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From: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Monday, December 27, 1999 6:45 AM
Subject: Re: women, priesthood
>-
>From: John Mundy <[log in to unmask]>
>
>>Query: Why did not Christianity, Judaism and Islam make room for female
>>priests, not to speak of goddesses?
>>
>As far as goddesses goes, it seems to me that it is reasonable to say that
>the mystery of God in all these religions incorporates femaleness as well
as
>maleness and it is only on our lesser plane that the two have been
separated
>for purposes of creation. This is how I read "male and female created he
>them" in his own image. Moreover I have always thought that that is what
>medieval thinkers believed when they argued that women are made in God's
>image. As we know, they did not agree about the details but that need not
>detain us here.
>
>Priesthood is a different matter. I can say nothing at all about Islam but
>I will point out that there are various forms of religious leadership in
>Judaism and also that we don't always have a good fix on how the religion
>was practiced in the first century. Women were excluded from the inner
>sanctum of the Temple and that seems to relate to notions of cultic purity:
>menstrual functions being polluting by nature. There are occasional hints
>that this was also on the minds of the early Christians and the author of
>the pseudo-Clementine "Recognitions" puts this opinion plainly into Peter's
>mouth: women cannot be priests lest they pollute the altar in their monthly
>courses. This notion is, however, unacceptable to the orthodox Christian
>position regarding women's functions (at least as it had developed by the
>time of Gregory the Great or whoever wrote the famous letter incorporated
>into Bede's Ecclesiastical History.)
>
>To return for a moment to Judaism, however, women were active in the
>synagogue movement in the first and second centuries and Bernadette Brooten
>has uncovered inscriptions naming women as leaders of synagogues. Their
>central role in Sabbath services is consistent and unquestioned.
>
>>Response: "big question. my guess is that, at least early on, it was felt
>>necessary to get away from the role of the sexual in worship (ie away from
>>female priests/temple prostitutes). this does not, therefore, suggest
>>that such a stance is necessary at all times and places."
>>
>Sexuality certainly enters in as an image problem. When churches met in
>private homes (often presided over by wealthy women), they attracted pagan
>charges of orgiastic behavior. Pagans were generally sarcastic and
critical
>about "oriental religions" (among which Judaism and Christianity were
>prominent) that attracted women and slaves--i.e. the socially unmanly
>classes. Moreover, during the first three centuries, the social
composition
>of Christianity tended to mix low status men and high status women. I am
>inclined to think that the rejection of female leadership had much to do
>with the power problem of subordinating men to women in a religious context
>and therefore alienating ruling class men even more thoroughly.
>
>As I have indicated earlier, the sources are lacking to reveal what the
>priesthood, or whatever they had, was really like in the early period. By
>the late second century, when heresy was being defined and constructed, the
>cultic activities of women seem to have been a major target and the
>liturgical association of men and women became a sure indicator of heresy,
>just as it did again for Bernard of Clairvaux in the twelfth century.
>>
>>Query: In paganism did cult-women officiate only in "fertility cults"?
>>
>Certainly not, unless you want to consider fertility in the broadest sense
>as an element in nearly all pagan religion. But the cult of Vesta, to name
>an obvious example, was not a fertility cult. Neither were the liturgies
>that Athenian maidens performed in the Panathenaic festivals. This is just
>to get your heads started. .
.
>>To sum up, the early church produced no surviving argument of any
substance on why women could not be priests but then they produced no
surviving argument as to the priesthood at all. Tangential sources indicate
that where women were serving in a priestly capacity, patristic writers
learned to see heresy. There was probably some discussion of the issue in
the high middle ages as indicated by groups like the Guigliemites already
mentioned and this must have been the impetus for Aquinas and others to
devise the argument from natural subjection. My favorite has always been
Duns Scotus who argued that Christ must have decreed the exclusion of women
because otherwise the church could not possibly have done such an unjust
thing.
Jo Ann
>
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