Women and Holy Orders

Being the Report of a Commission appointed by
the Archbishops of Canterbury and York
Published by the Church Information Office, London. Dec. 1966

APPENDIX 3

Supplementary Essays

B. ECUMENICAL CONSIDERATIONS

by G. R. Dunstan

1 It is the purpose of this chapter to consider such information as has been available to the Commission from other Churches, either about their practice in admitting women to their ordained ministries and their reflection on the experience, or upon their reasoned attitude to the question if they have not. The consideration is important for us in two respects: first, in order that the Church of England may learn from other Churches, their tradition and their experience; and secondly in order that we may estimate the probable response of other Churches if this Church decided to admit women into Holy Orders.

2 The subject has engaged the attention of the World Council of Churches, and this in a way which illustrates clearly the double source of the contemporary interest in the ordination of women. The one source is the theological consideration of the nature of the Church’s ministry to God and to the world, and of the respective roles of ordained and non-ordained Christians within it—of what in short, until recent years, could have been called ‘ the clergy ’ and ‘ the laity ’ respectively without fear of misunderstanding. This consideration has been of interest to the World Council’s Department on Faith and Order. The other source is the theological consideration of sexuality, of the relationship between men and women in general and their complementary roles in life and in the Church. The prosecution of this interest has been the work of the Council’s Department on Co-operation of Men and Women in Church, Family and Society. Consequently the two Departments together prepared material for the Fourth World Conference on Faith and Order in Montreal, 1963, and subsequently published it under the title The Ordination of Women (Geneva, 1964). It is clear from the first paragraph of the document that these two theological streams converged in the life of the World Council as early as 1927, and that since then the second has been adding thrust and impetus to the first. Indeed, the first rhetorical question in the pamphlet, ‘ does the life of the Church adequately reflect the great truth that in Christ there is neither male or female? Does the Order of the Church adequately express this truth?’1 appears to pre-suppose the acceptance of one characteristic interpretation of that much-disputed text. Whether that interpretation is legitimate, or conclusive for the main question, is a subject which is discussed elsewhere in this Report: but its implied acceptance in this context, unargued, is significant. A Pauline silence may be enjoyed on women in some Churches; in the World Council of Churches it is not.

3 The several essays in the pamphlet do indeed make clear the very serious difficulties with which the subject of the ordination of women is surrounded. In the initial statement they are explicit: a few examples only are cited, from Sweden, Scotland and North India in particular, where the admission of women to the ordained ministry is a potential barrier to unity, and, indeed, to full communion, between churches; others could have been added. (A footnote elsewhere—p.36—gives the statistical position known to the World Council in 1958: in that year, out of 168 member Churches, 48 admitted women to ‘ the full ministry’, 9 to ‘ partial or occasional ministry’; 90 Churches did not admit them at all; 21 Churches did not answer the enquiry.) Two later essays on the attitude of the Orthodox Church affirm categorically that women cannot receive the sacrament of ordination in the Orthodox Church, and show how alien the suggestion is to its theological tradition.

4 Even more formidable are the difficulties implicit in the exegetical articles, one a report of a consultation organised by the Department of Co-operation between Men and Women, and another an examination of some New Testament texts. These are the difficulties of the theological debate itself, arising from the captivity exercised by unexamined assumptions over the consideration of the ‘ key ’ texts in Scripture and of the material elements in the tradition of the Church. No doubt this captivity can be alleged on both sides of the main question: but it can hardly be denied that the habit of mind formed over years of endeavour to minimise the disparity of influence between ‘ clerical’ and ‘ lay ’ on the one part, and between ‘ male ’ and ‘ female ’ on the other, has impressed upon the texts and upon the tradition an interpretation which minds less influenced by these campaigns spontaneously reject. Two examples may be given, from Dr Marga Buhrig’s examination of the question in the light of some New Testament texts. The first is her treatment of the catechetical outline of household morality sometimes called the ‘ code of subjection’, reflected in Eph. 5. 21ff, I Peter 2. 18ff, and elsewhere. Dr Buhrig’s leading comment is that this ‘ is based on a clear super-ordination of husband over wife, which is of course, like the whole social order of the day, patriarchal’ (p.43). This interpretation misses completely the point of the passage, which is the mutual submission enjoined in the governing verse, Eph. 5. 21, and which is then spelled out in the mutual relations of husband and wife, parent and child, slave and master (for it is the household which is envisaged, not the mere family, and certainly not mere marriage). The second example is in Dr Buhrig’s quotation (p.48) from another woman writer of a series of bitter rhetorical questions designed to disavow the perpetual dominance of a mute worshipping congregation by one clerical voice, that of a man; against which, on p.50, she sets her ideal relationship described as that of ministerial brother and sister. To the reader who has not encamped, as it were, with the campaigning force, these passages carry no conviction: sociologically they do not match the English scene—though whether they match a Continental one is another matter; and psychologically the pre-suppositions appear naive. It is only in the essay by the professional theologian, Professor Andre Dumas, that the detached reader of this sort finds a more objective analysis of the texts and of the tradition, with a balanced survey (pp.37ff) of its conclusion.

