Benedictine Women Priests?

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At a Bible Study tonight (Catholics) one of the women that went to a Catholic Benedictine college in the 70s said the nuns there said that Benedictine women had been priests long ago. I hadn’t ever heard that claim before and couldn’t find it on a search on Catholic answers. A Google search came up with a site for Roman Catholic Womenpriests, which I can tell is not faithful to the teaching of the Church. Has anyone heard of this claim before? I would like to bring back the facts next time we meet.
 
Since it is not possible for women to be priests, the claim that nuns were priests is not grounded in reality.

Perhaps the person asserting it can provide a source for this outrageous claim. Otherwise, encourage them to stop making the claim in absence of any evidence. Hint: there is no evidence.
 
Unfortunately, many feminists feel justified in offering revisionist history. They feel their cause justifies telling a lie!
This was not uncommon with those who espoused women priests until JP II “laid down the law”. Thankfully, except for a few radical diehards and the American press, this seems to have largely died out.
 
Hey, it was the '70s…
Wanna know what I learned in CCD during the '70s?
How to make felt banners, and color pictures of kittens holding a chin-up bar with the caption “Hang in there!”

Now my kids (of that same age group) are learning about the three conditions for a sin to be mortal, and all the different ways that Jesus was prefigured in the Old Testament. Quite a change!
 
catholicmom2010 said:
At a Bible Study tonight (Catholics) one of the women that went to a Catholic Benedictine college in the 70s said the nuns there said that Benedictine women had been priests long ago. I hadn’t ever heard that claim before and couldn’t find it on a search on Catholic answers. A Google search came up with a site for Roman Catholic Womenpriests, which I can tell is not faithful to the teaching of the Church. Has anyone heard of this claim before? I would like to bring back the facts next time we meet.
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maybe they were Episcopalian nuns 😛

jk jk 😃
 
There were women of immense influence in the 600s and 700s coming from Britain and going on missions to Germany where they set up abbeys.

Some were as powerful and influential as the bishops:

St. Hilda of Whitby, St. Lioba (the cousin of St. Boniface), St. Walburga.

St. Lioba and St. Hilda were influential in creating the beginning of English literature.

History is hazy, but it seems that some heard confessions.
 
surritter said:
Hey, it was the '70s…
Wanna know what I learned in CCD during the '70s?
How to make felt banners, and color pictures of kittens holding a chin-up bar with the caption “Hang in there!”

Now my kids (of that same age group) are learning about the three conditions for a sin to be mortal, and all the different ways that Jesus was prefigured in the Old Testament. Quite a change!
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That’s really sad that’s how bad it was, but the visual of the kittens with the chin up bar made me giggle. That’s awesome that your kids are learning the good stuff though.
 
This is the second time in an hour that this phrase has been useful on CAF: “Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur”. What is asserted without reason may be denied without reason.
 
triumphguy said:
History is hazy, but it seems that some heard confessions.
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Mother abbesses could sometimes hear “confessions” but only in the sense that the family / community was damaged by sin and she could welcome the sister back to full integration with the family, just as a child’s parent can accept a confession.
But it was never a sacramental confession.
 
surritter said:
Mother abbesses could sometimes hear “confessions” but only in the sense that the family / community was damaged by sin and she could welcome the sister back to full integration with the family, just as a child’s parent can accept a confession.
But it was never a sacramental confession.
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Monastic confession preceded formal sacramental confession, with the latter likely growing out of the former. We need to be a little careful about imposing a more modern view of the sacraments back on times before that formalisation had occurred in the Western (Catholic) Church. That is not to say the abbesses were considered to be priests (I haven’t seen any good evidence for that), just that we need to be a little careful trying to fit the ancient or old Church into more modern formalised practices.
 
Eh, it could be possible, but it is pretty unlikely that a women would claim to be ordained. Like it is said above, the Church doesn’t have the authority to ordain women. It happens every once in a while that some bishop tries to ordain a women because he thinks he knows better than the Church, but who knows what your friend thought she saw in the 70’s.
 
surritter said:
Mother abbesses could sometimes hear “confessions” but only in the sense that the family / community was damaged by sin and she could welcome the sister back to full integration with the family, just as a child’s parent can accept a confession.
But it was never a sacramental confession.
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I think one thing we have to be wary of is reading early Benedictine history with a modern mindset of sacramental confession. Regular sacramental confession after baptism was not part of Church life until the eight century (1) and was not mandated until the Fourth Lateran Council in the 13th century (2). Indeed it is probably the development of regular “confessions” after baptism within the Benedictine tradition that led to it being made available to, and then mandated for, the laity.

But on Benedicitne women priests - I have not come across anything to indicate that women would have led the mass in Benedictine history, but even there we perhaps have to be a little careful applying modern terms to a more primitive Christianity. Recent evidence discovered in the Roman Catacombs does appear to show women celebrating what looks like the Eucharist (picture below) but it is quite possible/likely that some celebrations were essentially agape meals that could be presided over by anyone. The same agape meals of bread and wine, in thanksgiving, can be, and are, shared by laity today. It seems Sacerdotalism took time to be more tightly defined. Maybe Benedictine women celebrated agape meals that may have appeared somewhat like the mass? I believe we have to allow the more primitive Christianity to be seen as it was (less structured and less defined than we find today) rather than applying a more modern specific view over it and (mistakenly, I believe) reading modern discipline and RC law back into the early Church.



(1) Nelson, ‘England and the Continent in the Ninth Century: IV. Minds and Bodies’, 3; Bachrach, ‘Confession in the Regnum Francorum (742–900)’,

(2) MacCulloch, Diarmaid (2009-09). A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years Penguin UK
 
Great picture of Agape. Do you know where it is? (Sorry it is off topic)
 
Apparently, there is some translation of either Greek or maybe Aramaic that leads to a word like priestess in ancient Catholic documents. However, I’m told (by apologists like Tim Staples) that these women were actually assistants and not sacramental priests. It’s a language/verbiage issue, not one of sacramental inconsistency, if you will.
 
Thanks all for your help- I will feel better equipped to make a reply. It was nuns in a Catholic University making these claims (from St. Ben’s in Minnesota).
 
catholicmom2010 said:
At a Bible Study tonight (Catholics) one of the women that went to a Catholic Benedictine college in the 70s said the nuns there said that Benedictine women had been priests long ago. I hadn’t ever heard that claim before and couldn’t find it on a search on Catholic answers. A Google search came up with a site for Roman Catholic Womenpriests, which I can tell is not faithful to the teaching of the Church. Has anyone heard of this claim before? I would like to bring back the facts next time we meet.
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catholicmom… my response to this post shall be sent to you via personal message.
 
catholicmom2010 said:
At a Bible Study tonight (Catholics) one of the women that went to a Catholic Benedictine college in the 70s said the nuns there said that Benedictine women had been priests long ago…
Click to expand...
That is absolutely false. The office of priestess is totaly a pagan notion. There were never priestess in either the Old nor in the New Tesatament ministry. As I pointed out, that was something only done by the pagans…
 
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