Please listen to the interview attached at the end of this blog with Mr. Jimmy Carter. It is so important.
It is in fact so important, that it should be showed in every school, every class, every home - and discussed over every dinner table. It is all about educating ourselves and learn! It is about opening our eyes and ears, and actually deal with the reality of our world. If not, we cannot change what needs to be changed.
You can also read the open letter from Mr. Carter himself via this link or you can read his book A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power (2014). It's a very powerful and educative read.
What is important to mention about this open letter, is the fact that Mr. Carter makes it very clear, that female priests and women as spiritual authorities, did indeed exist during early Christianity! (They existed up until around year 500.)
Mr. Carter's words do indeed support, that I was very right in the questions I asked as my discoveries unfolded whilst walking the Camino. As you probably can guess, this is one of the many reasons why I titled my book The Hidden Camino, but theres more!
Another person who has written about women in Early Christianity is Alex Mar. Some time ago, I read Mar's blog article about the Rebel Virgins and Desert Mothers in early Christianity and felt I had shared it here on my own blog. The Rebel Virgins and Desert Mothers is a deep and brilliant historical article which again supports the large - growing - amount of evidence there is about these early spiritual female leaders of the Christian faith.
According to Alex Mar, these women had permission to live beyond their gender as the leaders and patrons of local congregations, as preachers and ecstatic prophets and tough ascetics. They defied Roman family laws and rejected the limitations put on their gender by society.
I have doubt that Mary Magdalene and so many other women who followed down the path of history, did the same. We know of Esclarmonde the Great and the Cathars, the Beguine movement, Hildegard von Bingen and the growing modern movement of Catholic Women reclaiming their rights to become priests and bishops - just to name some examples.
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