The Theology of Priesthood

From Yes To Women Priestspp1-14

by Hugh Montefiore

Published 1978 by Mayhew-McCrimmon Ltd
in association with A. R. Mowbray & Co. Ltd
Republished on our website with the necessary permissions

At first sight the question of the admission of women to the Christian priesthood might seem to be merely a matter of common sense; which could be resolved in the same kind of way as their admission to other vocations and professions. But the church is not simply a human institution: it is of divine appointment. The question therefore whether women should he (or are capable of being) admitted to the priesthood depends on a theological understanding of priesthood in the church.

What is a priest? The whole church is described in scripture as a ‘royal priesthood’, because it is called to fulfil its vocation of self-offering to God as a living sacrifice. It is generally agreed that a priest is not only a particular representative of this ‘common priesthood’ but also personally called by God to enable the church to fulfil its divine vocation. (1) Christians see all priesthood as a kind of participation in Christ our high priest, who was appointed by God, empowered with indestructible life, and who offered himself in a complete and unrepeatable sacrifice.

There is a variety of images used in the New Testament to describe the functions of the Christian minister; servant, herald, ambassador, teacher, shepherd, steward and exemplar. The minister has authority in and exercises oversight over the church. So far as all these functions are concerned, they are exercised both by men and by women in the secular world. The same could be said also of the Christian Church. Fr Gerald O’Collins SJ (2) wrote in 1975 of the Roman Catholic Church:

By October 1972 German bishops had authorised 2000 women to distribute Holy Communion at parish masses. By then about the same number enjoyed official positions as pastoral assistants in parishes and other communities .... In South America matters have gone much further than in Germany. Catholic nuns perform baptisms, preach sermons, distribute holy communion and officiate at weddings. They act as full deacons without being ordained as deacons.

Similarly there are women in positions of high responsibility in the Church of England. (3). If these functions were all that were required of a priest, then a woman could carry them out as well as a man. Perhaps because emphasis is specially laid on functional roles in Protestant churches, they have been the first to admit women as ministers.

A priest however not only has pastoral functions, as a minister of word and sacrament. He is also a representative symbol; and it is at this point that objections to women priests often arise.

Whom do priests represent? Certainly they are representatives of the church. ‘They are priests’, wrote R. C. Moberley (4) ‘because they are personally consecrated to be the representatives and active organs of the priesthood of the Church. And they represent it emphatically in both of its directions. In the ceremonial direction they represent it as divinely empowered to be ... its leaders and instruments. And from this representative leadership .... I apprehend that it follows also, on the inward and spiritual side, that those who actually represent the Church no less specially represent it in its true inwardness.’ Bishop Lightfoot, although belonging to a very different churchmanship, concurs in so far as he wrote of the Christian minister: ‘His office is representative and not vicarial.’ The ARCIC Agreed Statement speaks of a priest as ‘representative of the whole church in the fulfilment of its priestly vacation’ (6).

Dr Packer,(7) however, holds that this representative function of priesthood does nothing to counter Dr Demant’s observation(8) that ‘a male priest represents both sexes in a way which a woman does not in organised church and society’ and ‘men and women on the whole will not value women as representatives’. This makes strange reading in a land where a woman is the universally acclaimed and paramount representative symbol of her country. If God created male and female in his own image (Gen. 1.27; 5. 1f.), either is able adequately to represent him; (9) and if there is neither male nor female, but all are one in Christ (Gal. 3.28), then-theologically speaking-either a man or a woman is an equally adequate representative of the Church.

But priests are also authorized representatives of God in Christ to the church. ‘All this is from God who in Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation’ (II Con 5.18). A priest stands on the Godward side of man as well as on the manward side of God. ‘They exercise this sacred function of Christ most of all in the Eucharistic liturgy or synaxis. There, acting in the person of Christ ...' (10)

How can a woman ‘act in the person of Christ’? One might as well ask, how can a Gentile act in the person of the Jewish Messiah? The official Roman Catholic answer is that ‘in human beings sex exercises an important influence, much deeper than, for example, ethnic differences’. (11) To this the Editor of the Jesuit journal The Month (12) has responded: ‘It is not Christian belief that the priest at the altar impersonates Jesus of Nazareth: rather he represents our redeemer in celebrating the sacrament of our redemption, and, in his saving significance, it seems fair to, suggest that Christ’s masculinity is irrelevant. What is important is the humanity which men and women share.’

