Not very helpful in today's situation, is it. If anything, it underscores
what my Serbian Orthodox business partner always reminds me: the greatest
weakness in Orthodoxy is it's inability to adapt to cultural and/or ethnic
diversity. 

MLW+

-----Original Message-----
From: charles scott [mailto:crscottblu@...] 
Sent: Friday, November 23, 2007 9:09 AM
To: faith life
Subject: [FaithandLife] Schmemann 1973 on women's ordination 

-------------------------------------------------------
ÐAlexander Schmemann 

-----------------------
St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 3, 1973, pp. 239-243
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Dear Friend: 

When you asked me to outline the Orthodox reaction to the idea of women's
ordination to the priesthood, I thought at first that to do so would not be
too difficult. It is not difficult indeed simply to state that the Orthodox
Church is against women's priesthood, and to enumerate as fully as possible
the dogmatical, canonical, and spiritual reasons for that opposition. At a
second thought, however, I became convinced that such an answer would be not
only useless but even harmful. Useless because all such "formal" reasons -
scriptural, traditional, canonical
- are well known to the advocates of women's ordination, as is also our
general ecclesiological stand which, depending on their mood and current
priorities, our Western brothers either hail as Orthodoxy's "main ecumenical
contribution" or dismiss as archaic, narrow-minded and irrelevant. Harmful
because, true formally, this answer would still vitiate the real Orthodox
position by reducing it to a theological context and perspective alien to
the Orthodox mind. For the Orthodox Church has never faced this question; it
is for us totally extrinsic, a casus irrealis for which we find no basis, no
terms of reference in our Tradition, in the very experience of the Church,
and for the discussion of which we are therefore simply not prepared. 

Such then is my difficulty. I cannot discuss the problem itself because to
do so would necessitate the elucidation of our approach, not to women and to
priesthood only, but above all to God in His Triune Life, to Creation, Fall
and Redemption, to the Church and the mystery of her life, to the
deification of man and the consummation of all things in Christ. Short of
all this, it would remain incomprehensible, I am sure, why the ordination of
women to priesthood for us is tantamount to a radical and irreparable
mutilation of the entire faith, the rejection of the whole Scripture
- and needless to say, the end of all "dialogues" ....
Short of all this, my answer will sound like another "conservative" and
"traditional" defense of the status quo, of precisely that which many
Christians today, having heard it too many times, reject as hypocrisy, lack
of openness to God's will, blindness to the world, etc. Obviously enough,
those who reject Tradition will not listen once more to an argument ex
traditione.... 

But to what will they listen? Our amazement - and the Orthodox reaction is
above all that of amazement - is precisely about the strange and to us
incomprehensible hastiness with which the question of women's ordination was
first accepted as an issue, then quickly reduced to the level of a
"disciplinary matter," and finally identified as an issue of policy to be
dealt with by vote! In this strange situation all I can do is to try to
convey to you this amazement by briefly enumerating its main "components" as
I see and understand them. 

The first dimension of our amazement can be termed "ecumenical." The debate
on women's ordination reveals something which we suspected for a long time
but which now is confirmed beyond any doubt: the truly built-in indifference
of the Christian West to anything beyond the sphere of its own problematics,
of its own experience. I can only repeat here what I have said
before: even the so-called "ecumenical movement,"
notwithstanding its claims to the contrary, has always been and still is a
purely Western phenomenon, based on Western presuppositions and determined
by a specifically Western "agenda." This is not "pride" or "arrogance." On
the contrary, the Christian West is almost obsessed with a guilt complex and
enjoys nothing better than self-criticism and self-condemnation. It is
plagued with a total inability to transcend itself, to accept the simple
idea that its own experience, problems, thought forms and priorities may not
be universal, that it may need to be evaluated and judged in the light of a
truly universal, truly "catholic" experience. Western Christians almost
enthusiastically judge and condemn themselves Ñ but on their own terms,
within their own hopelessly "Western" perspective. Thus when they decide Ñ
on the basis of their own, possibly limited and fragmented, specifically
Western "cultural situation" Ñ that they must "repair" injustices made to
women, they plan to do it immediately and without even asking what the
"others" may think about it, and are sincerely amazed and even saddened by
the lack, on the part of these "others," of ecumenical spirit, sympathy and
comprehension. 

Personally I have often enough criticized the historical limitations of the
Orthodox mentality not to have the right to say in all sincerity that to me
the debate on women's ordination seems to be provincial, deeply marked and
even determined by Western self-centeredness and self-sufficiency, by a
naive, almost childish conviction that every "trend"
in Western culture justifies a radical rethinking of the entire Christian
Tradition. How many such "trends"
we have witnessed during the last decades of our troubled century! How many
corresponding "theologies"!
The difference this time however is that one deals in this particular debate
not with a passing intellectual and academic "fad" - like the "death of
God," "secular city," "celebration of life," etc. - which, after it has
produced a couple of ephemeral best-sellers simply disappears, but with the
threat of an irreversible and irreparable act which, if it becomes reality,
will produce a new, and this time I am convinced final, division among
Christians, will signify, at least for the Orthodox, the end of all
dialogues.... 

