Early Church Fathers Women's Ordination

[catholic1seeks]

Hello All,

I’m doing some private research on women’s ordination in the early church, specifically how the earliest church fathers (before the Council of Nicea) viewed the role of women in the church.

So far, I’ve been unable to find anything that specifically explains why women cannot be priests, and the few times the fathers do make mention of it (that I have found), the women are often involved with heretical groups and it’s hard to tell whether they are being criticized because they are women or because they are heretics (usually gnostics).

I have no doubts that women were not allowed to be priests in the early church, but I’m trying to find any evidence at all that explains why the church fathers held this view. Does anyone have good information to provide? Thanks!

And by the way, yes, I’ve seen this post: catholic.com/tracts/women-and-the-priesthood

The tract doesn’t really give any explanation for why they oppose the practice, and as I said before, in many of these examples, they are dealing directly with heretics (usually gnostics). One exception may be one of the quotes from Tertullian, but that’s all.

It seems there have been women priests at various points in the Church’s history.

romancatholicwomenpriests.org/RCWP_Resource.pdf

For example,

A fifth century inscription carved on the sarcophagus of Leta Presbitera describes “Leta Presbitera” and states: "Of blessed memory Leta the Presbyter lived 40 years, 8 months, 9 days whose husband prepared her burial she departed in peace the day before the Ides of May.”

 

[steve_b]

It seems there have been women priests at various points in the Church’s history.

romancatholicwomenpriests.org/RCWP_Resource.pdf

For example,

Totally bogus

 

[catholic1seeks]

Totally bogus

Wow you must have read all of those excerpts fast.

Why bogus?

 

[Mintaka]

“Presbytera” is the Greek word for a priest’s wife.

“Presbyterissa” is the Greek word for a priest’s mom.

Similarly, “Episcopa” is the Greek word for a bishop’s wife, and “Episcopissa” is a bishop’s mom.

These are still words in use, and there’s no reason or evidence to believe that they meant something different in early Christian times.

Re: Jewish requirements for priests – Actually, Catholic canon law did use to say that priests had to be perfect of body. With both Jewish and Catholic law, it was to prevent families from dumping their disabled members into a tough job that would kill them. (The testicles thing was supposed to prevent the pagan Middle Eastern custom of having a eunuch priesthood created by surgery on poor boys with desperate families, with all the accompanying temptations to bad stuff that happened among large groups of eunuchs. The Byzantines ended up with tons of eunuch bureaucrats, and you can read history about how that worked out.)

Of course, many disabled people got dispensations if they truly had a calling to the priesthood. For example, the Jesuit priest saint who had his fingers cut off during his missionary work in North America was given a dispensation to say Mass despite his injuries.

Today, there are not as many formal rules, but priests, brothers, sisters, and nuns all have to prove that they are healthy enough to engage in their given vocations before they are allowed to be ordained or take vows, unless they receive dispensations from part of the requirements for some good reason. Different places have different requirements; for example, there are orders specifically designed for disabled people wanting to be religious.

But yes, being a priest is hard work, and a lot of priests still die on the job. I know one who died while getting ready to go out his door to say Mass one morning.

 

[Thorolfr]

Re: Jewish requirements for priests – Actually, Catholic canon law did use to say that priests had to be perfect of body. With both Jewish and Catholic law, it was to prevent families from dumping their disabled members into a tough job that would kill them. (The testicles thing was supposed to prevent the pagan Middle Eastern custom of having a eunuch priesthood created by surgery on poor boys with desperate families, with all the accompanying temptations to bad stuff that happened among large groups of eunuchs. The Byzantines ended up with tons of eunuch bureaucrats, and you can read history about how that worked out.)

Leviticus doesn’t say that disabled people can’t be priests because it might be too hard for them. It says that such people can’t enter the tabernacle because someone with a physical blemish would “profane my sanctuaries”. As my commentary on Leviticus says, it’s the same reason that all animals offered for sacrifice had to be “unblemished” otherwise God would not accept them. It has to do with the fact that God, according to Leviticus, didn’t want blemished people or blemished animals or someone with a disease or who was ritually “unclean” because they had touched a menstruating woman or a dead body or had eaten pork to enter the tabernacle. I would like to know, however, why God would make someone a dwarf, for example, and then say that this dwarf is unfit to enter His presence as a priest in the tabernacle?

