If you walk into most churches in 2015 you’d likely see a male leading the service. This is due to the fact that there are many verses in the Bible where it explicitly says that women cannot be a minister. Recent evidence seems to prove that there are multiple instances of priestesses in Christianity. The release of the Catacomb of Priscilla released a Pandora’s box of inquiries on whether women were heads of churches. The author, Rosemary Joyce, says yes, women are and have been leading churches since the dawn of religion.
In ancient images we can clearly see that women are wearing stoles, her head was covered and she was in the quintessential priest pose of images for that time period. Everything a male priest would wear. Why then would a woman in the very same garb, not be considered a priest? There are also Latin and Greek texts that used the titles “head of the synagogue”, “leader”, and “priestess” to identify women. The Vatican deems this evidence and the uncovering of the Pricilla Catacomb as mere fairytales.
This article speaks volumes about the role of women in modern society as well as in ancient society. The ancient society seems to have revered women more as intellectuals than we do today. It is important to note that there is undeniable proof that as the church became more misogynistic, evidence of women being priests were written out of history. This is true for Phoebe, a Christian minister whose role in the church was lowered and redefined for the sole purpose of erasing female religious heads from history. We are living in a society who does not value women as much as a men. The Vatican likes to reference the Bible to prove that this attitude towards women is okay, but who’s to say that men did not alter that as well, to make it more favorable for them? Who’s to say that we are not living in society based on values written…or rewritten by male chauvinists?