January-February 2001

Macy: Women priests until 12th century

Belief that an absolutely consistent tradition in the Church bars women from the priesthood is crumbling under a mass of scholarly research. In fact, notes University of San Diego theologian Gary Macy in an article in Theological Studies last September, “For over 1,200 years the question of the validity of women’s ordination remained at least an open question. Some popes, bishops and scholars accepted such ordinations as equal to those of men; others did not.”

There are abundant references to the “ordination” of episcopae and presbyterae (women bishops and women priests), deaconesses and abbesses in Church documents from the earliest times. In those times, everyone agrees, the word ”ordination” had a wider and more ambiguous meaning than it has today. And Church officials have long declared that the term did not signify elevation to the clerical state or the right to confer sacraments. Episcopae and prebyterae, it was argued, were designations for the wives of male bishops and priests. But mounting evidence contradicts this, says Macy.

In the 10th century, for example, Bishop Atto of Vercelli wrote that in the early Church, because of a scarcity of workers, devout women were ordained to help men in leading worship, and that not only men, but also women presided over the Church because of the great need. A 9th century mosaic was dedicated to “Theodora Episcopa,” who, it has been established, was not the wife of a bishop. Other 9th century documents provide explicit descriptions of liturgies in which women assisted. Macy quotes one scholar: “It is certain that women could not have gained access to the altar without the acquiescence of the officiating bishop or priest. As for the people, they took bread and wine from the hands of women, so ordinary believers accepted the authority of certain women to administer the sacraments.”

Also active for centuries were abbesses who, according to Church documents, had the duty to preach, baptize, hear the confessions of their nuns and assign penances.

However, this liturgical activity of women was often a cause for controversy and was gradually over four centuries snuffed out. Documents from the 800s through the 1200s reveal growing hostility to women’s official ministry. Says Macy, “The 12th century was a watershed in the understanding of Christian ministry in the West. The separation between the roles of laity and minister widened as the ‘power‘ bestowed upon the minister in ordination became seen as absolutely necessary for the efficacy of many Christian rituals. A properly ordained minister became essential to the proper functioning of the ritual life of the community and indeed to salvation itself.” And the “power” came to be reserved to males only. Finally at the Council of Trent (1545-1563) the clerical exclusivity of males was set in stone.

Macy concludes with probing inquiries relevant for today. Was this ordination and liturgical activity of women through most of the Church’s history simply a mistake? And is the current, restricted understanding of ordination the only valid tradition for the Church? That is the position of the papal magisterium in the 20th century, says Macy. The magisterium has concluded that “certain periods [of history] and documents are normative and, more importantly, irreversibly normative. >From a historical point of view all other periods must be judged more or less incomplete, faulty, or flawed in relation to those normative periods and documents.”

But Macy is troubled by the absence of theological arguments to justify what is normative and what is not. He wonders, by way of example, why certain documents from the early Church and Middle Ages “are deemed to be normative, definitive and irreversible,” while “equally strong canonical legislation and practice from the first through the 19th centuries insisting that ordination must include the voice of the community for which one is ordained is not considered equally normative or definitive and has been reversed in papal appointments to episcopal office during this century.”