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

E. A THIRD VIEW

by Alan Richardson

1 The third position is that of those who hold that there are no sound theological reasons why women should not be ordained to the priesthood, but that it is nevertheless inexpedient to take such a step at the present time. They are unimpressed by the argument that the priesthood must for ever be male because the Incarnation took place in the male sex: they think it might just as reasonably have been argued that, because the Incarnation took place in the Jewish race, the Christian priesthood should have consisted only of Jews. They are equally unimpressed by the argument that since Christ appointed only men as Apostles, therefore the priestly work of Christ in his Church can be effected only through a male priesthood : the whole Body of Christ, which includes women in virtue of their baptism (cf. Gal. 3. 27 f), is priestly, and therefore there is no reason why women should not, if duly ordained to do so, perform representative priestly offices on behalf of the Body. They would hold that, whatever the Pauline doctrine of the subordination of women might mean for the hierarchical structure of being, it has no relevance to the ordering of the Church’s ministry in the changed conditions of the modern age.

2 Nevertheless, those who adopt this third position would maintain that at the present time it is not expedient to make the innovation of ordaining women to the priesthood. Their attitude does not arise from a timid reluctance to change the existing order of things, but from a realistic appraisal of the situation of the Church in the contemporary world. The upholders of this position would not all agree as regards the weight to be attached to the various types of consideration which are set out below; but they would insist that, though their conclusions are based primarily upon expediency, they are not to be dismissed as ‘ mere expediency ’: they would concur with the Pauline judgment that, though a thing may be theologically legitimate, it is not therefore necessarily expedient or edifying (1 Cor. 6. 12; 10. 23). We proceed to list five types of consideration which weigh (in varying degrees) with the supporters of this third position.

3 (i) One type of consideration may be broadly characterised as ecumenical. In an age in which possibilities of mutual understanding and of eventual reunion have been opened up before the eyes of Christians of many confessions, it would be inexpedient for any church to embark upon unilateral action which would widen rather than heal the divisions within Christendom. It is recalled that those divisions have in the past often been created or widened by the action of one church or group of churches in developing a doctrine or a practice which has not gained the approval of the Christian community as a whole. Those who do not believe that the ordination of women to the priesthood is a matter of urgent doctrinal and practical necessity are reluctant to complicate the ecumenical situation by the introduction of such an innovation at at the present time.

4 (ii) A second type of consideration is that of the importance of tradition in the life of the Church. It may be agreed that (in the words of Article XXXIV) ‘ it is not necessary that Traditions and Ceremonies be in all places one, and utterly like; for at all times they have been divers, and may be changed according to the diversities of countries, times, and men’s manners, so that nothing be ordained against God’s Word ’. But even those who hold that the ordination of women to the priesthood would not be ‘ against God’s Word ’ might still pause to reflect that the Church of England is not today simply a national Church, as it was in the sixteenth century, but is a part of the world-wide Anglican Communion, and that it must therefore in some sense acknowledge a tradition wider than its own. It would be an affront to the Anglican Communion if one Church were to make a unilateral departure from the wider tradition without at least first consulting the other Churches. So far as we know, no such consultations have taken place, nor can it be predicted what the outcome of such discussions might be. (Still more difficult questions would be raised about the relevance of ‘ the Western tradition ’ as a whole, or of the Orthodox tradition.) But this type of consideration is not the only question which is raised by the break with tradition which would be involved. A more radical break would be involved if women were ordained not merely to celebrate the sacraments but to exercise pastoral care as parish priests. Some of those who hold that the sacraments might be validly celebrated by a duly ordained woman priest would nevertheless maintain that women could not be appointed to benefices without a significant breach with the tradition of pastoral oversight. The parish priest is traditionally the ‘ father ’ of his people, and a woman could not by nature take his place. Her relation with her flock would necessarily be something other than the priest-people relationship which has been hallowed by centuries of tradition. Of course, it might be argued that a new and valuable kind of relationship would be established, and that this new relationship would supplement and enrich the age-long pastoral ministry of clergymen. But the case remains to be argued, and in the meanwhile this consideration accounts for the fact that some, who in principle see no theological reason why ordained women should not celebrate the sacraments, nevertheless believe that women could not by nature fulfil the whole task of the priestly office and would not wish to see ordained women presented to benefices. The argument, of course, becomes even more cogent when the question of the ultimate consecration of women to the episcopate is raised.

5 (iii) The third type of consideration relates to the conspicuous absence of a common mind amongst church people, clerical and lay, upon the subject. However one may deplore the fact, it is certain that the issue is a highly emotional one, which stirs deep-seated and incompletely understood prejudices and attitudes of a largely non-rational kind. It would inevitably give rise to controversy. It is a matter of opinion whether dissension would in fact rapidly die away soon after the ordination of women to the priesthood was accomplished; but recent events in Sweden do not encourage an optimistic view. It is noted that in this country, even amongst those Free Churches which have now for some time accepted the parity of men and women ministers, there has been no striking development of a full pastoral ministry of women. It is well known that within the Church of England there is an articulate and determined body of opinion in favour of the ordination of women to the priesthood, but there is nothing which points to a wide demand from all sides; there is also evidence of a clear and conscientious opposition to the proposal, though it is less articulate and well-organised. How strong these respective attitudes are in relation to each other it is impossible to say, since the resources which would be needed to make an adequate statistical survey are not available to the Commission. There seems to be a general impression—it is no more than that—that apart from the minorities which have taken up opposing points of view, the majority of church people have given little thought to the matter and have not yet become alive to the issues. Hence the conviction of some of those who adopt this third position is that any attempt to implement the proposal at the present time would be highly controversial and would consume a great deal of the energy and time of church people.

