His Beatitude Jonah, the Archbishop of Washington, Metropolitan of All America and Canada of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) announced recently that his church has ended its ecumenical relations with The Episcopal Church, and will establish instead formal ecumenical relations with the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA)...
“We engage in dialogue with Episcopalian traditionalists, many of whom embrace the Orthodox faith,” Jonah told a Moscow-based weblog. “And I personally, and our entire synod, give great attention to bringing these people into the fold of the Orthodox Church in America.”
And then this...
It was Archbishop-elect Duncan, the bishop of Pittsburgh, who pushed them to make a place for ordained women, said the Rev. Karen Stevenson, rector of Trinity parish, Washington, and the only female priest on the influential Provincial Council of the new body. "He said that this was not up for negotiation for us in Pittsburgh, that this was a deal breaker," she said.
Of four dioceses that broke from the Episcopal Church and joined the new church, only Pittsburgh ordains women. The Canadians ordain women, as does the Diocese of the Holy Spirit, made up of U.S. parishes that had been under the oversight of the Anglican Church of Uganda. But they are a minority.
"It's a sadness and a sacrifice but it's not the end of the story," the Rev. Hays said. She noted that it is also a sacrifice for some opponents of women's ordination to sit on a provincial committee of which she is chairman.
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