In fact, the argument needs to be pressed more rigorously. The phrase ‘acting in the person of Christ’ needs further unpacking. The priest is not a representation of Christ: he is his representative. A priest does not represent a dead Jesus, but the risen and ascended Lord, as Roman Catholics agree. ‘In the bishops, for whom priests are assistants, the supreme High Priest is present in the midst of those who believe.’ (13) (As a matter of fact, Christ is present through the Spirit wherever two or three are gathered in his name; and he will remain with us until the end of the age.) In this risen Christ sex has no significance. In the resurrection, men and women ‘are like the angels in heaven’ (Mark 12.2-5). Moreover, the priest must symbolize God himself, for the Ascended Christ is the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. And whereas the male symbolizes God as Father, Protector, Lawgiver and judge, the female, as Dr Dillistone has so clearly demonstrated in a later chapter, is needed to represent God as Generator, Sustainer and Fulfiller of Life and Reconciler of opposites into unhindered communication .(14) It follows therefore from this theological examination of priesthood that both men and women need to be admitted to the priesthood.

Dr Mascall, (15) echoing the ‘Undeceptions’ of C. S. Lewis, (16) fears lest female participation in priesthood would result in ‘a different religion’, with the feminine symbols of Mother, Daughter and Bride substituted for the scriptural images of ‘Our Father in Heaven’, the Eternal Son made man, and the Heavenly Groom united in the nuptial mystery with the Church, his Bride. In fact these scriptural images are analogies of heavenly mysteries rather than the realities themselves. Dr Mascall’s fears in any case would only be well grounded if women alone were to be ordained. But where men are ordained alongside women, the scriptural imagery of Christian revelation would continue to be symbolized in male priests, but there would be added those other profound aspects of God’s saving mystery symbolized in the person of women priests.

It follows that, if priesthood is to be a fully representative sign of both Christ and the church, both men and women must be included. If the theology of priesthood is subjected to rigorous theological scrutiny it emerges that women, far from being alien to Christian priesthood, contribute to the plenitude of its expression.

If the validity of these arguments be granted, on what authority could a change of policy be effected? Anglicans recognize a threefold source of authority in Scripture, Tradition and Reason. (Reason here is used to signify the mind exercising itself beyond the sphere of bible and tradition, rather than an authority distinct from both.)

Professor Christopher Evans, in a later essay, (17) has considered the bearing of the Bible on this issue, distinguishing three possible attitudes. We may dismiss what he calls ‘a text-quoting exercise’. Nothing constructive can emerge from it unless we are committed to the extraordinary belief that the Bible contains a jumbled pastiche of propositions, which, when properly ordered and juxtaposed, give authoritative directions for situations quite different from those which the writers of its constituent books could have possibly imagined.

The second approach is more critical and analytical, distinguishing those parts of Holy Scripture which show the impact of the Christian gospel from those which owe their origin elsewhere, and which may only to some extent have been brought under the gospel’s influence. (18) To many (such as myself) it will seem self-evident that passages e.g. from St Paul which assert male predominance belong to the latter category; and such people will sympathize with St Paul as he struggles-not always successfully (19) to refine the prejudices of his Jewish upbringing and the cultural assumptions of the first century with the revolutionary gospel of Christ which discloses God as no respecter of persons and as the healer of the age-old divisions of race, class and sex. But whether the exclusion of women from the apostolate in New Testament times was due to well thought out theological principles or to cultural assumptions and unavoidable practicalities, there can by the nature of the case be no final proof. It is rather a question for informed judgment about such fragmented and elusive evidence as may exist.

The third and most helpful approach which Professor Evans proposes is to start from the present situation with its contemporary questions-and the admission of women to the priesthood is certainly one such question-and to ask whether such a question is blocked by the gospel, or whether it is fundamentally consonant with it theologically or spiritually. In my judgment it is consonant; but here again, as Professor Evans remarks, ‘stalemate is possible’. Yet he cites impressive evidence of a change of heart by leading Roman Catholic theologians, not because they now have a better understanding of the Bible but because they have been given a clearer insight into the nature of its authority.

