Women at the Altar

As in all congregations of God's people, women should not address the meeting. They have no license to speak, but should keep their place as the Law directs. If there is something they want to know, they can ask their husbands at home. It is a shocking thing that a woman should address the congregation.

--St. Paul, First Letter to the Corinthians

IN his admonition to the Corinthian women, St. Paul was merely applying Jewish practice to new Christian congregations. But in the 19 centuries since, many Christian churches have followed the Pauline exhortation as if it were divine law. Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, the Anglican Communion and Lutheran churches have until now been especially slow to remove regulations barring women from a full role in the ministry.

U.S. Episcopalians seem at last to be willing to lower some of their own barriers; last week their General Convention approved the ordination of women deacons (see following story). U.S. Lutherans are removing restrictions against women in the ministry even more rapidly. Last June in Minneapolis, the liberal-leaning Lutheran Church in America became the first U.S. Lutheran body to announce that it would ordain women ministers. Late last week the moderate American Lutheran Church, at its own convention in Texas, did likewise. Indeed, the World Council of Churches recently reported that 70 denominations around the world have admitted women to the full ministry of "Word and Sacrament"--allowing them both to preach and preside over Communion services.

Chattel to Partner. Yet obstacles to full ecclesiastical equality for women still exist throughout a large part of Christendom. Eastern Orthodoxy, retaining its Middle Eastern traditions, is perhaps the slowest to accept women as equals. Women are completely barred, for instance, from even setting foot on the monastic peninsula of Mount Athos in northern Greece. Women also have a long way to go in Roman Catholicism and Judaism.

Roman Catholicism has helped both to elevate and subjugate women. Despite St. Paul's admonition about female silence, other passages of the Apostle's writings show that he expected women to take a prophetic role now and then. His reminder that "there is neither male nor female . . . in Christ" also helped to raise women from the level of chattel to partner. The early church had a specific office of deaconess. By the Middle Ages, when veneration of the Virgin Mary almost put her on the level of a goddess, religious orders had produced powerful abbesses who held their own in intellectual exchanges with men, as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales pointedly witnesses. Indeed, St. Catherine of Siena earned her major fame by talking the Avignon pope into moving the papacy back to Rome. Partially in recognition of this, Pope Paul VI recently named her, along with the 16th century mystic, St. Teresa of Avila, "Doctor of the Church" --a title hitherto bestowed only upon men.

Still, through the ages the Catholic image of woman has remained curiously dualistic. As German Catholic Scholar Hilda Graef has observed, the church's view of woman has tended either to be of her as mankind's temptress--Eve forever proffering the apple--or as a virginal mother figure. "She was placed on an inhuman pedestal," says Graef, "either in heaven or in hell."

Such thinking has effectively barred participation of women at many levels of Roman Catholic life. Just recently, women in the Miami archdiocese were reminded that, even if new Mass directives allowed them to act as readers during the ceremony, the regulations still forbade women to enter the sanctuary during services (a restriction often skirted in many other dioceses).

On higher levels, the discrimination is far more noticeable. Though the Vatican employs many women as clerks and typists, it recently refused to accept one--Frau Elizabeth Mueller--as a member of the diplomatic mission from Bonn. Rosemary Goldie, the Catholic daughter of an Australian Jew, is the first woman ever to hold a post in the Curia. She was appointed an Undersecretary of the Council on the Laity by Pope Paul in 1967.

The overall lack of female representation has caused religious orders of women, and laywomen, to fight for female equality. The ordination of women as priests is a long way off, if it ever comes, but a revival of the office of deaconess may not be so distant. More immediately, the National Council of Catholic Women is seeking smaller concessions, such as proportional representation of women on diocesan commissions.

Separate Worship. Like Catholicism, Judaism has traditionally treated women ambiguously. In the home, the Jewish mother is charged with considerable religious responsibility. She must not only preserve the ritual of celebrations but also see to it that her husband studies Halakhah, the body of Jewish religious law. Jewishness itself is determined by whether one is born of a Jewish mother, not of a Jewish father. Ancient Israel boasted seven women prophets, heroines such as Judith and Esther, and a judge, Deborah.

Yet the quorum for a religious service (minyan) is ten men, and--except among Reconstructionist Jews, who hold men and women equal--no number of women can make up for one absent man. In Orthodox synagogues, women are seated separately, and in Jerusalem they must worship separately at the Wailing Wall. Though women in Israel have fully equal secular rights and are even subject to compulsory military service, Orthodox control of such social institutions as marriage clearly favors the man. In the strict interpretation of the law, for instance, only a husband can grant a divorce. The Orthodox male attitude is perhaps best exemplified by his familiar daily prayer. "Blessed be thou, O Lord our God, for not making me a woman."

In the U.S., Reform Jews, the most liberal in observance of the three main Jewish groups, appear to be breaking some millennia-old barriers. In 1955, Mrs. Betty Robbins became the first known Jewish woman cantor. Now 24-year-old Sally Priesand, in her fourth year of study at Cincinnati's Hebrew Union College, is determined to become a rabbi--an innovation that even many Reform leaders oppose.

Uphill Campaign. The drive for ordination is not the final female hurdle. Although 47 women have been admitted to the Lutheran ministry in Sweden in the decade since women were first ordained there, not until next month will the first woman become a kyrkoherde, or head of a parish. Only government pressure, applied by the Minister of Religion, finally overcame male resistance to the appointment. Further government insistence may be the only recourse for 440 Swedish female theological graduates now eligible for ordination; some conservative bishops still adamantly resist ordaining women.

U.S. women may have to wage a similar uphill campaign. Yet religious history favors their cause. The U.S., after all, has a certain tradition of female church leadership, including, among the earliest, Mother Ann Lee, founder of the egalitarian Shaker sect. Mary Baker Eddy continued the tradition by founding the Christian Science movement (in which a majority of the "practitioners" and "readers" are women). Indeed, both the Christian Science churches and the Shakers challenge the traditionally male image of God the "Father," referring to God as both Father and Mother. In so doing, they anticipated the admonition of early 20th century Feminist Mrs. Emmaline Pankhurst, who told her followers how to keep up the good fight. "Trust in God," Mrs. Pankhurst advised. "She will provide."

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