5 These reflections are offered, not as though in criticism of the pamphlet, but in order to exemplify the extreme difficulty even of examining the question of the ordination of women—to say nothing of commending it—at a time, on the one side, of ecumenical consciousness with its attendant requirements of caution and mutual consideration, and, on the other side, of such ferment— theological, ecclesiastical, sociological, psychological—that the very language of ecumenical exchange carries overtones which are themselves impediments to understanding.

II

6 The inter-play of some at least of these factors is seen in Switzerland itself. There each cantonal Church is independent. Most cantons give women a vote in Church affairs—while they are still without it in civil affairs—and most admit women to the ministry. But a minority of Churches do not. Hitherto, in a tradition of tolerated cantonal diversity, this difference has been of little account. But now, with a tendency towards impatience with ‘ cantonal Congregationalism ’, the few Churches which have not woman ministers are under persuasion to adopt them, on the ground that the majority want them. This movement in the Church is co-incident with a vigorous movement to secure for women an equality of civil and political rights with men; and it is a further co-incidence that the strongest champion for a revision of the place of women in the Church and its ministry, Dr Gertrude Heinzelmann (the author of Frau and Konzil, Hoffnung und Erwartung), writes from Zurich the home-city of Interfemina Verlag. Meanwhile, from Neuchatel, mid-way between Zurich and Geneva, and from within the Reformed tradition, there comes a vigorous theological protest against the ordination of women to the full pastoral ministry, in the writings of Professor J. J. von Allmen.(2)

7 Professor Von Allmen starts from the Reformed tradition which holds the ministry to be of the esse of the Church, not its bene esse; that is, it is a ministry from the Lord, through the Apostles, within the priesthood of all believers; it is not merely a ministry representative of that believing priesthood, not merely a full-time occupation for the specialist layman. Von Allmen can, therefore, give full justice to the baptismal significance of such texts as Galatians 3. 28, without conceding to them a decisive ministerial significance. On the contrary, he can argue that the Gospel, redemption—symbolised by baptism—is a vindication of the created order, not a rescue from it or a reversal or obliteration of what creation has established. Hence, all arguments which ground a case for the ordination of women upon an assumption that, fundamentally, sex doesn’t matter—that there is no difference between man and woman—must be rejected. Man and woman are different, from creation; and whereas the Lord Jesus himself, followed by his doughty champion St Paul, worked a major and dangerous revolution in their vindication of the true place of women in the created order, and would not have hesitated to establish women also, had they so intended, in the ministerial order, the fact is that they did not; and the Church is not at liberty, ‘ unless forced to a decision by an over-riding necessity ’, to alter a ministerial order so established. (It was left to the Marcionites and the Montanists, who set redemption over against creation, to depart from the Church’s rule, and admit women to their ministries of grace.) So, for a Church to admit women to its ordained ministry now, except in the strict case of necessity, would be to treat the ministry as an entity at the disposal of men, not of the Lord; to sin against love, in the giving of scandal to adherents to the theological tradition; and to sin against hope in adding yet another complication to the already complicated course towards reunion—a course most complicated of all in its ministerial aspects. Such a decision, if it is to come, should await the time—which must be hoped for unwaveringly—when a united Church can discuss it as one.

8 Professor Von Allmen observes that it is in Churches, particularly in the Lutheran tradition, where there is a close nexus with the state, where ministers are even officers of the state, that there has been the most readiness to admit women into the ministry. The observation points at once (though not only there) to the Scandinavian churches, and especially to Sweden.

9 The Lutheran Churches have, since the Reformation, been less definite than the Reformed in their doctrine of ministerial order: the fact of the co-existence of Lutheran Churches, some maintaining a tradition of episcopal succession from the medieval Church, others not, is but one cogent illustration of this. So, in the sixteenth century, some Lutheran churches could debate St Paul’s imposition of silence upon women in church in the same terms as those employed for his prescriptions on the covering and uncovering of heads, as matters of church order and discipline, not matters of the ius divinum at all; though Luther himself took a stricter view, allowing that women might preach only if men were not available, lest the Holy Ghost be required to abrogate his own law, expressed in 1 Cor. 14. 34. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Danish Lutheran Church could ordain women fifty years ago, without arousing controversy. There are said to be five ordained women now in Denmark, working as chaplains to women’s hospitals and similar institutions; and one in Norway. In 1964 the Church in Finland rejected a proposal to ordain women.

10 In Sweden, however, in a Church which, having maintained its episcopal succession, enjoys in modern times a closer affinity with the Church of England than other Lutheran Churches enjoy, the ordination of women to the priesthood has been a subject of controversy and division from the time of its formal proposal in 1957 to the present day. To the difficulties inherent in the subject itself there are added the complications which arise from bonds between Church and State which are different in kind, not simply in degree, from those obtaining in England.