Since I seriously doubt that God would ever really prohibit people with physical blemishes or diseases from entering His tabernacle, I have doubts that texts such as Leviticus are really inspired by God. I therefore have doubts that God would also believe that women are unfit to be priests and doubt the texts used to support that reasoning.

 

[phil19034]

It seems there have been women priests at various points in the Church’s history.

romancatholicwomenpriests.org/RCWP_Resource.pdf

For example,

I’ve reviewed that website before. It’s totally nonfactual (and/or twisting the facts) and 100% dedicated to their heterodox agenda.

They often also claim that the Church used to ordain Deaconesses, which the Church did not. However, the Church did use Deaconesses (wives of Deacons) during baptisms when the Church practice naked, full body immersion. The Deaconesses would baptize the naked women, so the men would not have to do it.

This did not require an ordained person because the Church does not require ordained priests or deacons to baptize anyone. Lay people can baptize validly (though not always licitly)

 

[adrift]

. I therefore have doubts that God would also believe that women are unfit to be priests and doubt the texts used to support that reasoning.

The reasoning is NOT that women are unfit you have built a straw man. God chooses who serves Him. He did not choose Mariam a very capable and good women. Why God wants only men as priest is not known to me. I know that it is true. I know the reason that they are unfit is false.

 

[adrift]

It seems there have been women priests at various points in the Church’s history.

romancatholicwomenpriests.org/RCWP_Resource.pdf

For example,

INTER INSIGNIORES addressed this

The Catholic Church has never felt that priestly or episcopal ordination can be validly conferred on women. A few heretical sects in the first centuries, especially Gnostic ones, entrusted the exercise of the priestly ministry to women: This innovation was immediately noted and condemned by the Fathers, who considered it as unacceptable in the Church

Move forward in time say five hundred years. Someone points to our time to prove that women were ordained. Would it be proof that there were priestesses? No because what is missing it that it was not accepted, not now not then. It would be impossible to address each thing that was raised in the article. Suffice it to say that what they present is misrepresented.

 

[ericc]

Peter Kreeft has a talk on Priestesses.

This is a very summarised transcript of that talk “Why Only Boys Can Be the Daddies” from a blog (url below)

1. Reasons of Authority

There are 3

God- The Church did not create the Priesthood, she received it from God, the Author. The Catholic Priesthood was not the first priesthood he created, he did it twice before with the Jews, but that is neither here nor there.

The Catholic Church claims LESS Authority than any other Christian Religion. The word Authority means “Authors Rights”. Where Protestants feel they have the ability to change or deny any doctrine they see fit (The reason there are 33,000 different Denominations), the Catholic Church knows that they do not, because they don’t get to decide how God thinks, only God does. It is this reason that the Catholic Church is so conservative. Times change, God does not and the Catholic Church knows that. The Catholic Church therefore cannot change the Priesthood because they are not it’s author or its editor.

Christ- As God created the Priesthood of Old, Christ Fulfilled the Priesthood in the New Testament by choosing his Apostles. But why did he choose only Male Disciples? The popular idea is that Christ bowed to cultural norms of the day that said that women were weaker and lesser than men. But to say that Christ was restrained by cultural limitations is a Heresy and a denial of the Incarnation. Can you really accuse Christ of the Sin of Sexism? Can you honestly believe that Christ was limited by his Culture? Christ breaks and offends his cultural norms with regularity in the Gospels, most of them being of greater importance than sexism. For instance, when he told his disciples to eat with unwashed hands or to drink his blood.

Jesus chose his Priests.

Church- The Jewish and Catholic Churches are the only ancient religions to have an exclusively male priesthood. All other religions of the times has priestesses of some kind. The Jewish Church was the first Church to exclusively use Masculine imagery for God and the priesthood reflects that.

