(Is the man pure at all times in the priesthood?)
Lazarus Abboud
The ordination of a deaconess in Africa stirred wide clamor in Orthodox circles, for this formidable step was like a bomb that blew up all stagnation and shook religious thought. I will not speak about the deaconess; I shall go to another angle. When speaking of the reason for forbidding the ordination of women, some present religious justifications (and I mean justifications — that is, not theology but a justificatory thought of no value resulting from social factors). These justifications are directly connected to the subject of the impurity and purity of woman, and these matters did not come from the thought of Christ but came influenced by pagan, Jewish, and Islamic factors and formed the current Christian (religious) thought. These justifications, such as the impurity of woman, menstruation, the forty days after childbirth, and her not entering the sanctuary — this was in the Old Testament, as though Paul had not cried out: neither man nor woman, but all are one in Christ.
Returning to the religious justifications, let us take the subject of impurity: woman is considered impure because of the menstrual cycle. But what about the man? Is the man pure? The man, exactly like the woman, passes through physiological states, among them what is called nocturnal emission (in English: Nocturnal Emission or Wet Dream), which is the reaching of sexual arousal during sleep, that is, ejaculation in males… and nocturnal sexual dreams occur most in adolescence and early youth but may occur at any time (1). They are accompanied by sexual dreams at times, and at other times by a natural discharge without any dreams, and they occur among the unmarried more than among the married. (See the book How We Live with God, chapter on nocturnal emission and its various causes, Part Two, p. 251.)
And in the event that this emission occurs with the priest, he is forbidden from celebrating the Divine Liturgy. The canons stipulate the following: if the emission was the result of demonic imaginings, the priest must carry out this service (I shall cite it later), and thereafter he is permitted to serve the Divine Liturgy (and likewise the layman is permitted to receive Communion); but if the emission was the result of being filled with drinking, the priest is not permitted to serve the Divine Liturgy, as the fourth canon of Dionysius requires, and as Saint Athanasius says in his letter to Amun and Saint Basil in his ascetical treatises (2).
And the Great Euchologion (page 629) contains a complete service “recited by a priest with whom an emission has occurred,” beginning with “Blessed is God,” psalms, the recitation of the Little Doxology, the Creed, and so forth. Among the expressions that occur in the prayers of the service:
A first prayer of Mark the Solitary: ” O Lord, You who are good, purify me also, who am consumed with the love of lust and sin and defiled by my imaginings in sleep, and cleanse me from every bodily and spiritual defilement, and do not reckon this against me as a sin whether I was defiled in the emission…so that, being freed by Your help from all the pleasures of tickling and from all the darkness of the terrible nightly imaginings”
A second prayer of Basil the Great “..purify me, Your lowly servant, from every bodily and spiritual defilement and from the impurity that has now befallen me…and make me pure by the grace of Your Christ, cleansed of defilement, and sanctify me…so that I may escape from the fog of my defilements and from the demonic imaginings and from every demonic defilement”
A third prayer: “…give me a helping hand, I who am sinking in the pit of pleasures..and save me from the defilement of my flesh..and grant me healing and purification..for I know the weakness of the nature which You have formed…” Then he makes fifty prostrations and the rest of the service…
And there is a prayer that the priest says before sleep in order to be delivered from emission; some of its expressions: ” O Lord…purify me, Your servant, from every bodily and spiritual defilement and make me clean of defilement, ..and make me worthy to come forward at the fitting time to receive Your pure and awesome mysteries..
And he is forbidden, for example, from serving in a second case connected with lust: ” If the deacon defiles himself with his lips or proceeds to kiss a woman and confesses this sin of his, he is forbidden from exercising his service for a time, since he is deemed unworthy of sharing in the holy things…” (3)
And whereas there is a service for the priest because of the emission connected with dreams and lust, and he may be forbidden from serving the Divine Liturgy for a time, the service of purifying woman is connected with childbirth; the three chapters found in the Small Euchologion are: a prayer for the woman in labor at her childbirth, when she miscarries the fetus, and a prayer for the woman’s entry with her child the first time.
The impurity of the priest as a man that befalls him because of nocturnal dreams and sexual lust was treated with a service of purification that the priest recites for himself, that is, a door of purification was set for him, or by forbidding the priest from celebrating the Liturgy for a time or the layman (the man) from receiving Communion, and then he returns. Whereas the religious thought prevailing today considers only woman impure because of a natural habit connected with procreation, and forbids her entirely from the priesthood. Why was a service of purification not established for woman and her allowed to serve the priesthood?
And the justification: had Christ willed women apostles or women priests, His mother would have been the first of the priests. What the holders of this justification forget is that the Mother of God (Eve, the new woman) carried Jesus in her womb for nine months — that is, Christ made of the place of impurity in woman a throne for God. If the woman carried Him in her womb, can she not carry the offering in her hands? Saint Gregory the Theologian says “men are the legislators of laws against woman,” and as Father George Massouh said: “We hope that the Christian Eastern discourse concerning the priesthood of woman and its legitimacy will rise to a level higher than some of the delirious quibbles that reach us from here and there. The time has come for a churchly discourse that answers the legitimate questions raised by sincere believers who are not involved in conspiracies against the Church, and this requires the utmost courage and unprecedented boldness.”
References
1. The article “Nocturnal Emission,” a medical website, link https://2u.pw/vGBT8bvF
2. The book The Great Euchologion, translated into Arabic by Bishop Raphael Hawaweeny, Qalfat Press, Lebanon, Beirut, 1955, p. 632.
3. The book The Abridged Euchologion (containing the prayers needed by the priest), Dar al-Kalima, Al-Sa’ih Press, 1989.
4. The Collection of Canon Law, or the Laws of the Universal Christian Church, compiled, translated, and arranged by Archimandrite Hanania Kassab, Al-Nour Publications, 1998, p. 145.
5. How We Live with God, Part Two, chapter (Nocturnal Emission and Its Various Causes), translated into Arabic by Mother Porfiria Georgios, Monastery of Saint Simeon the Stylite, Patristic Heritage Publications, first edition, 2012, p. 251.
6. Saint Isaac the Syrian, Ascetical Homilies (a chapter on the movements of the body), translated by Father Isaac Atallah the Athonite, new revised translation, Monastery of Saint Michael, p. 117.
7. Father George Massouh, article “Woman and the Priesthood: Two Parallel or Intersecting Lines?” – 1998, Orthodox Youth Movement website, 27 March 2017, link https://2u.pw/TUuZT7p4
8. Maria Kabara, The Priesthood of Woman as an Ecumenical Theological Problem, Tilos magazine, published on 12/10/2020, link https://2u.pw/qqXss30D