11 In Sweden a member of the Cabinet, the Minister for Ecclesiastical Affairs, is responsible to Parliament for much of the government of the Church. The policy of the Social Democratic Government has for long been to keep the Church under ‘ democratic ’ control. A right to vote in civil affairs carries with it for most citizens a right to vote in ecclesiastical affairs, on appointments, legislation and even doctrine. Ninety-five per cent of the population has registered membership of the church. Candidates for some elections to church councils are known to stand as Social Democrats, Conservatives and Liberals. The church tax is compulsory in so far as it pays for the whole system of registration—births, marriages, deaths and changes of address—and of the keeping of population statistics, and for the provision of burial grounds; only from that small part which provides for religious services can exemption be claimed. The clergy are civil servants; they are paid on civil service scales, and are better known to most of the population as civil registrars, and issuing officers for identity documents, than they are as priests: their pastoral and priestly ministrations have primary significance only for the church-going few.

12 It was the status of the clergy as civil servants which first provoked the issue, in its present form, of the ordination of women. The Swedish Government found, to its embarrassment, that it could not ratify a United Nations declaration on the equal rights of citizens because one branch of its civil service was closed to women as such, namely the priesthood of the Swedish Church.

13 An initial enquiry, addressed to all cathedral chapters, drew from all except one an advice against the ordination of women. The Swedish Church Assembly, which meets every six years, having been asked by the Government to introduce legislation to permit the ordination of women, discussed the matter in 1957 and rejected the request. Accordingly the Government itself introduced the legislation into Parliament in 1958, carried it, and required the election of an extraordinary Church Assembly to vote on the matter. The election was the occasion of a strong campaign by organisations for the rights of women, and by the women’s branches of all political parties, strongly supported by the press. In the new Church Assembly, therefore, when the legislation was discussed, among the bishops there was a majority of one in favour; among the clergy, a majority of two against; among the laity, a large majority in favour. And since the Assembly does not vote by houses, there was a large overall majority in favour of the ordination of women to the priesthood.

14 Ordination did not follow immediately. Those who approved the step hoped that a little time for reflection would commend it to those who did not. They underrated their opponents. Of these, some stood on Scripture, some on Tradition; and they united in opposition. With the press virtually closed to them, the country could not, perhaps, fairly estimate the strength of their determination. In 1959 they drew up seventeen points of guidance to those troubled in conscience—nine for the clergy, eight for laymen— should women be ordained and appointed; but they did not publish them before the event, in the hope that there would be no event. The shock was the greater, therefore, when, on Palm Sunday 1960, three women were ordained, by separate bishops and in different places, and the depth of the division in the Swedish Church stood revealed.

15 Members of the Commission were left in no doubt of the fact or of the seriousness—indeed, the bitterness—of the division when they discussed the matter with Dr Margit Sahlin, one of the first three women ordained, who was good enough to meet the Commission and to talk with them.

16 The opposition force is a minority force—a very small minority among the bishops, and among the lay populace; but it contains a number of eminent theologians and biblical scholars, many of the younger clergy, many of the church-going laity, and most ordinands. Some ordinands transferred themselves to dioceses which had no woman priests; others gave up their intention of seeking ordination. Some priests were received into the Church of Rome; others gave up the exercise of their ministry and took to teaching and other work. By 1965, eleven women have been ordained to the priesthood, many of whom were already in full-time church work. This numerical gain to the ordained ministry has been more than offset by its heavy losses in withdrawals, and in men not seeking ordination, for which the ordination of women is given as the reason.

17 Relationships between the Church of Sweden and the Church of England, which had been already the subject of regulation by the Convocations of Canterbury and York, were soon called into question. Both Convocations appointed Committees, whose reports were debated in 1961. In York, the Lower House, on 2 May, 1961, accepted resolutions which had the effect of excluding women from the permission granted by a regulation of 1955 for ‘ Swedish ecclesiastics’ to give addresses in churches of the Church of England, simply by recalling that only male ecclesiastics were contemplated when the regulation was framed. The Bishops of the Province were asked also that none of them should take part in any future Swedish consecration ‘ until the position of the Church of Sweden is clear ’. In the Province of Canterbury, where the Archbishop, as President of the Convocation, had already publicly stated that he had warned the Archbishop of Uppsala, before the event, that the ordination of women would introduce ‘ a cause of embarrassment and dispute’ between the two Churches, the Lower House, on 4 October, 1961, accepted the resolutions of its Committee that, in accordance with the present discipline and practice of the Church of England, any invitations to Swedish ecclesiastics to give addresses in churches of the Church of England should be extended only to men, and that the same limitation should apply to invitations to celebrate the Holy Communion. On the participation of English bishops in Swedish consecrations, although it was explicitly recognised that if an Anglican bishop were to accept any such invitation ‘ it might seem that official countenance was being given thereby to a view of Holy Orders contrary to the present practice and discipline of the Church of England’, no advice from the Lower House was necessary, ‘ because the acceptance of any such invitation has always lain under the direct control of the Archbishop ’. In fact, no Bishop of the Church of England has taken part in a Swedish consecration since the admission of women to the priesthood in Sweden in 1960.

