyDeleteThis may help FJ. Three references found on Google:
ReplyDeleteWhat is a female diaconate?
In the Byzantine church women who were deacons had both liturgical and pastoral functions within the church. These women also ministered to other women in a variety of ways, including instructing catechumens, assisting with women's baptisms and welcoming women into the church services.
Deaconesses had ceased to exist in the West at the time of the Statuta’s redaction. So ‘widows or nuns’ was substituted for ‘deaconesses’. See also Statuta c. 12; Pseudo-Jerome, On St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans chap. 16 § 1.)
This chapter considers ‘Women Deacons in Ancient Christian Communities: Leadership and Ordination’. Women deacons are widely attested in the Greek-speaking Catholic East during the first millennium. Ancient rites that have been preserved show that the ordination of women deacons was truly ‘sacramental’, just as that of male deacons. Their role consisted in instructing and baptizing female catechumens, guiding women at Sunday worship, taking communion to the sick, and ministering at funeral services. They belonged to the clergy in virtually every parish. They enjoyed more or less the same legal status as male deacons. As time passed, however, the female diaconate was relinquished, partly because of the diminishing of adult baptisms, partly on account of growing anxiety about female clergy possibly polluting the altar through menstruation
There's so much muddled thinking nowadays that even if in the early church female deacons enjoyed parity with males ones, most people fail to understand why women ordained deacon in the contemporary Church shouldn't necessarily have expected to be "promoted" to the priesthood. This is largely because in western Christianity (Roman and Anglican) the diaconate had become nothing more than a probationary year before ordination to the priesthood -- a rather inconvenient interlude when a man could do almost everything he would be able to do as a priest, but not quite, and there was little uniformity of practice in the way they were employed liturgically. A radical C of E report in the 1970s suggested doing away with the diaconate altogether, but my guess is that this wasn't acted on so as to have a role for ordained women before the inevitable decision to ordain them priests took effect.
DeleteIn Orthodoxy the ministry of (male) deacons has continued, and although to fill gaps many of them end up being ordained priest this is often after many years, their distinctive ministry as deacons being valued by all. To appreciate the contribution the deacon makes to the liturgy one has to be familiar with its Orthodox form, where the priest is occupied within the altar (i.e. behind the icon screen), but the deacon is continually on the move from the priest's to the people's side, coming out to lead litanies and exhort the congregation to "attend" at key moments.
Rome has re-established the permanent diaconate, to which unlike the priesthood it admits married men, but it has been suggested that this, like the admission of women to the diaconate among Anglicans, was primarily to give a role to men unqualified by reason of their married state to the priesthood. One wonders whether in the light of the current grave shortage of priests this state of affairs will continue indefinitely.
With due respect, Ancient Briton, Martimort's book contradicts many, if not all of the "references found on Google" which you have posted. Moreover, here is a book by an Orthodox priest on the same subject, a book which I have not yet read, but which was commended to me by an Orthodox friend, a History professor.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.amazon.com/Disappearing-Deaconess-Hierarchical-Ordering-Diaconate/dp/0991016971/ref=sr_1_3?Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.x=0&Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.y=0&qid=1687030836&refinements=p_27%3Abrian+patrick+mitchell&s=books&sr=1-3&unfiltered=1
Thank for the reference WT. The question was whether or not there were women deacons in the early Church. The preview of the book you refer to begins "For all the recent research on deaconesses in the early Church, we still know very little about them, for two reasons: First, their duties were very limited, so there isn't much said about them in ancient texts. Second, their presence was also very limited: There weren't many of them anywhere outside Constantinople. In many places, there weren't any at all, and for a long time, there weren't any anywhere in the Orthodox Church. Why?" From these references the answer to FJ's question appears to me to be Yes but I acknowledge I am no expert on the subject.
ReplyDeleteThe place at which the Cult in Wales has arrived, along with Western Christianity in general, is to pick and choose which bits of the Gospel are to our liking. As St Augustine of Hippo rightly observed, "If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you do not like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself."
ReplyDeleteOne of the many disillusioned
By my reckoning the cult in Wales arrived at that point some 25 years ago.
DeleteThe Anglican Church - most clearly in Wales - has deviated from the beauty of traditional marriage between man and woman as God intended and instead chased the illusion of same sex 'marriage', and all things LGBT. What a paucity of vision and a sad contradiction of God's truth.
DeleteLW
One must remember not to confuse any of the shenanigans going on in the Cult in Wales with Christianity, especially in Llandaff with Typhoid Mary and slippery Dick the Sherry.
DeleteAgreed 1662, however the rot set in twenty five or thirty years before that, starting in Glyn Simon's time. Not much longer to go before the inevitable collapse.
DeleteYes indeed 1662. Arrived there 25 years ago through ignorance but now pushing it hard through arrogance.
ReplyDeleteAd Clerum
REMINDER: 'Anonymous' comments for publication must include the commentator's pseudonym.
ReplyDeleteThe joys of multiculturalism.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/08/14/california-robbery-flash-mob-topanga-nordstrom-los-angeles/
Coming to a town near you, soon.
Bloody love Dibley
ReplyDelete