Also, There is no evidence in the New Testament or the early church of female Priests. In fact, St. Paul indicated the exact opposite. The Church has said no to priestesses not only from her beginning but through the years and still today. The Church has spoken clearly, publicly, Authoritatively and Magisterially. The Church has spoken the case is closed. The main issue is not whether the Church will have Priestesses, but whether or not those seeking them will have the Church.

1. Reasons of Sexual Symbolism

Everything that God creates point beyond itself. Especially Sex and Sexuality. God deliberately created man and woman to reflect trinitarian love in the same way that God deliberately incarnated himself as a male. Jesus Christ is still a male today and he still has his male body in heaven.

Priests must be male because Christ is male. When the Priest says the words"This is my body/blood given up for you" that is not merely him speaking but Christ. Christ Literally speaks through that Priest, and because Christ is a male, so must the Priest also be.

For the rest of the transcript
thegingercatholic.blogspot.com/2010/04/why-only-boys-can-be-daddies.html

 

[Pulvis]

There are numerous references in the epistles as to who can lead the church, and what the requirements for deacons, priests and Bishops are. No where are women allowed to lead. St. Paul goes so far in one epistle, 1 Corinthians i think, to state that women are to remain silent in church. I know this does not go over well in the modern age, but it is there in the canon of scripture. I believe that the women priest argument lessens all of the contributions that women have made both in the old testament and in the Christian era.

 

[commenter]

Dogmas tend to be explained mainly in response to a contemporary challenge. Certain aspects of the Eucharist weren’t defined until 1000 years after Christ - because they were taken for granted, didn’t need to be explained explicitly until the challenge came. That didn’t mean the Eucharist was not believed long before. Of course it was. The Early Church Fathers were writing mainly to counter or defend or respond to questions that were then coming up.

The OP has made a distinction between early church fathers, and heretics. That is a useful distinction, but that’s the Magisterium’s distinction, which you are (prudently) recognizing. This guy was deemed an Early Church Father, and that guy was deemed a heretic. For that matter, this book was accepted by the Magisterium as a canonical gospel, and that book was rejected as not canonical - by the Magisterium.
Some other authority might put all the Magisterium’s ECFs on the “heretic” list, and the Magisterium’s heretics on the list of the *real * ECFs. That process is sort of happening now actually, with the New Testament canon, also.

If you see that the Magisterium is authoritative on some things (accepting Jerome as an ECF, rejecting the Gospel of Thomas as non-canonical), you might also see St JP II Magisterial teaching on the topic of ordination as also authoritative. It’s the same Holy Spirit.

 

[Vico]

Hello All,

I’m doing some private research on women’s ordination in the early church, specifically how the earliest church fathers (before the Council of Nicea) viewed the role of women in the church.

So far, I’ve been unable to find anything that specifically explains why women cannot be priests, and the few times the fathers do make mention of it (that I have found), the women are often involved with heretical groups and it’s hard to tell whether they are being criticized because they are women or because they are heretics (usually gnostics).

I have no doubts that women were not allowed to be priests in the early church, but I’m trying to find any evidence at all that explains why the church fathers held this view. Does anyone have good information to provide? Thanks!

And by the way, yes, I’ve seen this post: catholic.com/tracts/women-and-the-priesthood

The tract doesn’t really give any explanation for why they oppose the practice, and as I said before, in many of these examples, they are dealing directly with heretics (usually gnostics). One exception may be one of the quotes from Tertullian, but that’s all.

Deaconesses were ordained, however Holy Orders were clarified more recently in the Latin Church.

From the end of the third century onwards, in certain regions of the Church60 (and not all of them), a specific ecclesial ministry is attested to on the part of women called deaconesses.61 This was in Eastern Syria and Constantinople. Towards 240 there appeared a singular canonico-liturgical compilation, the *Didascalia Apostolorum *(DA), which was not official in character. It attributed to the bishop the features of an omnipotent biblical patriarch (cf. *DA *2, 33-35, 3). He was at the head of a little community which he governed mainly with the help of deacons and deaconesses. This was the first time that deaconesses appeared in an ecclesiastical document.
…
[Syria 380 A.D.] Deaconesses took up their functions through an *epithesis cheirôn *or imposition of hands that conferred the Holy Spirit,65 as did the lectors (*CA *8, 20, 22). The bishop pronounced the following prayer: "Eternal God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, creator of man and woman, who filled Myriam, Deborah, Anne and Hulda with your spirit; who did not deem it unworthy for your Son, the Only-Begotten, to be born of a woman; who in the tent of witness and in the temple did institute women as guardians of your sacred doors, look now upon your servant before you, proposed for the diaconate: grant her the Holy Spirit and purify her of all defilement of flesh and spirit so that she may acquit herself worthily of the office which has been entrusted to her, for your glory and to the praise of your Christ, through whom be glory and adoration to you, in the Holy Spirit, world without end. Amen."66