IV

18 The canon law of the Roman Catholic Church (Codex Iuris Canonici, can. 968) explicitly restricts ordination to men: Sacram ordinationem valide recipit solus vir baptizatus: ‘ only a baptised man validly receives the bestowal of holy orders’. Canonists, under such headings as Sunt incapaces mulieres (‘ women are not capable’ [sc. of receiving orders]) can recite a tradition leading from St Paul through the Fathers which excludes women entirely from the ecclesiastical hierarchy and can treat as heretical the opinion which would allow the office of priesthood to women. The ordination of persons in whom the sex is doubtful is forbidden; if one is ordained, then, it is held, the validity of the ordination is doubtful and the orders cannot be exercised. Constans traditio et praxis ecclesiae demonstrate sexum masculinum requiri: ‘ the unwavering tradition and practice of the church make it clear that the male sex is required ’.

19 The subject is, however, one for sporadic theological discussion, and for some practical agitation, in the Church of Rome. Fr H. van der Meer, S.J., wrote a doctoral thesis for the University of Nijmegen, in 1962, under the supervision of Dr Karl Rahner, S.J., entitled Theological Reflections on the Thesis ‘ Subjectum Ordina-tionis est solus Mas ’. In it, he examined the data of Scripture, the Fathers, the rulings of councils and popes, and the rational and theological arguments of Aquinas and of modern theologians, and Professor Nicolae Chitescu, Professor of Theology at the Theological Institute, Bucharest, begins with the statement: ‘In the Orthodox Church the opinions of theologians do not count. The only thing that matters is the traditional regulations established by the Church as a whole in its canons and in its practice.’(3) In this tradition, ‘ women cannot (sic) (4) receive the sacrament of ordination ’. Reasons are adduced from Holy Scripture, the Old Testament as well as the New, and authorities from constitutions and canons dating from the earliest times. In centra-distinction to the practice of the Montanists in ordaining women, it is explicit in the tradition that even deaconesses, who survived into the twelfth century, ‘ did not receive the ordination of a deacon ’, but only a blessing whereby they were ‘ entrusted with a mission in the life of the Church as a whole’. The duties and qualifications— including celibacy or widowhood—are described; but it is emphasised that however similar in form to the ordination of a deacon the consecration of a deaconess, as in the Apostolic Constitutions, might appear to be, ‘ the canonical doctrine and actual practice have always remained the same, absolutely prohibiting the consecration of women to the hierarchy ’. The functions now open to women in the Orthodox Church of Roumania who have been elected to the church council are described; they correspond fairly closely to what any licensed woman worker might do in the Church of England.

24 The second comment, by the Rev. Archimandrite Georges Khodre, is also categorically negative to the main question. He begins a theological and anthropological argument with an examination of ‘ the Word of God, regarded as a final revelation’; and he makes clear the pre-suppositions from which he examines—or, rather, does not examine—it

. ‘ There is indeed a temptation to interpret it in the light of a naturalistic claim which ignores or minimises the mystery of womanhood, and wants to make woman the equal of man in the sense that all their functions are interchangeable. There is certainly an anthropological question at the root of the problem of the ordination of women. If one adopts an equalitarian anthropology, one is tempted to interpret the Bible to mean anthropological relativism.’

Of himself yielding to this temptation he could certainly not be accused. To the question, ‘On the plane of natural anthropology, is the feminist movement well-founded? ’, he answers plainly ‘No ’. Consonant with the negative judgment of Scripture both the theological and the canonical traditions of Orthodoxy are against the ordination of women. The heart of the theological argument is the insistence that the question should be considered ‘ in the light of the bishop, who carries the fulness of the priesthood and of his Church ’ ; who is ‘ not the delegate of the congregation; he is the representative of Christ’. ‘ He is the living image of the Lord, his sacrament, the head which renews the members.’ It is he who ‘ carries out the functions of the Bridgegroom towards the Church’, which is the Bride of Christ. ‘ It is therefore normal that the charisma of representing Christ in relation to the Church (the Bride) should be borne by a man.’ As for the canonical tradition, ‘ it seems that this should be interpreted in the sense of a special ministry for women exercised only among women, and excluding any form of ministry within the Church congregation as a whole ’. It is clear that Orthodoxy is a long way from admitting women to the priesthood.

VI

25 Returning to the West, to the immediate environment of the Church of England, indecision and divided opinion prevail again. In the Reformed tradition, our neighbouring Churches in France and Scotland show this most clearly. In France, where the synods of the Eglise Reformee have debated the question for many years, and where a resolution in 1949 permitted women to be ordained in exceptional circumstances, the national synod, on 1 May, 1965, decided that henceforth women might be ordained ministers on the same conditions as those for men; but the margin, after a whole-day debate, was a narrow one: 47 votes in favour, 38 against; with three papers blank.

26 In Scotland, the debate continues. On 18 May, 1965, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, acting on a Report prepared by the Panel on Doctrine, approved by a large majority a recommendation that women may be admitted as elders (i.e. assistants to the ministers in attending to the spiritual well-being of members). The decision is permissive only: it allows congregations to have women elders only if they choose to elect them; and it has to be accepted by a majority of the local presbyteries before legislation can enact it at another General Assembly. But the decision to invite the Assembly to take the next step, and admit women to the ordained ministry, has not yet been taken, for the Panel on Doctrine which is charged to consider the matter is still sharply divided.

