Despite representing a very significant contingent among the faithful, historically the role of women in the Catholic Church has been relegated to a secondary level: priestly functions, for example, can only be performed by men.
However, in Christianity it was not always like this.
A look at the first Christian communities allows us to understand that female participation used to be greater in them, especially before religion became allied with the Roman State, becoming official.
According to contemporary historians and theologians, two aspects of early Christianity stand out for this variable: in them, women had equal roles with men, despite the patriarchal mentality present in these societies.
They even held positions equivalent to that of priests.
Its about Marcionismestablished by Marcion of Sinope (85-160) and the montanismofounded by a theologian who probably lived in the second half of the 2nd century, known simply as Montanus.
Ivone Gebara, philosopher, theologian, feminist and religious of the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady, warns, however, that when observing these movements it is necessary to understand that many of them “are at odds with the tradition of Catholicism and classical Protestantism.” ”.
Marcionism “placed women on equal terms with men, naming them deacons, priests, and even bishops.””says religious scientist Ana Cândida Vieira Henriques, PhD from the Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB), in an academic article published in 2017.
In the text, titled “The female priesthood: the Holy See in the face of contemporary challenges,” Vieira Henriques adds that this prerogative was due to the “radical Paulinist” characteristic (associated with the beliefs, doctrines and writings of the apostle Paul) of Marcionism.
Marcion was the son of a religious leader considered bishop of the city of Sinope, in a Roman province located in what is now Turkey, and began his career as an assistant on his father’s team.
He immersed himself in the studies of those still incipient Christian texts and, little by little, He began to think that the way religion was developing was not compatible with the teachings of Jesus..
He lived in Rome between the years 142 and 143 and there he developed his theological system and began to attract followers.
Among its main points was a total break with Judaism. He did not understand Christianity as a continuity, but as another religious idea.
For Marcion, The God of the Jews could not be the same as the God of the Christianssince the message in the Hebrew texts – today contained in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible – presents an angry and vengeful superior being, while Jesus announced a loving and always forgiving God.
“The God of the Jews was, for him, an ethnic god, without balance, who did not know love, a very bad God,” historian André Leonardo Chevitarese, professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, explains to the BBC. (UFRJ) and one of the authors of the book “Judaism, Christianity and Hellenism — Essays on Cultural Interactions in the Ancient Mediterranean”.
Marcion was the first to worry about organizing a canon of Christian texts. Many remember his writings as an embryo of what would become the Bible.
But since they excluded everything that seemed to him contaminated by Jewish tradition, he included only the Gospel of Luke, since according to him the references to the ancient prophets and Israel were interpolations that had been inserted a posteriori into the original text.
The religious included, in a special way, Paul’s letters in his collection. In fact, 10 of them, not the 13 in the current Bible (although today many researchers maintain that only seven were legitimately written by him).
“According to Marcion, Paul was the only one among the great leaders of Christianity who had understood the radicality of the most fundamental content of Jesus’ message.,” theologian and philosopher Pedro Lima Vasconcellos, professor at the Federal University of Alagoas (Ufal) and former president of the Brazilian Association for Biblical Research, explains to BBC News Brazil.
This point is very important because it sheds light on how supporters of this aspect understand female participation.
In the letters of Paul, author of what are considered chronologically the oldest known texts about Jesus, there is a notable appreciation for women.
In one of these epistles, the one to the Galatians, Paul clearly says that after baptism in Christ there should be no more divisions and everyone should be treated equally, regardless of conditions.
“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for you are all one in Jesus Christ.”, he states.
And in the letter addressed to the Romans, the missionary greets Junia, a woman who, according to the text, would be part of the group of “eminent apostles.”
“In Paul we can see women not only as wealthy matrons who financed the movement, but as prominent leaders and missionaries. “Women played a decisive role in the extension of the movement to non-Israelites and, in general, were always the first Gentiles to convert,” explains anthropologist Fabiola Rohden, professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), in her master’s thesis “Feminism in the sacred.”
So, The followers of Marcionism treated men and women equally, without distinction.
“For this reason, these churches are credited with recognizing the female role exercised on equal terms with male leadership,” says Vasconcellos.
“The Marcionites emphasized femininity as the sphere of creation, while masculinity symbolized transcendence,” Rohden explains.
Chevitarese highlights that female participation was one of the points considered heretical in the Marcionite message.
“It was a time in which attempts were made to dialogue with the Roman Empire, with movements following Jesus without Jesus, in which hierarchies and phallocracies were the norms. How do you treat a man who, despite being competent, puts women in elevated roles?” says the expert.
For Vasconcellos, “the Marcionite proclamation produced a true earthquake in Rome and in the network of Christian communities of the time.”
Furthermore, the specialist believes that the very construction of the Christian canon, expanded, modified and consolidated over the following centuries, occurred as a reaction to the ideals of Marcion.
“The Bible as we know it is, to a large extent, indebted to the Marcionite project that rejected the acceptance of the Jewish scriptures,” he says.
“The shot backfired because the result is that we have the constitution of a Bible that incorporates these writings, but calls them Old Testament, in reaction to Marcionism.”
The New Testament would also have been influenced by their beliefs.
There are traces that the Marcionite communities maintained their activities for at least four or five centuries, thanks to the network of communities over which Marcion exerted influence.
But this feminist reading of the Christian message was not a privilege of the Marcionites.
As Rohden points out, if Jesus had a revolutionary stance toward the status quo and sought to defend the disadvantaged, then women, seen as inferior in that patriarchal society, were among those who should be welcomed.
“Jesus calls the oppressed to join his kingdom, and the most oppressed of the oppressed are women”, he argues.
According to his interpretation, among the social breaks necessary to become a disciple was also to abstain from any hierarchy related to gender roles.
The anthropologist explains that this factor was important in the first centuries of Christianity, when the Church was illegal, persecuted and clandestine. During this period, communities needed to meet in the homes of their faithful.
“The ‘domestic church’ offered, due to its location, equal opportunities for womensince traditionally this area was their domain and they were not excluded from the activities that took place there,” he emphasizes.
“The Jesus movement did not have priests (at that time) and there was cooperation between women and men that came out of institutional schemes,” says theologian Gebara.
“We don’t know exactly what that was like. We develop hypotheses that give us some justification for what we are looking for. There is no way to repeat or rescue this past that is so distant and so manipulated by the powers of this world. Our analyzes and decisions must be anchored in justice, in law and above all in our current needs.”
Montanism, a trend that emerged shortly after Marcionism, also valued the female role.
This side was founded between the years 156 and 172 by a religious man known as Montano, who He shared leadership with two women, Priscila and Maximila, who performed priestly functions..
The history of Montanus and his group was recorded in the book “Ecclesiastical History”, published in the 4th century by Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea (265-339).
“Those two women who accompanied Montano were prophets, priests,” says historian Gerson Leite de Moraes, professor at Mackenzie Presbyterian University in Sao Paulo.
Before converting to Christianity, Montanus had been a priest serving the cult of the god Apollo, who in Greek mythology is represented as the solar deity.
Experts believe that this may explain how they came to have different interpretations of Christianity.
“Some of his behavior shows that he never freed himself from those convictions,” says Moraes.
The movement that Montano led had a reformist and fundamentalist character, and sought a reconnection with the original message of Jesus.
“He was against a certain monarchical episcopate that was beginning to organize itself,” comments the historian.
In their group, the active participation of women was common, not only of the two main priestesses.
“In this sense, copied the female priesthood that existed (in the cult) of the god Apollo”, he concludes.