…

At Constantinople the best-known of the fourth-century deaconesses was Olympias, the superior of a monastery of women, who was a protegee of Saint John Chrysostom and had put her property at the service of the Church. She was “ordained” (cheirotonein) deaconess with three of her companions by the patriarch. Canon 15 of the Council of Chalcedon (451) seems to confirm the fact that deaconesses really were “ordained” by the imposition of hands (cheirotonia). Their ministry was called *leitourgia *and after ordination they were not allowed to marry.
vatican.va/roman_curia/co…conate_en.html

 

[steve_b]

Wow you must have read all of those excerpts fast.

Why bogus?

I can’t add to what others have already said on this.

 

[Pulvis]

Deaconesses were ordained, however Holy Orders were clarified more recently in the Latin Church.

From the end of the third century onwards, in certain regions of the Church60 (and not all of them), a specific ecclesial ministry is attested to on the part of women called deaconesses.61 This was in Eastern Syria and Constantinople. Towards 240 there appeared a singular canonico-liturgical compilation, the *Didascalia Apostolorum *(DA), which was not official in character. It attributed to the bishop the features of an omnipotent biblical patriarch (cf. *DA *2, 33-35, 3). He was at the head of a little community which he governed mainly with the help of deacons and deaconesses. This was the first time that deaconesses appeared in an ecclesiastical document.
…
[Syria 380 A.D.] Deaconesses took up their functions through an *epithesis cheirôn *or imposition of hands that conferred the Holy Spirit,65 as did the lectors (*CA *8, 20, 22). The bishop pronounced the following prayer: "Eternal God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, creator of man and woman, who filled Myriam, Deborah, Anne and Hulda with your spirit; who did not deem it unworthy for your Son, the Only-Begotten, to be born of a woman; who in the tent of witness and in the temple did institute women as guardians of your sacred doors, look now upon your servant before you, proposed for the diaconate: grant her the Holy Spirit and purify her of all defilement of flesh and spirit so that she may acquit herself worthily of the office which has been entrusted to her, for your glory and to the praise of your Christ, through whom be glory and adoration to you, in the Holy Spirit, world without end. Amen."66

…

At Constantinople the best-known of the fourth-century deaconesses was Olympias, the superior of a monastery of women, who was a protegee of Saint John Chrysostom and had put her property at the service of the Church. She was “ordained” (cheirotonein) deaconess with three of her companions by the patriarch. Canon 15 of the Council of Chalcedon (451) seems to confirm the fact that deaconesses really were “ordained” by the imposition of hands (cheirotonia). Their ministry was called *leitourgia *and after ordination they were not allowed to marry.
vatican.va/roman_curia/co…conate_en.html

Thanks for the link. Very interesting. It is noteworthy that it is clearly stated that the deaconess position was for ministering to women, and had no liturgical funtions.

" Despite the similarities between the rites of ordination, deaconesses did not have access to the altar or to any liturgical ministry. These ordinations were intended mainly for the superiors of monasteries of women."

“It should be pointed out that in the West there is no trace of any deaconesses for the first five centuries. The Statuta Ecclesiae antiqua laid down that the instruction of women catechumens and their preparation for baptism was to be entrusted to the widows and women religious “chosen ad ministerium baptizandarum mulierum”.71 Certain councils of the fourth and fifth centuries reject every ministerium feminae72 and forbid any ordination of deaconesses.73 According to the Ambrosiaster (composed at Rome at the end of the fourth century), the female diaconate was an adjunct of Montanist (“Cataphrygian”) heretics.74 In the sixth century women admitted into the group of widows were sometimes referred to as deaconesses. To prevent any confusion the Council of Epaone forbade “the consecrations of widows who call themselves deaconesses”.75 The Second Council of Orleans (533) decided to exclude from communion women who had “received the blessing for the diaconate despite the canons forbidding this and who had remarried”.76 Abbesses, or the wives of deacons, were also called diaconissae, by analogy with presbyterissae or even episcopissae.77”

 

[Thorolfr]

Dogmas tend to be explained mainly in response to a contemporary challenge.