If there is no certain reply to be had from Holy Scripture, what about the age-old tradition of the church? The churches which have preserved the historic threefold ministry of the church, have not (apart from the Church of Sweden and some Anglican churches in the recent past) ordained women to the priesthood. The Vatican Declaration declares that the Fathers ‘considered it as unacceptable’. (20) Fr Flusser, after a detailed examination of the texts cited, concludes that these texts ‘do not bear out that contention very convincingly’. (21) Nonetheless, apart from a few heretical sects, women were not priested. In medieval times, it was the same. Certain abbesses were described as ordained, but the context suggests rather their consecration. They were mitred, given staff and ring, authorized to hear confessions, described as ‘sacerdotes’ and granted (for a period) ecclesiastical and civil authority. (22) These privileges however suggest episcopal jurisdiction rather than priestly orders.

How should the constant and universal past practice of the church be evaluated? There were of course undeniable prejudices against women as weak, frail, subordinate to men, the object of sexual temptation, visited with the baneful effects of the Fall and even (as St Thomas Aquinas believed) as incomplete males: These prejudices are now unacceptable. Were not these the real reasons for an exclusively male priesthood rather than the revelation of God in Christ as attested by Scripture? Professor Lampe has isolated two different types of tradition." ‘Part of it consists of the accumulated deposit of doctrine, the result of the constant process of formulation and explanation by which the common mind of the church has sought to interpret and reinterpret for successive generations and cultures the revelation embodied in scripture. Part on the other hand is made up of customs, the ways in which the church’s life and world are organized, its worship ordered and its particular rites conducted which have grown up almost imperceptibly, have come to be taken for granted and have not usually been subjected to critical examination.’ As Article XXXIV asserts; the latter type of tradition may be changed. Here again opinion divides. To some, like Professor Lampe and myself, it seems self-evident that the exclusion of women from the priesthood belongs to the latter category. But here again it is a matter not of proof but of informed judgment. The Holy Scriptures give a problematical reply to our question, and so too does tradition.

The third source of authority lies in the exercise of reason beyond the sphere of bible and tradition.

1. The first point to be made is that pronouncements on matters of sex, especially when made by an exclusively male body (above all if its members are compulsorily celibate) should be very rigorously scrutinized. (Similar comments have been made about ‘Humanae Vitae’ and the Vatican Declaration on Certain Questions concerning Sexual Ethics.)

2. It is worth enquiring what effect it has on an institution when women are admitted to positions of responsibility. Bishop John Taylor has noted: (24) ‘It is enlightening to observe what happens to other professions when women have been admitted to them. The pattern and concept of the profession begins to undergo a process of humanization.’

3. ‘What, it should be asked, would be the impact of women priests on their male colleagues? In other professions the result has been an enrichment as men and women have brought complementary gifts to their work. Professor C. P. Price has remarked a certain ‘confusion of identity from which many clergy are suffering at the present time’ .(25) He continues: ‘It is said in liberation theology that the liberation of the oppressed entails the redemption of the oppressor. In a somewhat comparable way, we could say that the ordination of women to the priesthood would be the redemption of male priests for they would be freed from the necessity of providing what ever it is that female priests might contribute to the ministry.’ Incidentally, the warning being put about that women priests, as matriarchs, promote homosexuality and suicide among men shows such ignorance of anthropology and psychology (not to mention the actual situation where women have been ordained) as to appear almost pathological .(26) Irrational feelings about sex, however, can be very deeply felt. No amount of arguing will remove them. Sex for many people is a terrifying, guilt laden department of life, to be repressed from consciousness, at least in so far as it impinges on religion and spirituality. People who may have been wounded by childhood experiences (and perhaps later affected by the assumptions of contemporary literature and the media) often think unconsciously of a woman as a sex object. For such people the idea of a woman priest is intolerable. Furthermore, the idea of women priests can arouse in both men and women a strong fear of the bisexuality which, to some degree, is inherent in human nature. For all of us the right way to deal with irrationalities about sex is not to try to reason them out of existence but to accept them for what they are, emotional ‘hang-ups', which can best be dealt with not by argument but through a deeper experience of personal relationships.

