Bridging the Ecclesial, the Academic, and the Political
In recent days several articles have appeared on this site raising profound, difficult, and unsettling questions. Sr. Vassa bravely asked whether “heresy” is a charge that can be applied to the “Edict” of the XXV “All-World Council of the Russian People,” approved under the chairmanship of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow on March 27, 2024, concluding,…
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No longer do I call you servants, but I have called you friends.-John 15:15 (RSV) Father Pavel Florensky (1882-1937) is one of modern Orthodoxy’s intellectual giants. The scope of his erudition was breathtaking, covering not only philosophy and theology, but also mathematics, physics, linguistics, art, cultural history…—he is sometimes called “the Russian Leonardo.” A leading…
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Translations of this essay are also available in Arabic (pdf) and Georgian. In this brief editorial, I try to explain what underpins the widely spread belief that the coronavirus cannot be transmitted through the communion of the holy Gifts. This belief is based on the assumption that the Body and Blood of Christ constitute an…
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The global COVID-19 crisis has ignited a number of difficult discussions among Christians. The method used to distribute Holy Communion is fiercely debated. In the Churches that remain open, many Protestants and Catholics are withholding the cup, so faithful are receiving in one kind only, the body of Christ. In Orthodox communities, clergy and laity…
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St Mary of Egypt, it is said, received Holy Communion exactly once after she fled to the desert to repent: on the day of her death. 17 years of life in the wilderness were spent deprived of Body and Blood of Christ in the eucharist. This was not normal practice at the time for nuns,…
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ελληνικά | ру́сский These essays are part of a series on the diaconate in the Orthodox Church derived from talks delivered at the St. Phoebe Center for the Deaconess “Renewing the Male and Female Diaconate in the Orthodox Church Conference” in Irvine, California in October 2017. Diaconal Service in Church Administration and Governance I have…
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The Orthodox world is buzzing with the recent news report on the ordination of deaconesses in the Patriarchate of Alexandria. To the best of our knowledge, the ordination occurred after the Divine Liturgy in the nave of the temple, and appears to resemble the rite used to ordain subdeacons. This rite includes the presentation of…
Continue readingPope Francis’s recent call for a commission to explore the possibility of reinstating the female diaconate in the Catholic Church resonates with over a century of similar calls among leaders and laity of the Orthodox Church. These calls for restoring the female diaconate within the Eastern Orthodox Church have been supported by prominent theologians and…
Continue readingThis essay was originally delivered as a public talk at the June 2015 Fordham/OTSA conference on the upcoming Great and Holy Council of the Orthodox Church. It was part of a panel on canonical impediments to marriage. According to Orthodox canon law and theology, the ideal Christian marriage among laypeople is union between faithfully practicing…
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