With New Pope, Catholic Women Hope To Regain Church Leadership Roles


Parishioners partake in the Way Of The Cross procession at the Colosseum on Good Friday in Rome. A group of women Catholics recently made a pilgrimage to Rome to request that women once again be allowed to hold leadership positions in the church.

The newly elected pope's focus on the poor and the marginalized has instilled great faith among many Catholic women. They hope the papacy of Pope Francis will promote a leading role for women in the church.

A group of American nuns and Catholic women recently made a pilgrimage to Rome to make their requests heard.

They visited ancient sites that provide evidence of the important leadership role women played in the early centuries of Christianity.

Sister Carolyn Osiek, a scholar of women's role in early Christianity, guided the pilgrims through Ostia, the ancient port city of Rome. The excavations help illustrate how people lived in the early centuries of the first millennium, when worship was still relegated mostly to private homes.

Ostia was the final stop on a pilgrimage to honor the many women who helped spread the faith at the dawn of Christianity.

The American women gathered on the steps of an old Roman theater and sang "Come Sophia," a prayer song in which God is evoked in a feminine metaphor: "Come Sofia, holy wisdom, gateway to eternity. Sacred source of all that is from long before earth came to be. In your womb the primal waters from below and from above gently rock your sons and daughters born to wisdom and to love."

Throughout the Mediterranean, inscriptions and images on tombstones, frescoes and mosaics provide compelling evidence that women held leadership and ministerial roles in the early church — roles identical to those held by men as prophets, priests and deacons.

These American pilgrims have visited catacombs where frescoes show women clothed in priestly vestments and celebrating the Eucharist.

"So certainly in the first two centuries, we see women — at least parts of the early communities — holding co-equal roles with men," says Sister Chris Shenk, executive director of the Catholic group FutureChurch, which organized the pilgrimage.


Sister Carolyn Osiek guides American pilgrims through Ostia — the ancient port city of Rome — for prayer and songs.


She says everything changed after the year 313, when women were pushed out of the public arena and lost their roles as officeholders.

"After Constantine made Christianity legal, worship moved from the house church into the basilicas and it became a public space where women's leadership was not as accepted because of the cultural norms of the time," Shenk says. "And so around that time you see more and more suppression of women in leadership roles."

The pilgrims also came to the ancient site to offer their individual prayers, reciting in unison: "We pray. Jesus prophet of wisdom lead and guide us ...."

Then one woman chimed in, "That all women may find their voice and realize its value."

Shenk stressed that "part of the power of our pilgrimage is that women's experience is validated not only in seeing women leaders in church archaeology, but it is also validated in prayer and often women do not experience that."

The pilgrimage ended at the Vatican, where the group handed over some 25,000 signed postcards and open letters, asking Catholic officials to help resolve the growing problem of the worldwide shortage of priests by allowing celibacy for men to be optional and by letting women once again be deacons.

Of course I don't believe such evidence exists, but I'd like to see the items (frescoes, etc.) they are trying to use as evidence. I've looked online and I haven't found anything in regards to photos of this "abundant evidence." Now, I know that has it's limitations, even then, as was said before they aren't finding this "evidence" in regards to false religions, either.

With New Pope, Catholic Women Hope To Regain Church Leadership Roles

Don't you think, as a matter of charity, that credits to the alleged article's source--and if not wire-service copy, the author--is overdue?  And even more importantly, its URL a.k.a. Web address*?  All those being details that should've been included with your original posting?  Or belatedly provided in your 2nd or 3rd posting?

For all we know now, seeing your posting dates, the alleged article might just be your idea of an April-Fool ruse designed to be convincing by being elaborate.

I also liked the first comment: [....]

Yes, what you excerpted, completely unidentified, was interesting.  But the "first" comment you see might not be the "first" I see.  You do know that some sites display the newest comment "first", sometimes the oldest "first", and sometimes only its editors' or algorithms' choices of "most popular", don't you?  And that that can differ depending on how each visitor's browser is configured?  So without any URL, we have no site to visit to be able to read the follow-up comments for ourselves.

-------
Note *: When any URL a.k.a. Web address is much longer than about 50 characters, please use Matthew's MbCode 'url' syntax to surround text that's reliably line-breakable, such as article headlines--but in particular, not URLs--so the whole topic, as displayed, doesn't get whacked out to an obnoxious width that's much wider than the computer screens that your readers can be expected to be viewing.  Original or follow-up posters who don't pay attention to that, tossing in 100-character URLs--or worse--as plain text, can make their own topic too much of a hassle for other members or visitors to bother to read.