27 It was in 1960 that the Assembly remitted the two questions together, the admission of women to the eldership and to the ministry, for study and report. Urgency was given to the discussion in 1963 when a woman presented to the Assembly a Petition for Ordination; a decision on this was postponed until the Panel could report on the whole question. The Supplementary Report of the Panel, presented in May, 1964, after reviewing succinctly and with characteristic competence the biblical and theological considerations, stated, in para. 20:

‘ It was not possible to agree on a unanimous recommendation. Some felt bound to hold that the Holy Ministry was not the form of diakonia proper to women; others felt bound to hold that there was no bar to the admission of women to the Holy Ministry.’

In 1965, when reporting to the General Assembly in connection with the discussion on the eldership, the Panel was able to say that, though the presbyteries had not been asked to vote on the question of ordaining women, nineteen presbyteries had in fact voted in favour of women in the ministry, and eighteen had voted against. (Concerning the eldership, thirty-one had voted in favour, and only eleven against).(5)

28 In the Methodist Church the position is even more complicated by the existence, from very early in the history of Methodism, of women preachers and missionaries, and then of deaconesses. In recent years all candidates for the Order of Deaconess have become Local Preachers also, and as such they may have ‘ pastoral charge of societies ’, and so also, by the authority of the Methodist Conference, they may have a personal ‘ dispensation to give the sacrament’—a provision made for persons not ordained to the full ministry but holding a pastoral charge where there is a shortage of ministers, and so conferred on men or women without distinction. The Report, 1962, of a Committee of the Conference on the Status of Deaconesses and the Admission of Women to the Ministry, mentions sixty deaconesses as having ‘ pastoral charge ’, and thirty-eight as having the dispensation. This Committee was appointed by the Conference in 1959. In its survey of the scriptural and theological arguments on the ministry of women, the Report is as thorough as it is succinct. In two places it is more balanced than most of these surveys in its appreciation of the positions of responsibility held by women at earlier periods in the history of the Church: it does not, in other words, accept uncritically the popular view that until our own time women have been utterly ‘ in subjection ’ in a church and civilisation dominated by men. The first passage (p. 5) concerns the medieval Church—and, of course, those parts of the Church in which the tradition was not severed at the Reformation:

‘ When in the West the monastic orders proved more attractive to women than the order of deaconesses, the abbesses of nunneries received far greater powers than any woman had previously held in the Church. Within their own nunneries they conducted all the services of the Church except the Eucharist. They held virtually supreme control over the lives of the nuns under their authority, and, in the case of double monasteries such as those which were common in England in Saxon times, over those of the male inmates as well. The principle of the subjection of women certainly did not operate in their case.’

The second passage is that which tells of the extensive work and travels of women preachers in Mr John Wesley’s connexion in the eighteenth century, evidently with the authority of Conference. It took two pronouncements of Conference in the nineteenth century to reduce their numbers: the first , in 1803, which pronounced preaching by women to be ‘ both unnecessary and generally undesired’, having, apparently, little effect, a second expression of disapproval was given in 1835. In Primitive Methodism the number of women preachers declined as more men became available, but the last of them did not close a ministry of thirty years of travelling until 1862. In the Bible Christian Church, women ministers were among the itinerants from the first; but few continued long in the ministry. For thirty years after 1861, none was accepted, but a few were admitted again between 1890 and the Union of 1907.

29 This vignette of Methodist history suggests—and the thesis might well be developed—that the norms of’ subjection ‘ against which the emancipationists of the twentieth century fought were more transient than permanent, being one of those products of Victorian society which, because that was an age of such strong feelings and deep convictions, assumed an air of permanent validity which did not belong to them.

30 On the admission of women to the Ministry today, however, Methodism faces the same pattern of divided opinion as appears elsewhere. From 1933 to 1945 there was vacillation, Conference passing resolutions approving their admission in principle, but the synods giving only divided support: in 1945, two-thirds of the synods voted favourably, but ten rejected the plan outright. In 1948 Conference reversed its earlier decisions, and ‘ declined to declare its willingness to receive for Ordination to the Ministry of the Word and Sacraments women who believe themselves called of God to this work ‘. A statement on ‘ Ordination in the Methodist Church ‘, however, approved in 1960, contains, in the words of the Committee, ‘ nothing that would exclude a woman from ordination on the ground of her sex alone ’ (p. 12).

31 In its conclusions, the Committee could only give expression to the two sides of the question as they saw it. Clearly, they found no absolute theological impediment to the ordination of women; yet they had ‘ become increasingly aware of practical problems’ attending the proposal—and some they mentioned. They reported ‘ little evidence of a desire on the part of the Methodist people for Women Ministers ‘ and they envisaged that’ the Stationing Committee might have difficulty in finding a suitable appointment for a woman who had not received an invitation’. They were, therefore, ‘ not able to bring to Conference a recommendation on the Admission of Women to the Ministry that would command the support of all members of Committee ’, and, advising against an immediate request for a decision, they asked for the fullest consideration first at Circuit and District level. Conference, accordingly, referred their report to the Synods and Quarterly Meetings for study.

