Women in the Catholic Church

Women play significant roles in the life of the Catholic Church, although excluded from the Catholic hierarchy of bishops, priests, and deacons. In the history of the Catholic Church, the church often influenced social attitudes toward women. Influential Catholic women have included theologians, abbesses, monarchs, missionaries, mystics, martyrs, scientists, nurses, hospital administrators, educationalists, religious sisters, Doctors of the Church, and canonised saints. Women constitute the majority of members of consecrated life in the Catholic Church: in 2010, there were around 721,935 professed women religious. Motherhood and family are given an exalted status in Catholicism, with The Blessed Virgin Mary holding a special place of veneration.

Biblical perspective

Prominent women in the life of the church have included Old Testament figures, the Jesus' mother Mary, and female disciples of Jesus of the Gospels. Motherhood is given an exalted status within the Catholic faith, with Mary the Mother of Jesus officially known as Queen of Heaven. The special role and devotion accorded to Mary and Marian devotion has been a central theme of Catholic art. Conversely, the role of Eve in the Garden of Eden and other biblical stories affected the development of a Western notion of woman as "temptress".

Educational perspective

Through its support for institutionalised learning, the Catholic Church produced many of the world's first notable women scientists and scholars – including the physicians Trotula of Salerno (11t
h century) and Dorotea Bucca (d. 1436), the philosopher Elena Piscopia (d. 1684) and the mathematician Maria Gaetana Agnesi (d. 1799). Of the 36 recognized Doctors of the Church, four are women (all of whom were recognized after 1970): German mystic Hildegard of Bingen, Spanish mystic Teresa of Ávila, Italian mystic Catherine of Siena, and French nun Thérèse de Lisieux. Other Catholic women have risen to international prominence through charitable mission works and social justice campaigns – as with hospitals pioneer St Marianne Cope and Mother Teresa who began by serving the dying destitute in India.

Church influences

The Catholic Church has influenced the status of women in various ways: condemning abortion, divorce, incest, polygamy, and counting the marital infidelity of men as equally sinful to that of women.Noble, p. 230.Stark, p. 104. The church holds abortion and contraception to be sinful, recommending only natural birth control methods. The role of women in the church has become a controversial topic in Catholic social thought. Christianity's overall effect on women is a matter of historical debate – it rose out of patriarchal societies but lessened the gulf between men and women. The institution of the convent has offered a space for female self-government, power, and influence through the centuries. According to some modern critiques, the Catholic Church's largely male hierarchy and refusal to ordain women implies "inferiority" of women. New feminism and feminist theology deal extensively with Catholic attitudes towards women. Yet, the Blessed Virgin Mary remains the most important human figure in the Catholic church after Jesus Christ who is regarded also as true man.

Historical development

Early Christianity

The New Testament which deals with this era refers to a number of women in Jesus' inner circle – notably his mother Mary (for whom the Catholic Church holds a special place of veneration) and Mary Magdalene who discovered the empty tomb of Christ. The church says that Christ appointed only male Apostles (from the Greek ''apostello'' "to send forth").

The New Testament is instructive of the attitudes of the church towards women. Among the most famous accounts of Jesus directly dealing with an issue of morality and women is provided by the story of Jesus and the woman taken in adultery, from verses of the Gospel of John. The passage describes a confrontation between Jesus and the scribes and Pharisees over whether a woman, caught in an act of adultery, ought to be stoned. Jesus shames the crowd into dispersing, and averts the execution with the famous words: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." According to the passage, "they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last", leaving Jesus to turn to the woman and say "go, and sin no more." This passage has been immensely influential in Christian philosophy.

Jesus' own attitude to women is found in the story of Jesus at the house of Martha and Mary. The Gospels suggest Jesus broke with convention to provide religious instruction directly to women. Mary sits at Jesus' feet as he preaches, while her sister toils in the kitchen preparing a meal. When Martha complains to Mary that she should instead be helping in the kitchen, Jesus says that, "Mary has chosen what is better" ().

According to historian Geoffrey Blainey, women were probably the majority of Christians in the 1st century after Christ. The 1st century Apostle Paul emphasised a faith open to all in his Letter to the Galatians: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Jesus Christ."

Other writings ascribed to Paul appear to both recognise women leadership in the early Church () and to put limits upon it (). According to the Book of Acts, the early church attracted significant numbers of women; many of these were prominent in cultures that afforded women more substantial roles than Judaism did and they shaped the church. According to Alister McGrath, Christianity had the effect of undermining traditional roles of both women and slaves in two ways:

# By asserting that all were "one in Christ", regardless of whether they were Jew or Gentile, male or female, master or slave.
# By asserting that all could share in Christian fellowship and worship together, again regardless of status.

McGrath describes Paul's egalitarian approach as "profoundly liberating" in that it implied new freedoms for women. McGrath comments that, although Christianity did not effect an immediate change in cultural attitudes towards women, the influence of Paul's egalitarianism was to "place a theoretical time bomb under them." He asserts that, ultimately, "the foundations of these traditional distinctions would be eroded to the point where they could no longer be maintained." Similarly, Suzanne Wemple notes that, although Christianity did not eliminate sexual discrimination in the late Roman Empire, it did offer women "the opportunity to regard themselves as independent personalities rather than as someone else's daughter, wife, or mother."

Women commemorated as saints from these early centuries include several martyrs who suffered under the Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire, such as Agnes of Rome, Saint Cecilia, Agatha of Sicily and Blandina. Similarly, Saint Monica was a pious Christian and mother of Saint Augustine of Hippo who, after a wayward youth, converted to Christianity and became one of the most influential Christian theologians of all history.

