It would be news to me if they had in any thoroughgoing way. Of course, as I understand it St. Nektarios ordained a deaconess to serve in a women's monastery shortly before he reposed, so the Church of Greece had at least one in the last century.
And if my memory doesn't fail me, didn't St. Nektarios get into some trouble for doing that.
In a letter to Athens Saint Nektarios says that he did not ordain the nuns
concerned as deacons but as subdeacons. I'll see if I can hunt the letter
out.
Hwever, in the meantime, here is an account of one of Saint Nektarios'
ordinations of a nun.
http://old.orthodoxnews.org/163/Ordination.htmI wish to respond to the letter of Mr. Gregory Orloff regarding the
ordination of women to the diaconate, particularly by Saint Nektarios in the
early twentieth century. Mr. Orloff accurately quoted a letter of Saint
Nektarios to Theoklitos, Archbishop of Athens, in which Nektarios described
the nuns he had ordained as "subdeaconesses : [who] are primarily sextons at
the sanctuary" caring for the altar vessels and cloths. Furthermore, the
saint described the nuns' vestments as "made according to the holy vestments
that the readers of the city churches wear".
However, Saint Nektarios' description to Archbishop Theoklitos did not
correspond to the reality of the ordination he performed. Professor
Evangelos Theodorou of the University of Athens, who has been the leading
expert on the female diaconate since his doctoral work in the 1950's,
described the actual ordination of the first nun (who later became abbess)
by Saint Nektarios, on Pentecost Sunday in 1911, as follows:
"THE ORDINATION TOOK PLACE during the Divine Liturgy with the laying
on of hands, following the same order of prayers as the ordination of the
deacon, including the prayer of the bishop saying aloud, "the Divine Grace
:" [he theia charis]. The woman who was ordained wore a sticharion (alb) to
about the waist, but not reaching the feet, with the diaconal orarion
(stole) and diaconal epimanikia (cuffs). : Because certain people were
scandalized with her 'ordination,' St. Nektarios gave an explanation to the
then Archbishop of Athens, Theoklitos, emphasizing that this particular
appointment perhaps had more characteristics similar to that of the
subdeacon and that this ministry was needed by the monastery, especially
during the absence of ordained clergymen."
(Evangelos Theodorou, He "cheirotonia" e "cheirothesia" ton diakonisson
(Athens, 1954), 96; English translation in Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGerald,
Women Deacons in the Orthodox Church: Called to Holiness and Ministry
(Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1998), 151-2.)
There are several important points to note relative to Theodorou's
description of the actual rite of ordination celebrated by Saint Nektarios:
1) Only ordinations to the major orders of clergy (deacon, presbyter,
bishop) occur during the Divine Liturgy; ordinations to minor orders of
clergy, including subdeacon and reader, occur outside the context of the
liturgy (subdeacons are usually ordained just prior to the liturgy, readers
today in the Greek rite are often ordained following vespers or the
liturgy). Had Saint Nektarios truly been ordaining the nun as a
subdeaconess, he would not have done the ordination during the Divine
Liturgy.
2) Saint Nektarios followed the ordination rite of the male deacon,
including the use of the prayer beginning "The divine grace," which is
another typical feature of ordination to major orders. In fact, it is
likely that he used the ordination rite found in Byzantine-era euchologia,
which follows the order for the ordination of a male deacon, with only a
couple of minor differences in rubrics and with prayers that are tailored to
the female diaconate (e.g., a reference to Phoebe, the female deacon
mentioned in Romans 16:1, in the second consecration prayer for the female
deacon).
3) Saint Nektarios vested the deaconess with diaconal clothing (most
notably the orarion, or diaconal stole), not the exorason traditionally worn
by readers (chanters) in the modern Church of Greece, as he stated in his
letter. Readers do not wear the orarion; only deacons and subdeacons do.
It should also be noted that Saint Nektarios' rationale for ordaining the
nun is not terribly convincing since nuns have cared for their monastic
churches, including the altar area, since Byzantine times, usually without
ordination. One need only read the typika (monastic rules) of several
Byzantine women's monasteries to see implicit confirmation of this. Men,
except for a priest to celebrate liturgy, were traditionally excluded from
women's monasteries. ...
In sum, then, Professor Theodorou has undoubtedly surmised correctly that
Saint Nektarios deliberately downplayed the significance of the ordination
he celebrated in order to avoid scandal for those unfamiliar with the
historical female diaconate. It is clear from the description of the
ordination itself that it was an ordination to the diaconate, not the
subdiaconate.
Fr Ambrose
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Should this topic be split off into another thread or is there a thread we can resurrect?
