Pope Soter

Hello and welcome back to the Pope Podcast. I am your host Scott Bosse. This is episode 13, titled Pope Soter.

Pope Soter was most likely born in the early part of the second century in a town called Fondi, located in Italy. Fondi is a rather small coastal town located in the province of Lazio region. This area sits in a small plain between the Ausoni and Aurunci mountains and Tyrrhenian Sea. This is all in the western coast of Italy, almost smack dab in the middle of the country. Historically, Fondi has been known as a major passage between Rome and Southern Italy. The region has been a big agricultural center, with roots dating back as for as 1000 BC. Today, Fondi boasts a population of approximately 35,000 residents. It is believed that Soter’s father was from Greece prior to settling in Fondi, and this tie to Greeks would remain a constant theme in Soter’s papacy later in life.

We are not sure about most of the events of Soter’s life leading up to his election as Pope around the year 166. Almost immediately upon taking his place as head of the Catholic Church, Soter began to act upon his Greek roots. You see, the Church had become fairly well established at this point in many regions throughout the Roman Empire. The Greek Church itself had grown to considerable size and influence to it’s native populations. One of Soter’s first acts as Pope was send a bunch of money collected in the offerings to the churchgoers and clergy at the Church of Corinth. The funds were meant to be distributed to the poor. This charitable act would be a common theme throughout Soter’s papacy, and the extent of his generosity and expression of thanks from the folks can be summarized in the following letter that was sent to Soter by the bishop of Corinth, a man named Dionysus:

“Right from the beginning, you introduced the custom of distributing to you brothers various benefits, and of sending to many churches scattered in individual cities the needed support. You thereby respond to the poverty of the wretched and you offer what the brothers who work in the mines really need.” He went on to add, “Bishop Soter has not only maintained that practice (of having a generous spirit like his forefathers), but has increased it be sending ample alms, consoling his afflicted brothers by his word and treating them like a father.”

So what we can already tell in our study of Soter is that he was obviously a very giving and compassionate man with a special affinity for the poor. This letter from Dionysus also points out the strong evangelical spirit that Soter embraced in his compassionate attitudes towards folks who were struggling with their faith.

In addition to his charitable works, Soter took a strong role in his work on behalf of the Church against the heretic philosophies that plagued the Roman Empire. An added challenge during Soter’s pontificate was the reality of persecution from the Roman elite themselves. Pope Soter found himself in an era of increased hostilities against the Christians by the Romans. This was due in large part to the increasing influence of Montanism and reign of Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

His most notorious act against the heresies of his day, and regarded by me as the starting point of the controversy of the role women play within the Church, was when Pope Soter decreed that women could no longer be able to touch the paten and chalice as well as forbid women to burn incense during ceremonies. While this decree appears to be quite sexist, there is a logical explanation as to why Pope Soter made this decree.

You see, up to this point women had played a very active role within the Church. A titled often bestowed upon active women in the Church was that of a deaconess. Deaconesses could trace their role within the Church to the times of St. Paul, who had women carrying his epistles to the Romans on his behalf. The traditional role of a deaconess had eventually grown to include responsibilities that included instructing young catechumens, helping women clothe and prepare for full immersion baptisms, assisting the Bishops in administering holy oil to the sick, washing and preparing women’s bodies for burial, transporting messages for Bishops in times of danger as well as doing chores for the Bishops and finally handing out alms in place of the deacons as needed. Typically deaconesses were widows between the ages of forty and sixty, and they were renowned for their diligence to their duties.

Well, some of the heretic philosophies of the day had begun to infiltrate the Catholic Church, and some deaconesses and priests began to seriously distort the nature their responsibilities. The deaconesses had gone from performing the duties mentioned above to all of a sudden living with the men, supposedly in a very strict and platonic way without any intimacy. In some situations, the deaconesses went from being widows in their forties to young women who began performing all sorts of chores around priest’s houses, including sleeping in their bed, apparently to help develop a stronger sense of their chastity. Well, Pope Soter got in there and said to them all “Yeah right, uh, uh, not gonna have it,” and he therefore felt compelled to limit the role of women in the Church. These increasingly inappropriate roles of women in ecclesiastical life became what was known as the tradition of sinisacte.

Although I can see Soter’s point, this did seem like a bit of a drastic step. It seems like he did not have much of a choice however. The Montanists were gaining ground in Rome, as well as a new philosophy with folks calling themselves Adamites. The Adamites were an obscure and relatively lawless sect of Christians who claimed to have regained Adam’s original innocence. And we are talking Adam of the Adam and Eve days and stories. These folks practiced something called “holy nudism” in which they took their clothes off while worshipping. The main tenet of this philosophy was that the concept of marriage was in essence a foreign concept to the Garden of Eden and would never have emerged if not for Original Sin. These folks basically tried to take themselves to the pre- sin days of Adam and Eve. They were like the original free- love hippies of the ancient world and lived a relatively lawless existence. They drew a lot of their beliefs from the Gnostics folks as well.

We don’t know much else about his papacy other than some brief entries I discovered stating that he declared marriage a sacrament that could only be blessed by a priest and that he made Easter a formal occasion to be celebrated every year from his time on.

Soter died around the year 175. Although he was originally believed to have been martyred, we now believe that is not the case and he is no longer officially listed as a martyr in the Catholic Church records. We are not really sure as to where exactly he was buried. There are stories of how his remains had been moved from location to location. At least part of them are believed to now be in the Church of St. Sixtus and another part of them in Toledo, Spain. Other sources used in this podcast also claim the remains to be in the cemetery of Calixtus. I am not sure what the whole story is behind how the remains were split like that. Pope Soter also has a feast day, which is celebrated on April 22.