text: "Your 2000+ tradition" is based on what facts?  From the days of Jesus Christ, it was the women who remained faithful to him, taught their children, and lived according to the Gospels.  They spread the gospel among their family members and friends.  
  
  Women were martyrs.  They were founders of monasteries.  They were mystics.  They were intellectuals.  But they didn't write history.  Men did and men promulgated themselves as the movers, shakers and builders.  But women were the cement that held all of this together.  
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  Ute E. Eisen, WOMEN OFFICEHOLDERS IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY EPIGRPHICAL AND LITERARY STUDIES, tr. Linda M. Maloney [Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 200]
  
  kevin Madigan & Carolyn Osiek, eds, 7 trs., ORDAINED WOMEN IN THE EARLY CHURCH: A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY [Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005]