An abbot has the rank of a bishop. So also an abess has the rank of a bishop. Such decisions are unbelievable old. Perhaps we lost our courage and left a right way only because such a way needs thousands of years of patience and a strenuous hike in difficult terrain?
We always defended our women. Even in the crusades we had not been criticized because we had been cruel and brutal warriors - everyone else also had been so - but we had been criticized that we gave our women too much freedom. I'm very sure for my own that the freedom and power of women is an essential way of monotheism at all - but only we Christians and Jews realized it consequently.
Lady Gyburc for example - a figure of Wolfram von Eschenbach and very famous because of her tolerance speech - spoke within the circle of the highest representatives of the political world in her time. And no one was astonished that a noble Lady criticized this leading nobels. They argued at the same level of authority.
I fear we lost a part of our very old way because of lots of absurdities of history. If you take a look at old pictures to an old song ("Minne") - then you can see for example a male noble teaching a female noble how to hunt with the falcon. This was the most noble activity at all. Only the best were able to hunt with the falcon. And the noble Lady was seen to be totally on the same level.
If you should think you are old and you think "long" then you are maybe only wrong. And please - don't start now this stupid English game to fight out who's right or wrong. Ask god what's right or wrong and for example why god accepted the authority of Mother Mary for his own education. Why did god go this way - and not another way? For me, equality before God is beyond doubt. I am sure that God loves each individual human being more than we are able to imagine.
I stand here at your manger,
O Jesus, my life;
I come, bring and give you
what you have given me.
Take it, it is my spirit and mind,
heart, soul, and courage, take it all
and let it please you.
Before I was born,
you were born to me
and made me your own,
before I knew you, chosen.
Before I was made by your hand,
you had already decided
how you wanted to be mine.
I lay in the deep night of death,
you were my sun,
the sun that brought me
light, life, joy, and delight.
O sun, which brought the precious light
of faith into me,
how beautiful are your rays.
I look at you with joy
and cannot get enough of you;
and because I can do nothing else,
I remain standing in worship.
O that my mind were an abyss
and my soul a vast sea,
that I might comprehend you.
You do not ask for the pleasures of the world
nor for the joys of the flesh;
you have come to us,
to suffer in our place,
seeking the glory of my soul
through misery and poverty;
I will not deny you that.
But one thing, I hope, you will not deny me,
my Savior:
that I may carry you forever
in, with, and upon me.
So let me be your little manger;
come, come and lay yourself with me,
you and all your joys.
I think Ann Barnhardt’s argument is that the consecration of the host is akin to intercourse so gender matters.
I don’t like how she has politicized her message and shows disrespect to others, but it’s an interesting point she is making.

