Mary Magdalene: Elizabeth Johnson

I have been reading more of the eminent theologian Elizabeth Johnson, CSJ and am being changed with her deep readings of the Gospels , Acts and Epistles, pointing out the central role of women as leaders, and explicitly named as Apostles that was right there in the texts as those roles have been denied to women from the early centuries of Christianity.   I will note the irony of much of that evidence, really some of the strongest, coming from Paul's Epistles and, especially his repeated praise for women's role in preaching - she goes through the often cited passage in which Paul says women should be silent in, well they weren't churches, noting that he was giving his opinion on what was obviously an ongoing practice in the earliest church.   Considering the role of women in the ambient pagan cities he was writing to, that passage might have shown he was nervous about women being freed causing a reaction.   I can very well imagine that women taking leadership and preaching must have seemed even more outrageous to Roman era pagans and intellectuals than the idea of a risen Messiah.

This lecture is a good introduction to that part of her work that deals with revealing how the evidence of Womens' central role in the beginnings of Christianity has been buried or suppressed, though, aside from one woman's name being changed to a man's name, the evidence has been laying there in the text, in plain sight awaiting a hermeneutical method for seeing that evidence and, in fact, overt testimony. 

The recording is echoy (I turned it way down) but her voice is strong and her articulation is excellent so you can hear what she says.  I don't believe I missed a word.   I think that the signs are that this information has taken root and it will grow fast and really change large parts of Christianity.   The resistance to it has already been mounted, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops have condemned at least one of Elizabeth Johnson's books, though in her response she pointed out that she hadn't said what she was accused of saying and accused of holding positions she rejects.   The boys who don't like girls are nervous.   But they've done such a disastrous job and made such a mess of things that I don't think they have any credibility, certainly no moral credibility and no real arguments except a corrupted tradition that is as bogus as the view of Mary of Magdala that Gregory I gave the Western Church.