4. It has already been noted that according to Judaeo-Christian tradition men and women are together made in the image of God, and possibly it is their complementarity that constitutes that image. (27) (It may also be that the biblical doctrine of the subordination of woman to man represents the result of sin and a manifestation of ‘The Fall.’) (28) Among the baptized, women share as fully as men in their adopted status as children of God (Gal. 3.28). Reason therefore suggests that women bring their own distinctive gifts into the ordained ministry; and Professor Mackinnon, in an Appended Note, movingly testifies to an important aspect of that ministry which they would be able to exercise .(29)

5. There is undoubtedly a world-wide movement effecting a revolution in favour of half the human race. Article 1 of the UN Declaration about Women reads as follows: ‘Discrimination against women ... constitutes an offence against human dignity.’ (30) No doubt there are excesses in the sexual revolution (e.g. in aspects of the Women's Liberation Movement and in ‘unisex’ tendencies), but no revolution should be evaluated in terms of peripheral deviations. The solid fact emerges that modern knowledge is dispersing many ancient prejudices about women, technology and medicine are relieving them from domestic drudgery and the weakening effects of continual child-bearing and child-rearing, and we no longer have rigid stereotypes imposed upon us about their role in society. Scientific, psychological and sociological sciences combine to enable us today to see women not as identical with men, but complementary in nature and equal in status. It is hard to deny that this insight, consonant with the revelation disclosed through Jesus Christ, is due to the prompting of the Holy Spirit. It is manifested in a world-wide stirring of the human spirit. Professor Demant, however, warned against confusing ‘the spirit of the age with the Holy Spirit. (31) How are-they to be distinguished? We must test our theology by its coherence and by the sources of its authority. By these criteria the views, e.g. of German Christians that under the Nazis the Volk were the new Chosen People appear hopelessly erroneous; (32) by the same criteria, the argument for admission of women to the priesthood has been tested and appears cogent and coherent.

In the secular world, there has been a call for ‘women’s rights’. But no one has a ‘right’ to be ordained. It is a calling from God. Women do however have a right for their calling to be tested. As the Report of the Doctrinal Commission of the Church in Wales has declared: (33) ‘If there is a positive case for ordaining women it must be based on the existence within the church of women with a genuine vocation to the priesthood.’ The testimony of the Rev. Canon Sister Mary Michael in a later chapter speaks eloquently of her genuine vocation. The Bishop of Hong Kong writes movingly of vocations in his diocese. A couple of years ago nearly a quarter of the women in full-time ministry of the Church of England indicated that they would seek ordination to .the priesthood if possible. (34) There must be many more women who have never thought and prayed about their vocation to the priesthood because they have never envisaged it as a practical possibility. No doubt a fair percentage. of those who believed they had vocations would not be recommended for training by a Selection Board. But that is precisely what now happens to male aspirants. I have been told by one who has to act as selector for the Church of Scotland that she has been deeply impressed by the quality of the women who offer themselves to the ordained ministry. I believe our experience England would be similar.

Theologically speaking there ought to be a change of policy so that women could be admitted to the priesthood. The universal church has not irrevocably made up its mind on this matter. Even the Vatican Declaration is by no means final. After all, most of the criticisms of it cited in this chapter have been by Roman Catholic theologians. (35) As Christian Howard has noted, (36) the Anglican-Roman Catholic Agreed Statement- represents the consensus of the Commission on essential matters when it considers that doctrine admits of no divergence, but the exclusion of women from the priesthood is not included among these essential matters. The Declaration itself states: ‘In the final analysis, it is the Church, through the voice of her Magisterium that, in these various domains, decides what can change and what must remain immutable.’" The Roman Church has changed its mind on other matters and could change its mind on this issue whenever it feels guided by the Holy Spirit into a fuller apprehension of the truth. The Church of England also can and should change its mind when necessary. Such changes have in fact taken place in all churches in the fairly recent past. The most notable of these changes has been in a new understanding (after some eighteen hundred years) between authority and the inerrancy of scripture. Nor is a church to be blamed because it has not been able to see the fuller implications of the revelation in Christ until circumstances were ripe. So it was, for example, with slavery: so, pray God, it will be with the priesting of women.

But how does such a change of heart and mind take place? The Holy Spirit works in many ways; through the writings of theologians, through the responses of the faithful and the leadership of their pastors, through scientific knowledge and through world events. Gradually minds and hearts are illuminated by grace with a growing apprehension of truth.

