Our brother Deacon Nathaniel has written a well articulate and detailed analysis on the history of the Diaconate and its current place, misuse, and even misunderstanding within the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Churches respectively. This can be seen on our sister channel ‘Good & Faithful’.
Preview:
“This discussion matters because the Sacrament of Holy Orders is one of the most important and vital parts of the life of the Church, which is one with the Body of Christ, lives eternally with Christ, and was established by Christ. The Church was made one with Him through His sacrifice, His teachings, and the authority given to the apostles, who carried on the mission of the Church throughout history. For 2,000 years, the offices of priesthood, deaconhood, bishop, and patriarch in the Oriental Orthodox Church have seen “changes” depending on geographical and historical reasons, these are not major changes that affect communion with other changes or shake any core belief it’s still one church but culturally separate.
I intend to do is study, pick apart, and make sense of without diving too deep where this authority comes from and why it is so important in the Church, in hopes of correcting some misunderstandings and issues found in the Church. The intention is not to gossip, judge, or make an example of anyone. Rather, what this is meant to do is, by God’s grace, bring some correction and, hopefully, some solution to a few issues that seem to have gotten worse over time. A lot of people would agree that the office of the deaconhood has, in many ways, changed in the last ten years.
What I mean is that in some ways the changes are good, but in many ways they are not. We are seeing a significant increase in the number of people being ordained into the office at a very young age, and that can eventually lead to a very dangerous path. We are seeing a rise in deacons not understanding their role, the reverence their position holds, and how that then begins to affect things like how they speak both in and out of church. It has reached a point where people no longer respect the office.
It seems, as absurd as it may sound, oversaturated at times. There is also something that I think people often overlook, and those are what I would call the enablers, and this goes as far as the office of the bishop in that general area or archdiocese. We are seeing laymen command younger deacons with authority that they do not possess, which is unfortunate. It is not fully their own fault, because these deacons are ordained so young that those who are much older, in many cases, command and scold them while forgetting what authority these deacons have…”
For the full article, please see here.
God bless.
Faith Unto Ages 