ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses church both as the community of Christian believers and as the established Catholic Church. The position of women in the Church is at present the subject of much attention. The ideas of these ancient Greeks and the language in which they are expressed have exercised a pervasive influence on our perception of the nature of woman and of male/female roles. The woman myth in very early Greek literature presents her as a source of evil and danger. The relationship between these myths and ideas, and women’s experience of reality, both in the Church and in the wider society, is not hard to trace. Ancient mythology and philosophy both present woman as inferior. Social, political and industrial change, which has occurred in the last three centuries, has forced a modification of women’s inferior status both within and outside the Church.