Sometimes it is said that only an Ecumenical Council could decide a theological matter such as this. This is very doubtful. Councils are seldom theologically creative: in the past they have usually set the seal of ecclesiastical authority on theological truths already perceived.’ The greatest and most far-reaching decision recognized by the Christian Church concerned the admission of Gentiles to full membership. But this was not decided by a Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 or earlier. The Council merely laid down the conditions under which Gentiles were expected to lead Christian lives: it recognized that God had already decided the question of Gentile Christians earlier by pouring out his Spirit on Cornelius. As Peter is reported to have said:

'If God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God?’ When they heard this, they were silenced. (38)

In the same kind of way, the ministries of Sr. Mary Michael, Jane Hwang, Joyce Bennett, Pauline Shek, ,Mary Au (and others not cited in this book) are living witnesses to God’s Spirit poured out on women admitted to the priesthood. They too should silence opposition. The evident infusion of grace in their lives and in the lives of those to whom they minister, their acceptance by their male colleagues and local congregations, the authenticity of their priestly ministry and vocation-these speak louder than words. These women are living embodiments of the theological truths which this chapter attempts to expound, and which are expanded in later chapters of this book.

NOTES

1. Cf. Ministry and Ordination (ARCIC Agreed Statement, 1973) para 13: One Baptism, One Eucharist and A Mutually Recognised Ministry (Faith and Order Paper No. 73, WCC, 1975); p, 33, paras 13f.

2. Reprinted in Women Priests? Yes, Now! (ed. H. Wilson, Denholm House Press, 1975). p, 46.

3. Recently during an interregnum, I placed in charge of a parish at the request of the Wardens, the Deaconess rather than one of the (far less experienced) Assistant Curates.

4. R. C. Moberley, Ministerial Priesthood (Murray, 1899), pp. 259f.

5 J. B. Lightfoot, St Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians (6th ed., Macmillan, 1881), p. 267.

6. Op. cit., para. 13.

7. ‘Representative Priesthood,’, Why Not? ed. M. Bruce and G. E. Duffield (Marcham Manor Press 1972), p. 80.

8. V. A. Demant ‘Why the Christian Ministry is Male’, Women in Holy Orders (Report of Archbishop’s Commission, C.A. 1617, 1966), pp. 110f.

9. Professor Lampe has pointed out to me that St Thomas Aquinas located the image of God in the rational soul (mens) to which sex-differentiation does not apply.

10. Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, 28.

11. Declaration on the Question of the Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood (Inter insigniores, 1977), Section V.

12. The Month, Second New Series, Vol. to No. 3 (March 1977). p. 76,

13. Lumen Gentium, 21.

14. See p. 47.

15. E. L. Mascall, Women Priests? (CLA 197x), pp. 14ff.

16. C. S. Lewis, Undeceptions (Bles 1971), pp. 192ff.

17.-See pp. 16ff. ‘

18. ‘Interpreting the Bible is a creative process which (a) looks at a passage in the ancient theological, historical, cultural and linguistic context that forms the “horizon” of the writer; and (b) allows it to come alive and arrest the modern hearer.’ (The Nottingham Statement-Official Statement of the Second National Evangelical Anglican Congress held in April 1977), p. 17.

19. E.g. 1 Cor. 11. 1-16

20. Inter insigniores, Section 1. The references are expanded in the official commentary.

21 M. Flusser, ‘Fathers and Priestesses: Footnotes to the Roman Declaration’, Worship, vol. 51 no. 5 (Sept- 1977), p. .445

22 Cf. Joan Morris, ‘Women and Episcopal Power’, New Blackfriars vol. 53 no. 625 (May 1972), pp. 205-210.

23 ‘The Church’s Tradition and the Question of the Ordination of Women to the Historic Ministry of the Church’ (Evidence submitted to the Archbishop’s Commission by the Anglican Group for the Ordination of Women, 1972), pp. 1, 4f

24 Speech in General Synod on 3 July 1975 by the Bishop of Winchester.

25 C. P. Price, ‘The Argument from Theology’, Women Priests- Yes Now! (Denholm House Press, 1975), p. 58.

26. Reported as the view of a Suffragan Bishop interviewed by Folly Toynbee (Guardian, 7 October 1977).

27. Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, III, 1 (T. & T. Clark, 1958), p. 196.