While the Twelve Apostles were all male, and there is much debate about the beliefs of early church leaders such as St Paul, women were known to be very active in the early spread of Christianity.

The tradition of a ritual form of the consecration of virgin women dates to the 4th century, although it is widely held that a more informal consecration was imparted to virgin women by their bishops dating from the time of the Apostles.
The first known formal rite of consecration of virginity is that of Saint Marcellina, dated AD 353, mentioned in ''De Virginibus'' by her brother, Saint Ambrose. Another early consecrated virgin is Saint Genevieve (c. 422 – c. 512).

Medieval era

In 735, the Latin Church, but not the Eastern Churches, decided that women must be allowed to attend liturgies and receive Holy Communion during their menstruation.

Women religious have played an important role in Catholicism through convents and abbeys, particularly in the establishment of schools, hospitals, nursing homes and monastic settlements, and through religious institutes of nuns or sisters such as the Benedictines, Dominicans, Sisters of Saint Francis, Loreto Sisters, Sisters of Mercy, Little Sisters of the Poor, Josephites, and Missionaries of Charity.

As Western Europe transitioned from the Classical to the Medieval Age, the male hierarchy with the Pope as its summit became a central player in European politics. However, many women leaders also emerged at various levels within the Church. Mysticism flourished and monastic convents and communities of Catholic women became powerful institutions within Europe. Marian devotion blossomed, setting a model of mercy and maternal virtue at the heart of Western civilization.

Petra Munro contrasts the early Christian Church as being inclusive of women as opposed to the medieval Church, which she describes as being "based on a gender hierarchy". The historian Geoffrey Blainey, however, writes that women were more prominent in the life of the Church during the Middle Ages than at any previous time in its history, and they initiated a number of church reforms. The Belgian nun, St Juliana of Liège (1193–1252), proposed the Feast of Corpus Christi, celebrating the body of Christ in the Eucharist, which became a major feast throughout the Church. In the 13th century, authors began to write of a mythical female pope – Pope Joan – who managed to disguise her gender until giving birth during a procession in Rome.

Blainey cites the ever-growing veneration of the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene as evidence of a high standing for female Christians at that time. The Virgin Mary was conferred such titles as Mother of God and Queen of Heaven and, in 863, her feast day, the "Feast of Our Lady", was declared equal in importance to those of Easter and Christmas. Mary Magdalene's Feast Day was celebrated in earnest from the 8th century and composite portraits of her were built up from Gospel references to other women Jesus met.

According to historian Shulamith Shahar, "some historians hold that the Church played a considerable part in fostering the inferior status of women in medieval society in general" by providing a moral justification for male superiority and by accepting practices such as wife-beating.Shahar (2003), p. 88. "The ecclesiastical conception of the inferior status of women, deriving from Creation, her role in Original Sin and her subjugation to man, provided both direct and indirect justification for her inferior standing in the family and in society in medieval civilization. It was not the Church which induced husbands to beat their wives, but it not only accepted this custom after the event, if it was not carried to excess, but, by proclaiming the superiority of man, also supplied its moral justification." Despite these laws, some women, particularly abbesses, gained powers that were never available to women in previous Roman or Germanic societies.Shahar (2003), p. 12.

Although historians have argued that church teachings emboldened secular authorities to give women fewer rights than men, they also helped form the concept of chivalry. Chivalry was influenced by a new Church attitude towards Mary, the mother of Jesus.Shahar (2003), p. 25. This "ambivalence about women's very nature" was shared by most major religions in the Western world.Bitel (2002), p. 102. The development of Marian devotions and the image of the Virgin Mary as the "second Eve" also influenced the status of women during the Middle Ages. The increasing popularity of devotion to the Virgin Mary (the mother of Jesus) secured maternal virtue as a central cultural theme of Catholic Europe. Art historian Kenneth Clarke wrote that the 'Cult of the Virgin' in the early 12th century "had taught a race of tough and ruthless barbarians the virtues of tenderness and compassion."

Women who had been looked down upon as daughters of Eve, came to be regarded as objects of veneration and inspiration. The medieval development of chivalry, with the concept of the honor of a lady and the ensuing knightly devotion to it, was derived from Mariological thinking, and contributed to it. The medieval veneration of the Virgin Mary was contrasted to disregard for ordinary women, especially those outside aristocratic circles. At a time when women could be viewed as the source of evil, the concept of the Virgin Mary as mediator to God positioned her as a source of refuge for man, affecting the changing attitudes towards women.

In Celtic Christianity, abbesses could preside over houses containing both monks and nuns (male and female religious), a practice brought to continental Europe by Celtic missionaries. Irish hagiography holds that, as Europe was entering the Medieval Age, the abbess Brigid of Kildare was founding monasteries across Ireland. The Celtic Church played an important role in restoring Christianity to Western Europe following the Fall of Rome, and so the work of nuns like Brigid is significant in Christian history. The abbess Hilda of Whitby was an important figure in the Christianisation of Anglo-Saxon England.

Clare of Assisi was one of the first followers of Saint Francis of Assisi. She founded the Order of Poor Ladies, a contemplative monastic religious order for women in the Franciscan tradition, and wrote their Rule of Life – the first monastic rule known to have been written by a woman. Following her death, the order she founded was renamed in her honor as the Order of Saint Clare, commonly referred to today as the Poor Clares.

According to Bynum, during the 12th-15th centuries there was an unprecedented flowering of mysticism among female members of religious orders in the Catholic Church. Petra Munro describes these women as "transgressing gender norms" by violating the dictates of the Apostle Paul that "women should not speak, teach or have authority" (). Munro notes that, although the number of female mystics was "significant", we tend to be more familiar with male figures such as Bernard of Clairvaux, Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas or Meister Eckhart

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