Hi David – I couldn’t agree more with your former student when she says that scripture and theology can be reconciled by reference to the teachings of Jesus and preachings of Paul (see other Comments on this subject). Specific “barriers” in the Old and New Testaments have also been rigorously reviewed by scholars of all stripes – archaeological, anthropoligcal, linguistic, literary, what have you – and certain denominations and confessions have adjusted their practices accordingly. At least, that’s how I understand the process. Is your former student perhaps a Biblical scholar and reviewing these “barriers” in her scholarship? If you havea chance tobring the subject up again with her, let us know what she says.

Hi, Genia. And thank you for your own insightful observation about growing up Roman Catholic in Poland. (It’s our secular world’s gain and the Polish church’s loss that you kept on being a rebellious female.)I know what you mean about the feeling of being unwelcome at the altar – or, in my case, the Sanctuary. I vividly remember the Sunday morning when, having passed around the collection plate (I think it was a basket, actually) for the Children’s Collection, I took the offerings to the side door off the Sanctuary and was practically hissed at by an old man at the door who brusquely shooed me away as though I was the carrier of a contagious disease. Perhaps it was my parents who then explained that girls and women aren’t allowed in that space, so much so that the only image of a female permitted on the Sanctuary walls is that of the Mother of God. I took the prohibition so much to heart that even when I have been absolutely alone and far from any person who could see me, as in the tiny nave of a village church in Greece, I haven’t dared to step inside the Sanctuary, just to see.

Thanks, JP, for the long view. However, I’m not sure which church you mean by “our” church. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church founded in Kyivan-Rus, or the one we established as settlers in western Canada, or the one tolerated by Constantine back in the day, or the one in full-throttled Byzantium…But I take your point about the theology around heterosexuality and gendered roles – as being antithetical to any ecological mission the Church has undertaken. Patriarch Bartholomew has been consistently and persistently teaching us that “creation is an intricate web of life, and the actions of human beings can either develop or destroy it.” (He said this most recently in a Keynote Adress to the Arctic Circle Assembly in Rejkjavik, October 13.) But I wonder if he’s ever named population control as even a partial “solution”? In any event, you ask the important questions about whether Orthodoxy can change once again, under pressure of planetary crisis. As for the role of women, in spite of all the societal advances and women’s contributions, I am in despair that our Church feels absolutely no need to respond. It’s as if our Hierarchs would rather go down with the ship (and, brothers, it’s listing rather badly) than bring women on board: “All hands on deck!”

Hi Alice. Yes, Apostolic Times, traditionally the Age of the Apostles, who knew Christ but whose Gospels were written, of course, ages later. so to speak. This puts us back to Paul, who wrote much earlier and who seems, by his own accounts, to have had lots of women in his house-churches. I wonder what “rituals” they may have had for the women and men who preached and taught and blessed the bread and wine? Why don’t our Churches go back to that Age when Paul, in Letter to the Romans (a genuine Pauline Epistle) thanks those women who “labour for the Lord’s work” and he didn’t mean in the kitchen!

Thank you, Heather, for weighing in, and letting us know something about Mary Schaefer. I wonder where she got her chutzpah in even hoping for elevation to the priesthood in the RC Church? As for doing something about it in our times, there are many churches that do ordain women – most recently the Anglicans in Canada in 1976 and in England in 1994 and some Evangelical Lutherans since 1970 in the USA -and therefore are able to expand their spiritual resources compared to the churches failing demographically. For Catholic and Orthodox women, of course, who have a call, this means having to leave their church. Such a one is my friend Marie-Louise Gomers, about-to-be-ordained an Anglican priest but in whom still beats a “Catholic heart.” She blogs at https://graceatsixty.wordpress.com/

Hi Helen, as you can see from my response to Ruth, I am actually a fan of St Paul – which doesn’t mean that I am comfortable or enthusiastic about everything he says but that, as a flailing-about Christian, I find him endlessly interesting, and human. If I were a lot younger, I would enrol in Pauline Studies somewhere. And if I were alive when he was preaching, I’d join his followers, women like Thecla….What are your own thoughts on the man?

Hi Ruth, thanks for checking in. I’ll take my time to get to Paul because there’s a new book about him I’ve discovered in the library of the Benedictine Abbey where I am currently installed on a short retreat. (The Letters of Paul: Conversations in Context, by Calvin Roetzel, a professor of Religious Studies in St Paul, Minn.) But you’ve anticipated some of what I want to say – about being defensive in response to feminist critiques, and about his context. The first reading I did which prompted my post-feminist revisionist views was about the authenticity of the Epistles -only some of which are genuinely his(the good ones:-) – and I’ve read quite widely since, e.g. Garry Wills’ What Paul Meant. As for the menstrual flow business. I know the Orthodox Church gives this as a reason why women are not admitted into the Sanctuary, and this is based on Judaic Ritual Purity, I believe. Here’s Wiki on the subject: “Any object she sits on or lies upon during this period is becomes a ‘carrier of tumah’ (midras uncleanness). One who comes into contact with her midras, or her, during this period becomes tamei (ritually impure) (Leviticus 15:19-23)” I’m not aware of Paul having ever invoked Leviticus on this subject, are you? He did re homosexuality…Anyway, I find the (Christian) Orthodox prohibition unpersuasive: what about the non-menstruating or post-menopausal woman? Ifeel another blog post coming on….