The State of the Question

from Women Priests?

By E. L. Mascall
Published by The Church Literature Association
London , 1972. pp. 5-11

In assessing the present situation it is perhaps well to recall that in 1962, following the publication of a report with the rather odd title Gender and Ministry (odd because “gender” has usually been taken as a grammatical and not an anthropological term) which had been prepared by a working-party of the Central Advisory Council on Training for the Ministry (CACTM), the Church Assembly requested the Archbishops of Canterbury. and York “to appoint a Committee to make a thorough examination of the various reasons for the withholding of the ordained and representative priesthood from women”. In response to this the two Archbishops appointed a Commission with the simpler terms of reference “to examine the question of Women and Holy Orders”. This Commission produced a report which was published in December, 1966, under the title Women and Holy Orders. It refrained, probably wisely, from making any recommendations but confined itself to assembling a large amount of historical material and setting out the arguments which had been urged both for and against the ordination of women to the priesthood. In July, 1967, the Church Assembly rejected a resolution welcoming the further consideration of the matter by the Advisory Council for the Church’s Ministry (ACCM, the successor of CACTM), the Council for Women’s Ministry in the Church and the Joint Committee of Representatives of the Church of England and the Methodist Church and describing itself as “believing that there are no conclusive theological reasons why women should not be ordained to the priesthood but recognising, that it would not be wise to take unilateral action at this time".’ The Methodist Conference, the supreme governing body of the Methodist Church in this country, had already, in 1966, affirmed its conviction “that women may properly be ordained to the Ministry of the Word and Sacraments” but, “recognising that it would not be wise to take unilateral action at this time”, expressed a desire for discussions with representatives of the Church of England. This discussion took place and its results were published in May, 1968, under the title Women and the Ordained Ministry. With an eye on the Anglican/Methodist union scheme this report expressed the view that unilateral action by the Methodist Church would not be an insurmountable barrier to Stage One of the Scheme but, unless the Church of England had decided to ordain women, might well hinder the implementation of Stage Two.

This piece of domestic history can have been of little direct interest to most of the members of the 1968 Lambeth Conference, but the general question must have been present to their minds. The subcommittee on Women and the Priesthood, (1) while expressing great respect for the opposite view, came down unhesitatingly in support of the ordination of women; it found “no conclusive theological reasons for withholding ordination to the priesthood from women as such”. It did indeed assert:

The appeal to Scripture and tradition deserves to be taken with the utmost seriousness. To disregard what we have received from the apostles, and the inheritance of Catholic Christendom, would be most inappropriate for a Church for which the authority of Scripture and tradition stands high.

Nevertheless, the appeal to Scripture was dismissed by juxtaposing two passages from St. Paul, one of which would, if anything, count against the ordination of women while the other has no explicit relevance to it. Similarly, the appeal to tradition was dismissed without detailed argument on biological and sociological grounds. It was added that “the element of sexuality in the Godhead and its implication for the sex of the priesthood are complex and debatable matters”, but the subcommittee felt itself competent to solve these complex and debatable matters in nine lines. The rest of the subcommittee’s report makes no reference to matters of principle but contents itself with asserting that churches which have ordained women have been satisfied with the results.

It is difficult to discover whether the matter received really adequate discussion in the crowded and hurried conditions of the Conference’s full sessions. In Resolution 34 it “affirm [ed] its opinion that the theological arguments as at present presented for and against the ordination of women to the priesthood are inconclusive". The addition of the words “or against” might seem significant. The Conference made it plain, however, in its subsequent resolutions that this state of alleged theological inconclusiveness was not to be taken seriously and that action could be envisaged on the assumption that the arguments against were valueless and that only the arguments for were valid. It asked all the parts of the Anglican Communion to give careful study to the question and to report their findings to the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), which would make them generally available. The ACC was also asked to initiate consultations with other Churches, both those which did and those which did not ordain women; and distribute the information thus secured. The Conference also requested that any Anglican national or regional Church or province contemplating ordaining women to the priesthood should seek and carefully consider the advice of the ACC (Resolutions 35-37). This last request is indeed surprising, for in it the Bishops of the Anglican Communion were shifting their responsibility, in a major matter affecting the basic structure of the Church, to a body of somewhat haphazard constitution which at the time of Lambeth 1968, had not even come into existence. When the ACC in fact came into existence and met in February and March, 1971, at Limuru in Kenya it consisted of fiftyone persons, bishops, priests and laypeople, each of the member churches of the Anglican Communion contributing two or three. The only ex officio member was the Archbishop of Canterbury. In spite of Resolution 37 of Lambeth 1968, it is difficult to see that advising about the ordination of women falls within the eight functions which Lambeth itself assigned to the ACC when it constituted it in Resolution 69. It is certainly difficult to see that all the members of the ACC had the necessary qualifications to consider such a matter in more than a pragmatic or emotional way. However, even setting such doubts aside, the resolution, No. 28(b), which was passed at Limuru has some very peculiar features. It was passed by 24 votes to 22 in the following terms