32 The Methodist Committee continues in being, recognising also the bearing which any decision of Conference might have on the progress towards union of the Methodist Church and the Church of England; it would not unthinkingly impose any inessential obstacle to that progress.

33 The Congregational Union of England and Wales first admitted women ‘ to the full ministry of the Word and Sacraments ’ in 1917; since then some seventy or eighty women have been ordained. In 1965, of the sixty ordained women on the ministerial list, only thirty-four were serving as full-time ministers; the remainder were either retired or had withdrawn from pastoral duties. In a Report made by the Union to the World Council of Churches in 1965 it was stated that though woman candidates for the ministry now find acceptance by colleges and congregations less difficult than their predecessors found it thirty years ago, ‘ there is still an attitude of caution on the part of college boards’, and that there are ‘ lingering hesitations’—and some refusal to accept them—among congregations and the local clergy. The report can speak, however, of a ‘ slowly growing acceptance of the full-time ministry of women ’, though it notes that most churches which call women are small ones: in 1964, only eleven women had churches with over a hundred members; and ‘ it will probably be many years before women are accepted into the full ministry of the Church as easily as men ’. The practical difficulties facing a woman minister are not minimised. On theological or other speculative difficulties the Report is silent: judgments quoted are entirely pragmatical.

34 The Baptist Church made its declaration at about the time of the end of the First World War, that there was no theological impediment to the admission of women to its ministry, and in the early 1920s one or two women were placed on its ministerial list. But the numbers have never been great, for the Deaconess Group offered opportunities of pastoral service. The number on the list remains today, therefore, very small, of which one member is active in ecumenical service, not in pastoral charge, and another— one of those originally admitted—is in retirement. There are indeed younger women being equipped theologically for pastoral and other service in the Church; but there are hopes within the Baptist Union that they will find their proper service in a newly quickened Deaconess Group, made more acceptable to this generation; there is very little interest in Baptist congregations in having women ministers as such.

35 The Presbyterian Church of England, which declared some years ago that’ there is no barrier in principle to the admission of women to the Ministry’, is reported to have now one ordained woman minister working with a congregation.

VII

36 In concluding this chapter on the ecumenical aspects of the question, it is convenient to recall two occasions in the life of the Anglican Communion itself when individual initiative changed the ordination of women from a theoretical to a practical issue.

37 In 1944 the Bishop of Hong Kong and South China, the Right Rev. R. O. Hall, admitted a woman to ordination as priest. There was immediate public discussion; a letter was sent to the Bishop in the names of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York repudiating the act as ultra vires, and the fact of its having been sent was reported to the Convocations. The lady ceased from the exercise of any ministry which the ordination may have conferred upon her.

38 Subsequently the diocese of South China submitted to the General Synod of the Chung Hua Sheng Kung Hui a proposal for a new canon, as follows:

‘ For the period of twenty years from the adoption of this Canon by General Synod, a deaconess may be ordained to the priesthood provided that:

1. She has the same theological, spiritual and pastoral qualifications as are required of a deacon before ordination to the priesthood.

2. She is full thirty years old and unmarried, and intends to remain unmarried and undertakes, should she later find herself called to the vocation of marriage, to return her licence to the Bishop.

This Canon lapses unless re-enacted at the expiration of twenty years from its adoption by General Synod, though women ordained under it shall continue their ministry for the rest of their lifetime.’

The General Synod took no action upon the proposal, except to refer to the next Lambeth Conference the question ‘ whether or not such liberty to experiment within the framework of the Anglican Communion would be in accordance with Anglican tradition and order’. Accordingly, a Committee of the 1948 Lambeth Conference, including among its fourteen members the Bishop of Hong Kong and four other Bishops from China, considered the question. Their reply was negative: it seemed to them ‘ plain that an experiment of so radical an order could not properly be made without the fullest previous consideration by the Anglican Communion as a whole, for “ Anglican tradition and order ” have certainly not hitherto recognised or contemplated the ordination of any woman to the priesthood ’. After referring to the Preface to the Ordinal in the Book of Common Prayer, the Lambeth Conference Resolutions of 1930, and the Resolutions of the Convocations of Canterbury and York, 1939-1941, on the Order of Deaconesses, the Committee reported:

‘ These considerations appear to us decisive, for we are only asked to give an answer about the suggested experiment in relation to Anglican tradition and order. We are not asked to discuss the principles upon which that tradition and order rest.’ Neither did they think the time ripe for a further formal consideration of them. The full Lambeth Conference of 1948, therefore, in Resolution 113, accepted the Committee’s decision, and resolved that ‘ in its opinion such an experiment would be against that tradition and order and would gravely affect the internal and external relations of the Anglican Communion ’.