With New Pope, Catholic Women Hope To Regain Church Leadership Roles


Parishioners partake in the Way Of The Cross procession at the Colosseum on Good Friday in Rome. A group of women Catholics recently made a pilgrimage to Rome to request that women once again be allowed to hold leadership positions in the church.

The newly elected pope's focus on the poor and the marginalized has instilled great faith among many Catholic women. They hope the papacy of Pope Francis will promote a leading role for women in the church.

A group of American nuns and Catholic women recently made a pilgrimage to Rome to make their requests heard.

They visited ancient sites that provide evidence of the important leadership role women played in the early centuries of Christianity.

Sister Carolyn Osiek, a scholar of women's role in early Christianity, guided the pilgrims through Ostia, the ancient port city of Rome. The excavations help illustrate how people lived in the early centuries of the first millennium, when worship was still relegated mostly to private homes.

Ostia was the final stop on a pilgrimage to honor the many women who helped spread the faith at the dawn of Christianity.

The American women gathered on the steps of an old Roman theater and sang "Come Sophia," a prayer song in which God is evoked in a feminine metaphor: "Come Sofia, holy wisdom, gateway to eternity. Sacred source of all that is from long before earth came to be. In your womb the primal waters from below and from above gently rock your sons and daughters born to wisdom and to love."

Throughout the Mediterranean, inscriptions and images on tombstones, frescoes and mosaics provide compelling evidence that women held leadership and ministerial roles in the early church — roles identical to those held by men as prophets, priests and deacons.

These American pilgrims have visited catacombs where frescoes show women clothed in priestly vestments and celebrating the Eucharist.

"So certainly in the first two centuries, we see women — at least parts of the early communities — holding co-equal roles with men," says Sister Chris Shenk, executive director of the Catholic group FutureChurch, which organized the pilgrimage.


Sister Carolyn Osiek guides American pilgrims through Ostia — the ancient port city of Rome — for prayer and songs.


She says everything changed after the year 313, when women were pushed out of the public arena and lost their roles as officeholders.

"After Constantine made Christianity legal, worship moved from the house church into the basilicas and it became a public space where women's leadership was not as accepted because of the cultural norms of the time," Shenk says. "And so around that time you see more and more suppression of women in leadership roles."

The pilgrims also came to the ancient site to offer their individual prayers, reciting in unison: "We pray. Jesus prophet of wisdom lead and guide us ...."

Then one woman chimed in, "That all women may find their voice and realize its value."

Shenk stressed that "part of the power of our pilgrimage is that women's experience is validated not only in seeing women leaders in church archaeology, but it is also validated in prayer and often women do not experience that."

The pilgrimage ended at the Vatican, where the group handed over some 25,000 signed postcards and open letters, asking Catholic officials to help resolve the growing problem of the worldwide shortage of priests by allowing celibacy for men to be optional and by letting women once again be deacons.

It was my impression that romans were dying out, in part, because they had embraced things like "women's lib."  So, I wouldn't be surprised if there is some truth to what she's saying.  Although, it does sound like catholic tradition ironed out those problems, which she seems eager to resurrect.  

Women's lib seems to be a fundamental rejection of the most basic elements of every successful culture that has ever existed.  Still, i've been told i'm too "pessimistic."  

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/03/us-pope-women-idUSBRE9320KZ20130403
(Reuters) - Pope Francis stressed the "fundamental" importance of women in the Roman Catholic Church on Wednesday, a message hailed as a significant shift from the position of his predecessor Benedict.

I think these radical women's libbers are setting themselves up for a huge disappointment. The Church cannot and will not ever ordain women priests.

In the early Church women were afforded a much greater say in Church politics. However as time progressed, it cannot be denied that as the Church became more and more dominated my men, it became somewhat misogynistic toward women and often treated them like second class citizens. For the most part they were excluded and not allowed any important roles or have any say in how things were run. They were allowed to be housekeepers for the priests, scrub the floors in the Church, and wash and press the altar linens but it was considered a sacrilege it they dared step foot on the altar. It wasn't until more recent times that the Church began to lighten up a bit and change its attitude for the better.  Increasingly, especially beginning with JPII, the Church began to stress the importance and dignity of women and what a vital role we play in the life of the Church.