In reply to the request of the Council of the Church of SouthEast Asia, this Council advises the Bishop of Hong Kong, acting with the approval of his Synod, and any other bishop of the Anglican Communion acting with the approval of his Province, that, if he decides to ordain women to the priesthood, his action will be acceptable to this Council; and that this Council will use its good offices to encourage all Provinces of the Anglican Communion to continue in communion with these dioceses.

There is a very serious ambiguity about the phrase “this Council” in this resolution. Does it mean the fifty-one persons present at Limuru from February 23rd to March 5th, 1971, or does it include any future meetings of the ACC? If the former, it is impossible for “this Council” to use its good offices or do anything else after the latter of these dates, since it will then no longer exist, and if it is suggested that the individual members will find the proposed action acceptable and use their good offices, this is very doubtful, since just under half the members voting did in fact vote against the resolution. If, on the other hand, “this Council” is intended to include future meetings of the Council, with, in all probability, a largely different membership, the resolution is surely ultra vires, since no authority has been given to the members of the ACC in 1971 to bind their successors for ever and it would need a shift of only two votes for the resolution to be rescinded. No one, I think, has suggested that decisions of the ACC, like ex cathedra papal pronouncements, are irreformable of themselves and not by the consent of the Church. And indeed it would seem rash in the extreme for any part of the Anglican Communion to rely upon such fragile and tenuous assurances. This is not just a debating point, but involves a matter of serious principle. Have the bishops of the Anglican Communion handed over their responsibility in the matter of the ordination of women to a bare majority of such an amorphous and fluctuating assembly as the Anglican Consultative Council?

At least one bishop appears to think so, for on Advent Sunday, 1971, the Bishop of Hong Kong went through the form of ordaining two women to the priesthood, in spite of the fact that the Archbishop of Canterbury had asked that no bishop should so act before all the Anglican provinces had stated their views. His Grace had been quoted several times as saying that ordination of women to the priesthood would ultimately come but that the time had not yet arrived; clearly the Bishop of Hong Kong disagreed on this latter point and saw no reason to accept the Archbishop’s plea for delay. In any case, the ACC at Limuru, in Resolution 28 (a), has asked all the Anglican Churches to express their views in time for its next meeting in 1973, so there would seem to be, at any rate in the ACC’s own opinion, some urgency in the matter.

SCRIPTURE AND TRADITION

In any other matter than this the argument from Scripture and Tradition would be considered overwhelming. The words which I have quoted above from the Lambeth sub-committee could hardly have been stronger:

The appeal to Scripture and tradition deserves to be taken with the utmost seriousness. To disregard what we have received from the apostles, and the inheritance of Catholic Christendom, would be most inappropriate for a Church for which the authority of Scripture and tradition stands high.

This, one might think, would have disposed of the matter. It is therefore little less than astonishing to find the sub-committee dismissing both Scripture and tradition in two brief paragraphs in a way that, by its own standards, is most inappropriate and which certainly does not manifest the utmost seriousness.

All that is said about Scripture is this:

Nevertheless the data of Scripture appear to be divided on this issue. St. Paul’s insistence on female subordination, made to enforce good order in the anarchy at Corinth, is balanced by his declaration in Gal. 3, 28, that in the one Christ there is no distinction of Jew against Gentile, slave against free man, male against female.

That is all-not a word about the highly theological exposition in Ephesians v, in which the relation of man to woman is compared with that of Christ to the Church, and not a word about the attitude and teaching of Christ himself. Those who advocate the ordination of women usually start from the undeniable fact that, whereas in Judaism women occupy an essentially inferior position, if for no other reason that they are physically unable to be admitted into the Covenant by the rite of circumcision, in Christianity the water of baptism and the unction of the Spirit are available indifferently to men and women alike. The bearing of the argument is, however, all the other way. For it is the same, primitive Church which is appealed to as witnessing to the absolute equality of all Christians, both male and female, in their status as members of the Body of Christ through baptism, which restricted the Church’s ministerial functions to men. Behind the action of the Church in this matter there lies the example of her Founder, who (as we see for example in his condemnation of the Jewish attitude to divorce) was full of sympathy for women but who nevertheless founded the Church’s ministry by giving it a purely male apostolate. It would be absurd to suppose that in doing this Christ was depriving women of their legitimate rights, and misleading his Church as to their true status, as a concession to the conventions and prejudices of the time; even his enemies never accused him of conventionality and cowardice and it would ill become his disciples in the twentieth century to do so. When we find our Lord and the primitive Church restricting the ministry to males in spite of the emphasis laid by both alike on the absolute equality of men and women as members of the New Israel which is the Body of Christ, is it not prudent to assume that there must be some very deep and significant reason in the nature of things for this restriction?

