Bart, as far as I know (I have no time to study in depth Thomas) he declared
that a male fetus becomes after 40 days and a female fetus after 80 days
human.
But that refers only to that what Theosophy labels the lower self. As far as
I know Thomas denied that women have a divine soul.
That's the reason why he also said that women exists mainly to serve the men
and give birth to children and to keep house - not to serve God, which is a
privileg of the man.

Thomas also added that a woman is inferior to man (i.e. lack of the divine
soul). That is the common convinction in the Catholic church and the
rationale why women cannot become priests: they possess no divine soul,
therefore have no connection to God and cannot to the work of a priest.

He also wrote that women are a blunder of nature, not created according to
the image of God, therefore it is the natural order of a woman to serve the
man. The full expression of the human kind is only possible in a man's body,
the women is a corrupted, mistaken man.

For this reason the synod of Paris in 846 A.C. decided that no priest must
enter a room where a woman is to be.

And the synod of Coyaca in 1050 decided that in the neighbourhood of a
church no woman must live.

And the 2nd synod of Toledo in 589 decided that a priest who hosts a woman
under suspicion must be punished and the woman sold into slavery by the
bishop.

The synod of Elvira, 4th Century, decided that woman must not write nor
receive letters.

Clemens said before 215 that a woman, thinking of her own being must be
ashamed.

There was another church teacher, John Chrysostomos (in greco-German
rendering), who said that women mainly exist to satisfy the horniness of
men.

Pope Pius II. (1405-1464) said: If you look at a woman, consider, it is the
devil! She is a kind of hell!

Buddhist monks is not allowed to give a woman the hand because they are
unclean.

I think that Theosophy teaches similiar in its higher teachings, but popular
Theosophy looks as is men and women are equal.
GdeP elsewhere said (I am looking for the text I read some years before) -
perhaps in one of his circulars - as warning for future theosophists that
women may not get leaders in the TM for the next some hundreds of years
because of their lack of the divine soul and their attraction to the lower
astral world.

Frank

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bart Lidofsky" <bartl@...>
To: <theos-talk@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, August 14, 2005 5:17 PM
Subject: Re: Theos-World Does a Clone have a Soul?


Frank Reitemeyer wrote:
> Bart, did you ever hear of Thomas of Aquinas?

Yes. He declared that the soul entered a baby girl at the 80th day
after conception.

I actually found a case of a bishop who, in a Synod in France in 585
AD, brought up the possibility that women didn't have souls based on
wording in the Vulgate translation, but, after a discussion, it was
decided that the problem was in the translation, not the theology, and
that it was clear that women, indeed, have souls.

Bart