[aculeus]

Discuss among yourselves.

[Slyfox]

I am too verklempt.

[gcruse]

"It's too late to change now."
                         --The Vatican

[B Knotts]

This smells an awful lot like the Anglicans trying to justify their priestesses after the fact.

[Neever]

However it plays out, you would never find Islam working to elevate the role of women in the church.

[adakotab]

As Junia, she was described by St Paul in a letter to the Romans as “prominent among the Apostles”.

Access Hollywood described Will Smith as "prominent among the NBA All Stars" - doesn't mean that Will Smith is a basketball player. I am not sold on this theory, although it may be true.

[B Knotts]

FYI BUMP

[tellw]

I think the justification for a celibate priesthood is greater than the justification for an all male priesthood. There are no physical limitations that can keep women from a priestly vocation.

[EternalVigilance]

Looks to me like someone with an ecclesiastical political agenda in search of scriptural justification to back it up.

I don't buy it.

[poet]

Hmm, Another re-write of history by feminists?

[Jhoffa_]

Now wait a minute.. We have a bonafied "deaconess" in the bible. But they are of course fudging on the female apostle?

Why? What purpose would it serve?

[muawiyah]

For many Christians this is not news nor is it structurally important. Simply by abolishing the office of Bishop, it is then possible for women to participate fully in church life anyway.

Many Protestant denominations did so in past centuries.

[foreverfree]

bump

[dodger]

Feminism & PC-dom aside, why does it sometimes (often) seem Paul succeed in a 'leveraged buy-out' of the Jewish reformation initiated by Jesus?

[narses]

Ping

[IncPen]

My knowledge of Christianity is somewhat smudged by years of intemperate Protestantism following a Catholic childhood, but the Monty Python view of this would no doubt be that she was a groupie, nothing more.

[parsifal]

What with the early Christian requirement that male converts be circumcised, I would not be at all surprised that women played a dominant role in the early church. parsy the sensitive.

[jwh_Denver]

bump

[Canticle_of_Deborah]

I'd like to see their Scriptural basis for this. There were 12 Apostles of Jesus. One betrayed him and was replaced (#13). St. Paul is considered an honorary 14th Apostle as he never was acquainted with Jesus in the flesh. There are no more Apostles, male or female. Zero, zip, nada. Where are they getting this?

We already know that women were prominent in the ministry of Jesus. Joanna, Mary Magdalene and other wealthy women were the patronesses of Jesus. We know there were many prominent female disciples and patronesses, but I have never seen anything anywhere naming them as Apostles.

[Conservative Chicagoan]

This sounds to me like feminist propoganda!

[Grig]

Wasn't there a female pope at one time?