The following paragraphs from the chapter on the Case against the Ordination of Women to the Priesthood in the report Women and Holy Orders deserve to be quoted at length; nothing in the subsequent chapter putting the opposite case seems to me to answer them

(a)It would be contrary to the tradition of the Church, from the time of the Apostles. If it is to be maintained that that tradition is wrong it has to be demonstrated, either that the Apostles failed to divine or to implement the intention of Christ, if he intended women to partake in the priestly ministry, or that Christ erred in not declaring this to be his intention. Neither proposition can validly be maintained.

It is therefore quite legitimate to assert that the exclusion of women from Holy Orders is just part of the nature of things, in this case of the nature of the Christian Church.

(b) The conviction that the priesthood can only be male is supported by the deliberate inclusion by Christ and the Apostles of women with men in the wider priesthood of the whole Church. There is a general priesthood of the whole people of God, comprising men and women, and a specific priesthood of those who have been ordained to it. The wider priesthood of the Laos indicates that if the ministerial priesthood is composed only of males, this is in the divine ordinance as much as the existence of the Church itself. If only secondary difficulties stood in the way, the ministry could easily have been opened to both sexes.

(c) Allied to this argument is that based on the recognition that Christianity was a revolutionary religion, not least in the greatly heightened esteem and value accorded to women .... The maleness of the Christian priesthood must therefore have deeper grounds than mere conservatism or a poor estimate of the feminine nature.

(d) All theistic religions (that is to say, religions in which the God or Gods transcend the created order and stand behind nature and history, as well as acting in them, rather than being merged in a monistic or pantheistic unity) have male priesthoods. Female priesthoods belong to the nature religions in which human nature is sensed to be merely part of society, society part of nature, and nature itself Divine. The Christian Church, rooted in the biblical view of God and his relation to the world, has without - question adopted a male priesthood. It is therefore pertinent to ask whether the feature of a male priesthood can be modified by the addition of a female priesthood without altering the essential character of the Christian ministry, and without affecting the human psyche at those deep levels at which it responds to religious symbolism.

None of these considerations appears to have made any impression on the Lambeth sub-committee, which indeed shows no signs of having heard of them. After the summary dismissal of

Scripture to which I have referred above, it deals with tradition as follows:

It appears that the tradition flowing from the early Fathers and the medieval Church that a woman is incapable of receiving Holy Orders reflects biological assumptions about the nature of woman and her relation to man which are considered unacceptable in the light of modern knowledge and biblical study and have been generally discarded today. If the ancient and medieval assumptions about the social role and inferior status of women are no longer accepted, the appeal to tradition is virtually reduced to the observation that there happens to be no precedent for ordaining women to be priests. The New Testament does not encourage Christians to think that nothing should be done for the first time.

In the absence of any details it is difficult to assess the force of these references to biology and sociology, but in order to make a case for the abandonment of the unvarying tradition of the Church we should need answers to the following questions: (1) What, if any, were the false biological views in question? (2) How did it follow from them that women could not be ordained to the priesthood? (3) What are the views which have taken their place? (4) Do those views imply that women can be ordained to the priesthood? (5) In what ways were women in the past believed to be socially inferior? (6) Did this belief imply that women could not be ordained to the priesthood and if so, how? (7) Have the views about women which have now come to be held been proved to be true? (8) If so, do they imply that women can be ordained to the priesthood? All these are serious questions and the matter is not to be dealt

with by casual reference to biology and sociology. Even if the refusal to ordain women in the past rested on a false belief in their inferiority (and it is doubtful whether this has been proved), there may still be other reasons against their ordination. In any case I would suggest that all this talk about inferiority and inequality is really irrelevant and un-Christian. For the basic fact about the sexes is not that they are inferior or superior to each other but that they are different.

Notes

(1) It should be remembered that the sub-committees were formed chiefly from volunteers.

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