Like the challenge of women who are tired of patriarchy? According to Merriam-Webster, the definition of patriarchy is:

“social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line; broadly : control by men of a disproportionately large share of power.”

 

[dmar198]

Like the challenge of women who are tired of patriarchy? According to Merriam-Webster, the definition of patriarchy is:

“social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line; broadly : control by men of a disproportionately large share of power.”

By that definition of patriarchy, I don’t think Catholicism is patriarchal at all. Rather, I think it has been instrumental in bringing legal and political equality to women.

• The Catholic Roman Empire’s laws explicitly recognized female equality in 565 A.D.
• Catholic Spain’s laws gave equal property rights to women in 643 A.D.
• Catholic France’s laws explicitly recognized female equality in 650 A.D.
• Italy’s laws gave equal property rights to women in 650 A.D.
• Catholic Ireland’s laws gave equal property rights to women sometime before 704 A.D., at the urging of St. Adamnan, who fasted for eight years and stood before eight different kings demanding equal treatment for women.

Women acquired seats at the western imperial courts, and an accompanying right to vote on legal matters, in the 900s A.D.

Catholic thinkers of the Scholastic period, like St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, and Peter Lombard, wrote about the spiritual basis of female equality and cited Adam and Eve (before the Fall) as an example.

~1150 A.D. - Peter Lombard - “[A]lthough woman was made from man…she was formed not from just any part of his body, but from his side, so that it should be shown that she was created for the partnership of love, lest, if perhaps she had been made from his head, she should be perceived as set over man in domination; or if from his feet, as if subject to him in servitude. Therefore, since she was made neither to dominate, nor to serve the man, but as his partner, she had to be produced neither from his head, nor from his feet, but from his side, so that he would know that she was to be placed beside himself whom he had learned had been taken from his side.” (Sentences Book 2 Distinction 18)

Catholics were also early leaders in creating schools for girls, in upholding the literary and spiritual contributions of female Catholic authors and saints, and in university education for women.

Catholicism has a history of helping women acquire civic and spiritual equality with men. Many of the laws mentioned above explicitly cite religious reasons as the basis for male and female equality. By the definition of patriarchy you gave, Catholicism seems very big on equality, not patriarchy.

Source:

Catholic History & Women’s Equality: A Timeline
historyandapologetics.com/2015/02/catholic-history-womens-equality.html

 

[Vico]

Thanks for the link. Very interesting. It is noteworthy that it is clearly stated that the deaconess position was for ministering to women, and had no liturgical funtions.

" Despite the similarities between the rites of ordination, deaconesses did not have access to the altar or to any liturgical ministry. These ordinations were intended mainly for the superiors of monasteries of women."

“It should be pointed out that in the West there is no trace of any deaconesses for the first five centuries. The Statuta Ecclesiae antiqua laid down that the instruction of women catechumens and their preparation for baptism was to be entrusted to the widows and women religious “chosen ad ministerium baptizandarum mulierum”.71 Certain councils of the fourth and fifth centuries reject every ministerium feminae72 and forbid any ordination of deaconesses.73 According to the Ambrosiaster (composed at Rome at the end of the fourth century), the female diaconate was an adjunct of Montanist (“Cataphrygian”) heretics.74 In the sixth century women admitted into the group of widows were sometimes referred to as deaconesses. To prevent any confusion the Council of Epaone forbade “the consecrations of widows who call themselves deaconesses”.75 The Second Council of Orleans (533) decided to exclude from communion women who had “received the blessing for the diaconate despite the canons forbidding this and who had remarried”.76 Abbesses, or the wives of deacons, were also called diaconissae, by analogy with presbyterissae or even episcopissae.77”

Your first quote refers to the eighth century. In the east in the fourth century and later: “Ordained abbesses of the monasteries of women, the deaconesses wore the * maforion*, or veil of perfection. Until the sixth century they still attended women in the baptismal pool and for the anointing. Although they did not serve at the altar, they could distribute communion to sick women.”