28. Cf. M. E. Thrall, The Ordination of Women to the Priesthood (SCM Press 1958), p. 35.

29. See pp. 14f.

30. Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, adopted by the UN Assembly in 1967

31. op. cit., p. 97.

32 L. Gutteridge. Open Thy Mouth for the Dumb (Blackwell, 1976), cc. IV and V.

33 Women and the Ministry (Church in Wales Publications, 1972), p. 12.

34. In 1974. out of 329 women in full time ministry in the Church of England, 83 wished to be ordained priest (48 deaconesses, 34 licensed lay workers), 131 were uncertain, 115 said they would not seek ordination.

35. In addition those mentioned in this chapter and by Archdeacon Perry and Professor Christopher Evans, Fr Gregory Baum and Fr Charles Curran headed a list of 110 eminent RC theologians and religious writers in America who signed a petition in 1974 calling on the Roman Catholic Church to respond to ‘the signs of the Spirit which are visible in our sister church’; and in 1977 members of the Faculty of the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley have made their objections to the Vatican Declaration public in an Open Letter to the Apostolic Delegate (Commonweal (1 Apr. 1977), 2o4-zo6). J. Wijngaards (Did Christ Rule Out Women Priests (Mayhew-McCrimmon 1977), p. 52) adds R. Metz, F. Klosterman, J. M. Aubert, Cardinal Danielon among others to the list of those who believe that the matter is not yet settled.

36 C. Howard ‘Ordination of Women in the Anglican Communion and the Ecumenical Debate,’ Ecumenical Review (July 1977), p. 245.

37 Inter Insigniores, Section 4.

38. Acts 11.17f

APPENDED NOTE

Women and The Ordained Ministry

from YesTo Women Priestspp14-15

by Donald Mackinon

Published 1978 by Mayhew-McCrimmon Ltd
in association with A. R. Mowbray & Co. Ltd
Republished on our website with the necessary permissions

In contemporary discussion among Anglicans concerning the ordination of women, there is one point which, in my judgment, has not received sufficient emphasis. It is, however, a point that, if it is to be made at all, must be made by one who is both lay in status and a male person.

We have had in recent years a great deal of discussion concerning the role of the ordained priest or minister. In all churches there have been many examples of those who have found that which they supposed irreducibly unique in their ministry, gradually diminished to vanishing point in their imagination, and their function objectively reduced to that of an amateur social worker. There have been cases of those who have in consequence either abandoned their ministry or else effectively withdrawn from it, finding satisfaction in other forms of service with or without preliminary professional training. Thus it is deeply significant that the Chairman of the Strathclyde Regional Council (Strathclyde is the largest local government unit in the United Kingdom) is a minister of the Church of Scotland, the Reverend Geoffrey Shaw, previously associated with the work of the ‘Gorbals Group’ of ministers and clergy in Glasgow.

I mention this many-sided discussion because I remain myself obstinately convinced that there is in the Christian ministry that which is irreducibly unique, definable indeed by reference to the mission, the death and exaltation of Jesus of Nazareth in whom the eternal Word of God is incarnate. Further I remain sufficiently committed to what is conventionally called the ‘Catholic tradition’ to maintain a distinctively priestly as well as pastoral and prophetic element in that ministry.

It is indeed for this reason that I wish to state out of the experience of many years that there have been, in my considered belief, occasions, some of them very important, in which a woman exercising a definitely priestly ministry, by virtue of the human perception that was hers as a woman, consecrated by her ordination, could have helped me avoid courses of action, disastrous in their outcome to myself and to others. In other words I am calling attention to the fact that where exercise of the Christian ministry in the world today is concerned, the Church of England is depriving itself of resources of deeply significant pastoral wisdom. To say that such resources are Available outside the exercise of a characteristically priestly ministry is to neglect the extreme importance of availability within, for instance, the context of the very special relation between priest and penitent in sacramental confession. To write in these terms is not intended to belittle any minister or priest, from whom I have received help; it is simply to record a growing conviction, born of experience.

Further, to write in these terms is not of course. to suggest that all women are suitable for the exercise of the ordained ministry any more than all men are suitable for such work. Belief in vocation may be an illusion; there must be selection. But it is greatly to be hoped that decision on this issue will be taken on grounds of principle and not on those of so-called ecumenical expediency. For what is at issue in the end may be nothing less than the fullness of effective Christian ministry in our society.

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