Tag Archives: inclusion of women in church

Bishop Theodora – 9th Century Female Bishop!

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Paul Collins. ‘Theodora the Bishop’: Pope Francis and Women Deacons

 

Episcopa_Teodora

Santa Prassede is famous for its stunning mosaics over the high altar and in the small, extraordinary Chapel of Zeno. In the north lunette of the chapel there are four women who, in the Byzantine way gaze directly at you. The slightly taller one is Mary with her blue veil. She is surrounded by the sisters Praxedes (after whom the church is named) and Prudentiana. But it’s the first woman who stands out. She has an unusual rectangular nimbus (halo) around her head which means she was still alive when the mosaic was created. An inscription in gold lettering identifies her as ‘Theodo[ra] Episcopa’, ‘Theodora the bishop’. She was Paschal I’s mother, but that isn’t why she was called episcopa.

Episcopa means woman ‘bishop’, ‘presbyter’, or ‘elder’. This suggests that she exercised authority in the church equivalent to men who had the same title. The problem is tying down exactly what these titles meant at the time and what function Theodora fulfilled.

 

Read the full post at “Pearls and Irritations“

The meaning of ordination and how women were gradually excluded | National Catholic Reporter

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Two points are important to make about the development of leadership roles in the church in the period from the fifth to the 13th centuries. First, the definition of ordination changed radically during the 12th century. Second, women were considered capable of ordination up until the 13th century. This having been said, it is important to understand what ordination meant from the fifth to the 13th centuries. Only then can we understand what it meant to ordain women during that period.

During the first millennium of Christianity, ordination meant election by and installation of a person to perform a particular function in a Christian community. Not only bishops, priests, deacons and subdeacons but also of porters, lectors, exorcists, acolytes, canons, abbots, abbesses, kings, queens and empresses were all considered equally ordained. This makes perfect sense. An ordo (order) was a group in the church (or society) that had a particular job or vocation. In fact, any job or vocation was called an “order,” and the process by which one was chosen and designated for that vocation was an “ordination.”

To quote Cardinal Yves Congar, the French Dominican theologian who died in 1995 at age 91, “Ordination encompassed at the same time election as its starting point and consecration as its term. But instead of signifying, as happened from the beginning of the 12th century, the ceremony in which an individual received a power henceforth possessed in such a way that it could never be lost, the words ordinare, ordinari, ordinatio signified the fact of being designated and consecrated to take up a certain place, or better a certain function, ordo, in the community and at its service.” Ordination did not give a person, for instance, the irrevocable and portable power of consecrating the bread and wine, or of leading the liturgy, but rather a particular community would charge a person to play a leadership role within that community (and only within that community) and he or she would lead the liturgy because of the leadership role they played within the community. So any leader of a community would be expected to lead the liturgy.

Source:  National Catholic Reporter

Early women leaders: from heads of house churches to presbyters | National Catholic Reporter

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The earliest references to local resident leaders in the Pauline churches are Philippians 1:1 and Romans 16:1-2. Paul addresses his letter to the community at Philippi with their episkopoi and diakonoi(both masculine plural titles in Greek, both terms borrowed from secular leadership). These are the terms that later came to mean “bishop” and “deacon.” The episkopoi cannot mean here “bishop” as we understand it because there are many in one community. The role of the diakonoi also had not yet evolved into that which was later understood as deacon. The revised edition of the New American Bible translates the words as “overseers” and “ministers” and acknowledges in a note that the later development had not yet taken place.

Masculine plural forms are used in Greek to refer either to groups of men or to groups of mixed gender. In Romans 16:1-2, Paul introduces to the letter’s recipients a woman named Phoebe, a benefactor who is also a diakonos of the church at Cenchreae, one of the seaports of Corinth. Thus we know that women could hold this title at the time, and therefore the diakonoi in Philippi could be a mixed group. If the episkopoi of Philippians were heads of house churches, as seems likely, it is not impossible that some of them were also women (for example, Nympha in Colossians 4:15).

The account in Acts of the Apostles 6:1-6 of the apostles choosing seven men to take care of table service is usually considered the origin of the office of deacon, yet no one in the story is called diakonosand the apostles appoint them for the diakonia of the table so that the apostles can devote themselves to the diakonos of prayer and the word. All perform diakonos of different kinds.

Source:  National Catholic Reporter

Francis’ female deacon commission brings hope, caution | National Catholic Reporter

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Pope Francis speaks during an audience with the heads of women’s religious orders in Paul VI hall at the Vatican May 12. (CNS/Paul Haring)

Pope Francis’ announcement Thursday to create a commission to examine the history of female deacons in the Catholic church has left many longtime advocates with a sense of hope, joy and drive moving forward in their efforts to enhance female leadership in the church.

“I am standing on my head, I am happy, I am crying,” Deborah Rose-Milavec, executive director of FutureChurch, told NCR in a phone interview Thursday morning. “It is just a historic breakthrough of enormous proportion and the implications are far-reaching, as far as what women will be able to take on in the church.”

Rose-Milavec said while the pope is likely to run into opposition from members of the Roman Curia and some theologian and scripture scholars, she does not believe it will deter him. “I don’t have any doubts about it. … No concerns,” she said of the opposition. “The UISG spoke very directly about this to him, and I think when he makes a promise to them in that way, it’s not going to go away.”

Source: National Catholic Reporter

Global women religious leader asks them to do synod’s unfinished work | National Catholic Reporter

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The leader of the umbrella group for some 600,000 global Catholic women religious has said that in the wake of this month’s Synod of Bishops the women are called to carry forth the pastoral work that the official church is sometimes not able to do.Maltese Sr. Carmen Sammut — who participated in the Oct. 4-25 Synod as one of 32 women who took part in non-voting roles alongside the 270 prelate-members — said the women religious should engage with people church institutions may not even know need help.”I think that we should not give up our role at the frontiers of the church,” said Sammut, who heads the International Union of Superiors General (UISG).

Source: Global women religious leader asks them to do synod’s unfinished work | National Catholic Reporter

Three new female Catholic bishops ordained in Delco

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NETHER PROVIDENCE >> More than 40 years ago, when Bridget Mary Meehan was an Immaculate Heart of Mary sister teaching in Delaware County parish schools, she was forming the foundation that eventually led her to becoming a bishop with the Associ

Source: Three new female Catholic bishops ordained in Delco