39 That the suggestion of distraction contained in the last few words quoted was not far from the truth became apparent on the second occasion of an individual initiative, when, in April 1965, the Bishop of California, the Right Rev. J. A. Pike, announced his intention of ordaining a deaconess to the diaconate, i.e. to the ‘ order ’ of ministry placed first of the three in the Ordinal. Again, there was immediate public discussion. A member of the Vatican Secretariat for Christian Unity, Fr Charles Boyer, S.J., was quoted in the Osservatore Romano to the effect that such an ordination would set up an ‘ insurmountable obstacle ’ to unity. Opposition to the proposal was expressed also within the Protestant Episcopal Church of America. The Bishop based his proposal on an interpretation of an amendment made to Canon 51 (now Canon 50) of the Protestant Episcopal Church by its General Convention in the autumn of 1964, by which the verb ‘ appointed ’ was changed to ‘ ordered’, and the requirement of celibacy for deaconesses was rescinded, and deaconesses were declared to be in an ‘ order of the ministry’. He assumed, therefore, that the canon was ‘ self-implementing ’, and that the office of a deaconess already appointed was ipso facto equated with that of a deacon. Accordingly he authorised a particular deaconess, in the absence of a vicar of a mission church, to administer the Holy Communion with elements previously consecrated by a priest. Doubting subsequently, however, whether the canon were ‘ self-implementing ’ in this way, he proposed to ordain the lady deacon to put her status beyond doubt. Two days after the statement from the Vatican Secretariat, the Bishop announced that he had deferred his proposal until he could submit the whole question to the House of Bishops for decision.

40 On 7 September, 1965, the House of Bishops, meeting at Glacier Park, Montana, debated the report of its own Committee on Deaconesses, and passed resolutions. The first declared that:

‘ The order of deaconesses is at present recognised as the one and only order of the ministry for women in our branch of the Anglican Communion.’

The words italicised were added on amendment, in order not to foreclose any future discussion or decision upon the ordination of women. Resolution 2 declared that:

‘ When a deaconess is “ ordered ” with prayer by the bishop and the laying on of hands, together with a formula giving authority to execute the office of deaconess in the Church of God, she receives an indelible character for this [specialised] ministry in the Church of God.’

The word specialised was deleted in an amendment proposed by the Bishop of California and carried. Resolution 4, as amended, interpreted the chief functions of a deaconess as declared by Canon 50 sect. 2(c) ‘ as not including the distribution of the elements in the Holy Communion’. After the Bishop of California had stated that this interpretation still did not’ bar ‘ him from allowing a deaconess to distribute the elements, the Bishops declared expressly, in another Resolution, that:

‘ It is the judgment of this House that deaconesses should not be permitted to administer the elements of the Holy Communion.’

Another Resolution rejected the possibility of ordaining ‘ part-time deaconesses ’ and required that their ministry be ‘ full-time ’; others declared that the General Convention of 1964 did not change the status of the ministry of deaconesses, but only clarified a status which was already theirs, a declaration which the Bishop of California supported.

41 Six days after this the Bishop officiated in his cathedral church at ‘ a special service of recognition and investiture ’ of the deaconess whom he had previously proposed to ordain deacon. The lady was ‘ vested in alb, amice, girdle, clerical collar and rabat. Bishop Pike draped a red stole deacon-wise over her right shoulder to symbolise her ministry’; and in his sermon he said that her ‘ formal “ setting apart ” as a deaconess in June 1964 had been in effect her ordination, so that her clerical seniority dates from that time’.

42 That this controversy is not of domestic significance to the Protestant Episcopal Church only, but has ecumenical ramifications, is evident not only from the reaction reported from the Vatican Secretariat, but also from further remarks in the Bishop of California’s sermon. He described the formal recognition of this lady’s ministry as ‘ a little step forward ’, recalling that the Protestant Episcopal Church is at present negotiating a unity with five Churches, all of which ‘ ordained women as pastoral ministers ’—the United Presbyterian Church, the Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ, the Evangelical United Brethren, and the Disciples of Christ.

43 Meanwhile, the discussion of the function and ministry of the deaconess whose ministry was thus ‘ recognised’ continues, not without heat.

VIII

44 From this survey many conclusions could, no doubt, be drawn, and the list following is not exhaustive.

45 (i) Whereas it is Churches with non-episocpal ministries which appear to have gone fastest and farthest in the admission of women to their ministries, there is no longer an absolute distinction between episcopal and non-episcopal Churches in this matter: witness events in the Church of Sweden (where, however, considerations of political and social policy dominated theological and ecclesiastical considerations), and in the Protestant Episcopal Church of the U.S.A. Nevertheless, the obvious and intimate connection between the admission of women to holy orders and the theological doctrines of the Church, the ministry and the sacraments, assures that where these doctrines are considered of high importance, there the opposition to woman ministers is strongest and most determined. It follows that a proposal for the ordination of women to the priesthood most seriously threatens the visible peace and unity of the Church in those Churches which hold a high doctrine of the Church. It may reasonably be supposed that the Church of England would not accept woman priests without some such difficulty.