It is well known that the advocates of women's ordination explain the
scriptural and the traditional exclusion of women from the ministry by
cultural "conditioning." If Christ did not include women into the twelve, if
the Church for centuries did not include them into its priesthood, it is
because of the "culture" which would have made it impossible and unthinkable
then. It is not my purpose to discuss here the theological and exegetical
implications of this view as well as its purely historical basis which,
incidentally, seems to me extremely weak and shaky.
What is truly amazing is that, while absolutely convinced that they
understand past "cultures," the advocates of women's ordination seem to be
so totally unaware of their own cultural "conditioning," of their own
surrender to "culture." 

How else can one explain their readiness to accept what may prove to be a
passing phenomenon, and what at any rate is a phenomenon barely at its
beginning (not to speak of the womenÕs liberation movement which at present
is nothing but search and experimentation), as a sufficient justification
for a radical change in the very structure of the Church? How else,
furthermore, are we to explain that this movement is accepted on its own
terms, i.e., within the perspective of "rights," "justice," "equality,"
etc., all categories whose ability adequately to express Christian faith and
to be applied as such within the Church is, to say the least, questionable? 

The sad truth is that the very idea of women's ordination as it is present
and discussed today is the result of too many confusions and reductions. If
its root is surrender to "culture," its pattern of development is shaped by
a surrender to "clericalism."
It is indeed almost entirely dominated by the old "clerical" view of the
Church and the double "reduction" inherent in it: the reduction on the one
hand of the Church to a Òpower structure"; the reduction on the other hand
of that power structure to clergy. To the alleged "inferiority" of women
within the secular power structure corresponds their "inferiority," i.e.,
their exclusion from the clergy, within the ecclesiastical power structure.
To their "liberation" in the secular society must therefore correspond their
"liberation," i.e., ordination, in the Church. 

But the Church simply cannot be reduced to these categories. As long as we
try to measure the ineffable mystery of her life by concepts and ideas a
priory alien to her very essence, we literally mutilate her, and her real
power, her glory and beauty, her transcendent truth simply escape us. 

This is why in concluding this letter I can only confess, without explaining
and justifying this confession by any "proofs," that the non-ordination of
women to the priesthood has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with whatever
"inferiority" we can invent or imagine. In the essential reality which alone
constitutes he content of our faith and shapes the entire life of the
Church, in the reality of the Kingdom of God which is perfect communion,
perfect knowledge, perfect love and ultimately the "deification" of man,
there is truly "neither male nor female." More than that, in this reality of
which we are made partakers here and now, we all - men and women, without
any distinction - are "kings and priests," for it is essential priesthood of
the human nature and vocation that the Christ has restored to us. 

It is of this priestly life, it is of this ultimate reality that the Church
is both gift and acceptance.
And that she may be this, that she may always and everywhere be the gift of
the Spirit without any measure or limitations, the Son of God offered
Himself in a unique sacrifice, and made this unique sacrifice and this
unique priesthood the very foundation, indeed the very "form" of the Church.
This priesthood is Christ's, not ours. Not only have none of us, men or
women, any "right" to it, but it is emphatically not one of the human
vocations analogous, even if superior, to all others. The priest in the
Church is not "another" priest, and the sacrifice he offers is not "another"
sacrifice. It is forever and only Christ's priesthood and Christ's
sacrifice, for in the words of our Prayer of Offertory, "it is Thou who
offerest and Thou who art offered, it is Thou who receivest and Thou who
distributest .... "And thus the "institutional" priesthood in the Church has
no "ontology" of its own. It exists only to make Christ Himself present, to
make His unique Priesthood and His unique Sacrifice the source of the
Church's life and the "acquisition" by men of the Holy Spirit. And if the
bearer, the icon, and the fulfiller of that unique priesthood is man and not
woman, it is because Christ is man and not woman.... 

Why? This of course is the only important, the only relevant question, the
one that no "culture," no "sociology," no "history," and even no "exegesis"
can answer. For it can be answered only by theology in the primordial and
essential meaning of that word in the Church, as the contemplation and
vision of the Truth itself, as communion with the uncreated Divine Light.
It is only here, in this purified and restored vision, that we might begin
to understand why the ineffable mystery of the relationship between God and
His creation, between God and His chosen people, between God and His Church
is "essentially" revealed to us as a nuptial mystery, as the fulfillment of
a mystical marriage; why, in other terms, creation itself, the Church
herself, man and the world themselves, when contemplated in their ultimate
truth and destiny, are revealed to us as a Bride, as a Woman clothed in the
sun; why in the very depth of her love and knowledge, of her joy and
communion, the Church identifies herself with one Woman whom she exalts as
"more honorable than the Cherubim, and beyond compare more glorious than the
Seraphim." 

Is it this mystery that has to be "understood" by means of our broken and
fallen world which knows and experiences itself only in its brokenness and
fragmentation, in its tensions and dichotomies, and which as such is
incapable of the ultimate vision? Or is it this vision and this unique
experience that must again become for us the "means" of our understanding of
the world, the starting point and the very possibility of a truly divine
victory over all that in this world is but human, historical, and cultural? 

Alexander Schmemann 

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