Father Alexander Schmemann, The Virgin Mary, and the Ordination of Women

The reader who engages with Father Alexander Schmemann’s mariological thought—as articulated primarily in The Virgin Mary, the third volume of his Celebration of Faith trilogy—encounters a challenge. The challenge is to reconcile Father Schmemann’s treatment of the issue of women’s clerical ordination with his theological reflection on the place of the Theotokos within Orthodox theology and worship.