46 (ii) The Churches with the highest doctrine of the Church, and with the strongest sense of tradition, namely the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches, are those in which the demand for woman priests is lowest, and the possibility of their admission most remote. So far away are the Orthodox Churches from contemplating the ordination of women that the Church of England could not expect to admit women to its priesthood without imposing great strain on its relations with the Orthodox. With the Church of Rome the position is a little harder to estimate. Theologians may speak with academic courtesy and detachment, with the degree of nonchalance which has been reported earlier in this chapter. But theologians do not direct ecclesiastical policy; it is commonly only after a long period of theological awareness that the ecclesiastics bring Church policy into line with what the theologians have taught. The ecclesiastical reaction in the Church of Rome to an admission of women to the priesthood of the Church of England would probably be sharper and more hostile than the words of the academic theologians would suggest; an indication of this is quoted in the Vatican response to events in California. In short, it cannot be supposed that relationships between the Church of England and the Orthodox Churches and the Roman Catholic Church respectively would remain unstrained if women were admitted to the priesthood in the Church of England.

47 (iii) It is probably true that the introduction of women to the ministry in those Churches which have admitted them was easier when it occurred, roughly in the first thirty years of this century, than it would have been today. At that time there was far less theological consciousness, and certainly a far less certain theology of the Church, in the non-episcopal Churches, than there is today; there was, then, no theological antibody (if the metaphor may be allowed) to withstand the impetus from without; the feminist movement was stronger then, as the theological movement was weaker. Today the position is reversed: today a proposal to introduce women into the ministry would probably be more seriously contested in all the major Churches, and this precisely because of the revival of theological determinants among them. The Church of England is unlikely to admit women into the priesthood without acute theological controversy.

48 (iv) Churches which have already granted the theological point— which have already declared that there is no theological bar to the ordination of women, and have actually ordained them—recognise, probably increasingly, that, in the third quarter of the twentieth century, the main body of the Church is not greatly interested in the question, that there is not much positive demand for woman ministers, and that there are ever-widening opportunities for educated women to serve their Church in other ways. Women holding degrees and diplomas in theology are readily absorbed, in their professional capacity, in the teaching of theology and of divinity in the dispersion of the Church across the educational map: few ministries on the ecclesiastical map offer them opportunities so specific to their theological qualification. Women who wish to minister pastorally know that there is a professional way of entry into a pastoral ministry also; it is through a course of training, academic and practical, in social work, and then through employment in the social services under public or voluntary authorities—again, where the Christian dispersion is; they know now that on the ecclesiastical map they seldom find either the opportunity or the professional context for the specific use of their professional training in a professional way. The demand (the word is intended to convey its forcefulness) for the admission of women to the ministry was formulated before these opportunities for professional service existed; it continues now on the strength of its own impetus; but the Churches themselves are showing, by their general indifference to the question, that the debate belongs more to the past than to the present or to the future.

49 There is another possible reason for this also—and it were better mentioned, albeit with sensitivity and sympathy, than ignored. It will be observed that, in the English Churches at least, the demand for the admission of women to ordination built up towards the end of, and immediately after, the First World War. It came from a generation whose fiances and husbands had been killed in that war, and who, contemplating the spiritual, social and economic wasteland which the war had left, wanted in deep earnestness to give themselves entirely to its reparation. The ministry of the Church perhaps seemed to them the obvious avenue, as indeed it might have appeared then to be the only one. It is easy, looking back, to censure the Church for its want of imagination, for its failure to offer other means whereby this potential might have been creatively employed; but the censure may be less than just: the laws of ecology obtain in society as in nature, and many social factors have had to move into place before the professions which now enable women to undertake social and pastoral work could become viable in our society. Be that as it may, it was perhaps the frustration of this generation’s natural and spiritual idealism which made it certain that the debate on women and holy orders could not be resolved in theological terms: theological negatives do not satisfy personal need.

50 Today we can record thankfully that these conditions no longer obtain. There are now more single men than single women in each age group from fifteen to forty-four, and the whole discussion of the ministry and professional service of women has now to be re-mounted, not on the presupposition of a large reservoir of unmarried women for whose potential some means of service must be found, but on the presupposition of early marriage for most women who see it, and of a widening social acceptance of the combination by many women of family life with a career.

51 For these reasons the general indifference of the great body of Christian congregations to the question of the ordination of women is understandable: it witnesses implicity that the question is obsolescent if not obsolete. The Church of England should assure that, in considering this matter now, it is considering contemporary woman,(6) contemporary society, the contemporary Church, a contemporary service; and not those of a generation ago. The mind which it gives to its future must be set in a new mould; not that of a mood that is past.

1 op. cit., p. I, para. 1.

2 ‘ Is the Ordination of Women to the Pastoral Ministry Justifiable? ’ in Verbum Caro, XVn no. 65 (1963).

3 op. dt., p. 57.

4 In a document, presumably translated, emanating from Geneva, where the distinction between ‘ can ’ and ‘ may’ may not always be drawn, the strict meaning of the word ‘ cannot’ ought not, perhaps, to be pressed too far.

5 On 25 May, 1966, the General Assembly agreed to the admission of women as elders of the Church on the same terms as men, if kirk sessions wanted to have them.

6 Mrs Bernadine Bishop has contributed some clear thinking on this in ‘ The Future of the Female ’, an essay in The Future of Catholic Christianity, edited by Michael de la Bedoyere (Constable, 1966), published after this chapter was written.

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