Sarah said:
Women play an important role in the Church.  Being a priest isn't the only way to serve.
Yes. This, however, presents the question: Are there legitimate ways in which women can serve in some kind of consecrated or, perhaps, "ordained" role
in the liturgy? Certainly,
most women do not currently have any such legitimate way (although nuns act as altar servers with the blessing of Bishop and Abbess). However, what does Church history tell us, and what does that history mean for the present? This is the real question and also the real reason why we often see so many people summarily dismiss the idea of an official liturgical (not
necessarily sacramental, but liturgical) role for women in the modern Church, viz. people don't really know Church history.
Consider as just one small example this bit from one of the articles I referenced above. It comes from Valerie Karras's “The Liturgical Functions of Consecrated Women in the Byzantine Church,”
Theological Studies 66:1 (2005). As the article's abstract says:
Although the ordained order of deaconesses vanished in the Byzantine Church, some women continued to fulfill, either informally or formally, various liturgical functions in public church life. The author examines the art-historical and textual evidence of three groups of women: noblewomen who participated as incense-bearers in a weekly procession in Constantinople; matrons who helped organize and keep order in a monastic church open to the public in Constantinople; and the possibly ordained order of myrrhbearers in the Church of Jerusalem.
All three examples are very instructive, in so far as they give us specific examples (outside of the well known offices of widow, virgin and deaconess) of ways in which the Church has included women in liturgical services. In the modern age, we may kick and scream and hate those who report such things, but the facts remain. What we do with those facts, of course -- ignore, spin, use them as a political platform -- is another matter.
Anyway, here is a section of the article on the "myrhhbearers." In the interest of time, I've had to leave out the footnotes, but the basic text will give everyone a good idea of the main descriptive part of this section of the essay (I had to leave out the analysis, unfortunately).
Quoted from section of article:
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It is not known when exactly the order of myrophoroi developed in the Jerusalem Church; when they disappeared is equally unknown. They are not mentioned in early church documents relating to the paschal celebration in Jerusalem, including the detailed description given by Egeria in the late fourth century. However, there are numerous references to these women in a typikon (liturgical rule) of the Church of Jerusalem, contained in a twelfth-century manuscript that apparently is a copy of an earlier work from the late ninth or early tenth century.'' Egeria's diary and the dating of the original typikon on which the twelfth-century manuscript is based thus provide us with a terminus post quem of the fifth century and a terminus ante quem of the ninth century, since the myrophoroi were clearly an established order by the time the typikon was written. It is likely that they still existed in the 13th century when the extant manuscript was copied from the lost original, although it is also possible that they had become defunct by that time but still existed within institutional memory. Their disappearance thus may coincide with, or postdate by a century or so, the disappearance of the female diaconate in the Byzantine Church.
Unlike the confusion over the use of the term myrophoroi by certain Russian travelers describing the Great Church in Constantinople, these women definitely cannot be identified with deaconesses, since that order is separately mentioned in the typikon's description of the paschal services. Thus, the myrophoroi were a distinctive order unique to the Church of Jerusalem. Their liturgical functions are quite clearly spelled out in the Jerusalem typikon, and largely mirror, in a stylized and liturgical fashion, the activities of the biblical myrrhbearing women.
The Jerusalem myrophoroi began their liturgical service early on Holy Saturday morning, when they accompanied the patriarch and his clerical assistants, such as the archdeacon and chanters, to the Holy Sepulcher. The myrrhbearers were to clean and prepare the oil lamps in the Holy Sepulcher, chanting the canon and the liturgy of the hours while they worked. When they had finished cleaning and preparing the lamps, they chanted the "Glory to the Father . . ." and a hymn in plagal second tone. A deacon then would chant the litany, and the patriarch would lock the Holy Sepulcher after extinguishing the lamps.
It cannot be stated for certain whether the myrophoroi were included as part of the clergy in the vesper service and for the Divine Liturgy of St. James, since they are not individually mentioned in the rubrics. However, it is likely that their inclusion should be inferred since, at the end of the liturgy, the typikon mentions that the myrrhbearers remained behind and reentered the Holy Sepulcher in order to cense and anoint it. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher was then locked until the return of the patriarch and clergy early the following morning.
For Easter matins, the clergy, which apparently included the myrophoroi, gathered early in the morning at the patriarchate, in the secreton, where they changed into white vestments before presumably returning to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Although the text does not give a full list of clerical orders included, the rubrics for the paschal matins service make it impossible not to understand the term "clergy" to include the myrrhbearers. Outside the church, the clergy chanted the Easter apolytikion, "Christ is risen," several times as a refrain to psalm verses intoned by the patriarch, who then called out: "Open to me the gates of righteousness; I shall confess the Lord as I enter in," to which the archdeacon responded with another "Christ is risen." Then,
The doors of the church are immediately opened and the patriarch together with the clergy enter the church, chanting the 'Christ is risen'. And the patriarch and the archdeacon immediately enter into the Holy Sepulcher, those two alone, with the myrophorot standing before the Holy Sepulcher. Then the patriarch shall come out to them and say to them [the myrophoroi]: "Rejoice! [ or "Greetings!"] Christ is risen." The myrophoroi then fall down at his feet, and, after rising up, they cense the patriarch and sing the polychronion to him. They [then] withdraw to the place where they customarily stand.
The matins service then proceeded normally with the chanting of the canon for Easter, the exaposteilarion, the praises (lauds), and the Easter aposticha. Near the end of the service comes the final reference to the myrophoroi. Following the deacon's chanting of the epakousta, there was a procession to the bema with two of each clerical order: deacons, subdeacons, deaconesses, and myrophoroi. The deacons held censers, the subdeacons and deaconesses held manoualia, and the myrophoroi each carried a triskelion. The two myrophoroi took up position one on each side of the Holy Sepulcher, censing throughout the second deacon's reading of the Gospel. At the end of the reading, the myrrhbearers entered the Holy Sepulcher and censed and anointed it.
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