Abstract

Eva Doppelbauer:
Can there be Female Doctors of the Church?
On the difference between Magisterium and Charism of Teaching
(FKTh 2019-1, p. 1–32)

When Pope Paul VI nominated the first two women «Doctors of the Church» in 1970, there had been before a clarification about the teaching charism of lay people and especially of women. We are not investigating a function of hierarchical Magisterium, but a charism in the realm of the common priesthood of all Christians. The gift of prophecy and the mystical encounter with God are important for it. The Pauline prohibition to teach, which is founded on a «command of the Lord”, refers to functions of predication related to the sacramental ordination. The article studies then the reception of the Pauline prohibition to teach in the time of the Fathers and in the Middle Ages. Diverse forms of teaching are explained. There is for instance the difference between doctrinal preaching and moral exhortation or between private and public teaching. According to these differentiations, we find examples of female teaching in the whole history of the Church.