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NaasPreacher (C4K) · Jan 12, 2004

Originally posted by Harley4Him:
Hi all, this is a topic that I've been interested in for a while. There was a Catholic nun and abbess named Brigid who had some authority over men. I did a web search and found this blurb from an online Catholic Encyclopedia at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02784b.htm:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />She founded two monastic institutions, one for men, and the other for women, and appointed St. Conleth as spiritual pastor of them. It has been frequently stated that she gave canonical jurisdiction to St. Conleth, Bishop of Kildare, but, as Archbishop Healy points out, she simply "selected the person to whom the Church gave this jurisdiction", and her biographer tells us distinctly that she chose St. Conleth "to govern the church along with herself". Thus, for centuries, Kildare was ruled by a double line of abbot-bishops and of abbesses, the Abbess of Kildare being regarded as superioress general of the convents in Ireland.
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Modern archaeological scholarship is also revealing that women in the early church played a more prominent role than many are aware. </font>[/QUOTE]I live in Kildare and am very familiar with the veneration of Brigid. There is WAY too mush mysticism and what borders on Brigid worship here. She also supposedly threw out her cloak which expanded to cover all of what is now County Kildare. With Brigid, like so much other early Irish history, fact and fiction often blur.

Harley4Him · Jan 12, 2004

Are you saying that the catholic encyclopedia's claim that she selected a bishop is incorrect?

NaasPreacher (C4K) · Jan 12, 2004

I am simply saying that 5th century Irish history is a blur of fact and fiction. The Celtic Church rejected Rome's authority until it was forced on them by the English Pope Adrian and King Henry (the II, I think.

Harley4Him · Jan 12, 2004

How about Egypt? (quotes taken from http://www.womenpriests.org/traditio/otran_2.htm)

An ancient Coptic prayer of commemoration for the departed reads: “...Remember the bishops, the priests, the deacons, the subdeacons, the readers, the monks, the gatekeepers, the exorcists, the continent, the women who exercise the diaconate, the eunuchs, the virgins, the widows...”

Zanetti’s translation correctly recovers the significance of the Coptic verb ‘diakonein’ referring to the women, for whom he theorizes a true and proper diaconal service.

It is also interesting to note that in the prayer, all the grades of the hierarchy are mentioned, sacramental and non- sacramental.

In conclusion, Zanetti, on the basis of other testimonies as well, concludes that the female diaconate was present also in Egypt.
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Or Pope Gelasius (Baptists, keep in mind that this Roman Catholic pope

An ancient Coptic prayer of commemoration for the departed reads: “...Remember the bishops, the priests, the deacons, the subdeacons, the readers, the monks, the gatekeepers, the exorcists, the continent, the women who exercise the diaconate, the eunuchs, the virgins, the widows...”

Zanetti’s translation correctly recovers the significance of the Coptic verb ‘diakonein’ referring to the women, for whom he theorizes a true and proper diaconal service.

It is also interesting to note that in the prayer, all the grades of the hierarchy are mentioned, sacramental and non- sacramental.

In conclusion, Zanetti, on the basis of other testimonies as well, concludes that the female diaconate was present also in Egypt.
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Or Asia Minor

In the Orient, in Asia Minor, in Gnostic and Montanist settings in particular, records of women with the functions of presbyters or of bishops, which the Church had condemned, have been found up to the second century
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Baptists, keep in mind that these Montanists with their femal bishops are you ancient Trail of Blood ancestors. This leads to an interesting question, at what point in Baptist history did Baptists follow the lead of the popes and ban the ordination of women?

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