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The latest book on Women Deacons
No Women in Holy Orders? The Ancient Women Deacons
by John Wijngaards, Canterbury Press 2002.

"This is an exceptionally engaging and readible book, written with great empathy for the historical background. Wijngaards has also rendered a great service by translating the original sources and presenting them in an easily accessible format."

Script for dramatizing the ancient ordination rite

Reviews ----- * ----- How to Order

• We believe in God for whom love is truly the highest priority, who expects the Church to be a community of care and mutual concern, brothers and sisters among whom leaders are servants and to whom power means comfort and healing.
  
• We believe in God who cherishes every part of our personality, our intelligence and spiritual gifts, but also our bodies, our sexuality, our longing for relationships, warmth and touch.
  
• We believe in God who has created all human beings to be sons and daughters, who calls both men and women equally to leadership and ministry in the Kingdom of Love.
  
• We believe in God who does not exact cruel sacrifices from us, but heroic deeds of love as Jesus showed us, deeds of generosity, a God who wants us to respect and love ourselves while giving and sharing of our best for the sake of others.
  
• We believe in God who expects us to be creative and free, who wants us to express our opinions honestly, to fight with all our heart and mind for truth and justice rather than blindly obey commands, to trustingly challenge those in authority when they make mistakes.

We are convinced that God revealed Good News, a breathtaking inspiration that gives meaning to our lives, an ideal against which we measure ourselves and our community of faith, a source of hope that makes us happy and proud to be followers of Christ.

Reasons why women can and should receive Holy Orders

1. Cultural bias
The Church’s practice of not ordaining women as priests was based on a three-fold prejudice against women. This affected the judgment of Church leaders. click!

2. One priesthood in Christ
Through baptism women and men share equally in the new priesthood of Christ. This includes openness to Holy Orders. click!

3. Women have been deacons
Until at least the ninth century the Church gave women the full sacramental ordination of deacons. This proves women can be ordained.click!

4. Women too are, in fact, called to be priests
The fact that many responsible Catholic women discern in themselves a vocation to the priesthood is a sign of the Holy Spirit we may not ignore. click!

5. The ability for women to be ordained has been present in the Church’s latent Tradition.
One example is the age-long devotion to Mary as Priest. It shows that, according to the ‘sense of the faithful’, in Mary the ban against women has already been overcome. click!

6. The wider Church accepts women priests
After serious study and prayer other Christian Churches now ordain women as priests. Though not everything other Churches do can be accepted by the Catholic Church, this converging consensus by believing Christians confirms that ordaining women is according to the mind of Christ. click!

7. The loss of truly Catholic values
The male-only priesthood is part of a set of skewed values on body, sex and marriage that need to be reformed. click!

Conclusion: there are no valid arguments against women priests, and many truly Catholic arguments in favour!