Women and the Priesthood

St. Vladimirs Seminary Press, July 1999. Paper Back. New. A greatly revised edition of a collection of essays originally published in 1983. In his preface, Fr. Alexander Schmemann writes: ''The question of tradition stands at the very center and challenges us with essential questions. What is it? Is it the living memory and consciousness of the Church, the essential term of reference or criterion by which we discern the essential unbrokenness of the Church's life and identity during her pilgrimage through history? Or is it itself a product, or a sequence of products, of history, in the light of which it is to be reevaluated, judged or rejected?'' If the Tradition is living memory rather than merely a product of history, it seems that with all due deliberation about the reasons, and with love, we must answer the question of the ordination of women to the priesthood with a ''no.'' All the contributors to this book -- Bishop Kallistos, Georges Barrois, Nicholas Afanasiev, Kyriaki FitzGerald, Fr. Hopko, Sister Nonna Harrison, Deborah Belonick -- answer thus, though some more firmly than others (Bishop Ware's essay is disappointing in this regard). But all the essays are carefully reasoned, drawing on the full depth of patristic anthropology and the Church's liturgical practice for two millennia, and go far towards presenting an articulate Orthodox response to an issue that up to now has been answered only intuitively and haphazardly.