A bit of Catholic Church History… a true journey

“The fact that women were ordained for the first twelve hundred years of Christianity will surprise many people. It surprised me when I first discovered it.”

– “The Hidden History of Women’s Ordination: Female Clergy in the Medieval West” by Gary Macy 1

Church history, to some, might seem rather dry. But I guess that depends on what skeletons are discovered in the closets of our Church’s history. This book lets you in on the centuries-old scandal of our hierarchy’s selective memory on women’s priestly roles in our Church.

The sad fact is that the hierarchy does not see the question of women’s equality in our Church as an issue at all. They have completely closed the door to any religious sister or lay woman who receives a call to the priesthood. As their complicity continues, I want fellow Catholics to learn the actual truth of this matter for themselves. From our early Church history, we literally find a completely lost religious heritage of women priests. We certainly need to honor these past forgotten women religious by including them back into the lectionary readings in our Church. As my late pastor William G. Stanton, told me, “Canon law can be reversed by a stroke of the pope’s pen.”

As I ventured forward on my own trip into past Church history, I found it to be a journey of a provocative nature.

Sadly, our Church hierarchy continues to hide the truth of this matter. You and I, the people of God, assume we know the truth regarding the subject of women priests.

We all certainly know or have heard about the Church hierarchy’s stance on this issue. Until I started reading books dealing with biblical research of women priests found in our early Church, I was just like you are in believing there was no issue here, no need to question what is being told to us by the hierarchy.

I was stunned by the realization that our Church has been misleading us, the laity, on the actual truth of this matter for century after century, rather than telling us the real truth. This has caused a major division between fellow Catholics – those who don’t know the truth and those who do know the truth of this issue.