One reason for a deaconess not teaching can be seen it the writings of st. Paul and St. John Chrysostom:

New American Bible (NABRE)1 Timothy 2:11-14 11 A woman must receive instruction silently and under complete control. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man. She must be quiet.13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14 Further, Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and transgressed.
St. John Chrysostom writes that Eve mad bad use of her equality with Adam and therefore God made her subject to her husband: If it be asked, what has this to do with women of the present day? It shows that the male sex enjoyed the higher honor. Man was first formed; and elsewhere he shows their superiority. “Neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman for the man.” 1 Corinthians 11:9 Why then does he say this? He wishes the man to have the preeminence in every way; both for the reason given above, he means, let him have precedence, and on account of what occurred afterwards. For the woman taught the man once, and made him guilty of disobedience, and wrought our ruin. Therefore because she made a bad use of her power over the man, or rather her equality with him, God made her subject to her husband. “Your desire shall be to your husband?” Genesis 3:16 This had not been said to her before.

But how was Adam not deceived? If he was not deceived, he did not then transgress? Attend carefully. The woman said, “The serpent beguiled me.” But the man did not say, The woman deceived me, but, “she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.” Now it is not the same thing to be deceived by a fellow-creature, one of the same kind, as by an inferior and subordinate animal. This is truly to be deceived. Compared therefore with the woman, he is spoken of as “not deceived.” For she was beguiled by an inferior and subject, he by an equal. Again, it is not said of the man, that he “saw the tree was good for food,” but of the woman, and that she “did eat, and gave it to her husband”: so that he transgressed, not captivated by appetite, but merely from the persuasion of his wife. The woman taught once, and ruined all. On this account therefore he says, let her not teach. But what is it to other women, that she suffered this? It certainly concerns them; for the sex is weak and fickle, and he is speaking of the sex collectively. For he says not Eve, but “the woman,” which is the common name of the whole sex, not her proper name.

newadvent.org/fathers/230609.htm

 

[Thorolfr]

Catholicism has a history of helping women acquire civic and spiritual equality with men. Many of the laws mentioned above explicitly cite religious reasons as the basis for male and female equality. By the definition of patriarchy you gave, Catholicism seems very big on equality, not patriarchy.

Then how do you explain this?

TURIN, ITALY Pope Francis has again publicly indicated he is not considering appointing women to leadership positions in the nearly all-male Vatican bureaucracy, saying to do so would be to promote a “functionalism” of women’s roles in the Catholic church.

But the pontiff has also indicated an equality in ministry between men and women in the church, saying that all women have the “same work” the Virgin Mary had in receiving the Holy Spirit along with the twelve apostles at Pentecost.

While Francis has said he is not considering the question of women’s ordination, many have asked if he might be considering appointing more women to leadership positions in the Vatican bureaucracy. There is currently only one woman serving at leadership level among the various church offices.

ncronline.org/news/vatican/francis-again-rejects-women-heads-vatican-offices

Surely not all leadership positions in the Vatican bureaucracy require ordination and could also be done by women?

 

[jinc1019]

I’ve a hunch that it may not be written anywhere. In the early Church, writings were typically letters from one place or person to another and they addressed whatever the concern was. It was taken for granted that men were the presbyters and it wasn’t challenged except by heretics. The why from the Early Church Fathers would likely be scripture. Jesus ordained the 12. He didn’t include anyone else. In explaining it to a protestant you could say “This is how Jesus did it, and that’s how we continue to do so. Maybe it’s a tradition we hold too tightly, but we believe this is instituted divinely.” Of course give all the usual explanations about in persona Christi, etc. but I don’t know that you’ll find a “why?” in the writings of those Fathers pre-nicaea.

Thanks for this. You may be right.

 

[jinc1019]

This doesn’t at all address the question, but I appreciate your time.