6 (iv) Often held along with this point of view is a fourth type of consideration, namely, the conviction of certain people that to raise the issue of women in the priesthood is to ask the wrong question at the present time. The question which should now be asked concerns the ministry of the Church as a whole, not merely the question about the admission of women to the orders of ministry as they are at present constituted in their familiar setting. A much more radical reformation of the Church’s ministry is urgently needed. It is held by some who approach the matter from this point of view that what is required is nothing less than a complete reassessment of our present situation, in which ministry is almost totally concentrated in the hands of the clergy as a professional body. The focussing of attention upon the question of the admission of women to the priesthood diverts energies which ought today to be directed towards the more urgently needed correction of the prevailing one-sided view of the nature and task of the Church’s ministry. The demand for the ordination of women to the priesthood is largely based upon this erroneous view and practice of the ministry. It arises from the false assumption that the only way in which a woman (or a man, for that matter) can participate in the real ministry of the Church is to join the professionals by acquiring priest’s orders, since in the Church of England as at present administered there is in effect only one ‘ real’ order of ministry, namely, the priesthood, which has monopolised all essential ministry saving only certain functions reserved to the episcopate. To admit women to the priesthood would leave the present unsatisfactory situation exactly where it is and would do nothing to reform what is wrong; indeed, it would impede the process of reform by suggesting that our difficulties would be overcome by the recruitment of women to the diminishing ranks of the professional priesthood. It would do nothing to promote the development of a wide variety of ministries, which is the Church’s most immediate need. Hence, on this fourth view, the demand for the admission of women to the priesthood obscures the real issues; it is a symptom, not a cure, of the unbiblical conception of the ministry as a professional priesthood, from which arise the gravest of the difficulties encountered by the Church today in the accomplishment of its proper task.

7 (v) The fifth type of consideration is closely connected with the fourth. It arises in the minds of many who are concerned about the divorce between the Church’s inner life and worship, on the one hand, and the common life of the workaday world on the other. They note that there are today many good Christian lay people, men and women alike, who are doing the Church’s work in those areas of secular life to which the clergy normally have no access. So wide has the gulf become between ‘ sacred ’ and ‘ secular’, between the professionalised ministry and the faithful layman, that the witness of the latter in his or her daily work is hardly recognised as being a genuine ministry of the Church to the world, even when a clear Christian vocation is consciously present. Hence the unhappy dichotomy between worship and work. Worship becomes in the general mind a matter of formalised ‘ religious ’ acts at set times on church premises and is the concern of the clergyman and his clerically minded parishioners; the world of work is a sphere into which those who have been spiritually strengthened by church worship may return to discharge their daily duties in accordance (so far as is practicable) with the Christian ethic. To add some women priests to the decreasing number of clergymen would not in any way correct this distortion of the true relationship of Christian worship and Christian service to the world; it would merely postpone the final collapse of the existing clericalised ministry without bridging the gulf between church worship and secular life. Those many lay folk, men as well as women, who already bear their witness to Christian faith and life in the world of daily work, receive no recognition as ministers of the Church even in the minimal sense in which churchwardens or secretaries of parochial church councils may be said to receive recognition. In the general view, the latter are doing ‘ church work ’, whereas the former are not. Yet today many men of genuine Christian vocation, who in former generations would have ‘ gone into the church ’, and also their counterparts among women, deliberately choose to go into industry, into the professions and into various forms of social work, because they sincerely believe that they can fulfil their Christian vocation more satisfactorily in these employments than in the narrowly ecclesiastical forms of ministry which are open to men and which in an even more restricted form are open to women ‘ church workers ’. It would thus be inexpedient in present circumstances to attempt an innovation which would not help to overcome the divorce between worship and Christian service.

8 The foregoing types of consideration, which lead some to hold that it is inexpedient to admit women to the priesthood at the present time, are scrambled together in varying proportions in many minds; they overlap one another and the attempt to analyse them into separate arguments can never be entirely satisfactory. It should be emphasised that, having no means of undertaking a scientifically sociological investigation, the Commission is unable to determine how strongly these various considerations weigh in relation to one another, or indeed to assess with accuracy the relative strength of opinion amongst church people in favour of or against the ordination of women to the priesthood. Only if the positions set forth in this Report were widely discussed in the representative assemblies of the Church, at the parochial, diocesan and national levels, would it be possible to arrive at any approximate estimate of the balance of opinion. In the existing state of inadequate means of assessment it is a natural human weakness that each person, especially one who himself holds a strong and well-defined view, should suppose that his own opinion is that of the majority, or at least that it would become the majority-view if only it were widely promulgated and understood. It is therefore all the more necessary for us to state clearly that, since the evidence received by the Commission comes mainly from those who hold definite views on one side or the other, we are unable to express an opinion about ‘ the mind of church people ’ in general on the question of the ordination of women to the priesthood. It remains for us to survey the wider question about the opening of forms of ministry other than the priesthood, not only to women, but also to men.

Copyright (c) 2007: All of the texts and techniques (pedagogical and relational)
displayed in this site are copyrighted materials.