The commitment of most Anglicans to the ordained ministry of women rests on the conviction that what I have just summarised makes it inconsistent to exclude in principle any baptised person from the possibility of ordained ministry. And to take the further step of advocating the ordination or consecration of women as bishops is to recognise that the public role of embodying the priestly vocation of the Church can’t be subdivided into self-contained jobs, but is in some sense organically unified, in time and space. Ordained ministry is one connected reality, realised in diverse ways. The earliest Christian generations reserved the Latin and Greek words for ”˜priest’ to refer to bishops, because they saw bishops as the human source and focus for this ministry of reminding the Church of what it is. The idea that there is a class of presbyters (or indeed deacons) who cannot be bishops is an odd one in this context, and one that is hard to rationalise exclusively on biblical or patristic grounds.
If that is correct, a Church that ordains women as priests but not as bishops is stuck with a real anomaly, one which introduces an unclarity into what we are saying about baptism and about the absorption of the Church in the priestly self-giving of Jesus Christ. Wanting to move beyond this anomaly is not a sign of giving in to secular egalitarianism ”“ though we must be honest and admit that without secular feminism we might never have seen the urgency of this or the inconsistency of our previous position.
Rectifying the anomaly is, we believe, good news in a range of ways.
The Archbishop of Canterbury is a Protestant. Who’d have thought it?
It’s certainly true that if you ordain women as priests, it’s almost impossible to come up with a non-tortured rationale for not consecrating them as bishops. So this was utterly predictable from the time they first started ordaining women. It does not speak well for the thinking process of anyone who sat around for 30 years (or whatever it was) saying ‘well, they can ordain women over there but it won’t affect me over here.” This, like many others, turns out to be an issue on which it is almost impossible to split the difference.
There is indeed a rationale for a male episcopate as a focus of diocesan unity quite different from the delegated priesthood and this was used in the C of E for many years to explain its different path from TEC in not pressing for a comprehensive canonical change involving both orders. While I was in seminary over there, the parallel cited was the Orthodox and Eastern Rite Catholics who have had married priests but celibate bishops for many centuries and show little sign of changing that.
But, Anastasios, my understanding is that the requirement for priestly celibacy is a discipline, not a doctrinal issue. The Roman Catholic Church could decide tomorrow that priests may marry and it wouldn’t change anything theologically. But because of the understanding of the role of the priest in situ Christi, for Catholics and Orthodox, allowing women to be ordained as priests would be a radical shift in their theology and understanding of scripture. So, no, your example doesn’t really work.
No surprise here, rather like the ABC’s other famous sexual issue material. Waffle until the accomplishment then say, okay. Keeps the pew sitters sitting and contributing whilst advancing the desired goal under the appearance of kicking the can. Rowan is a a master at this! See how far it’s gotten the church under his care?
Branford is correct: a celibate priesthood is a discipline of the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church. It is changeable; in fact, exceptions are made within the Latin Rite. A celibate episcopacy is also disciplinary, as I understand it, but is universal in the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Ordination of women is theological.
Weird to consider which anomalies need rectifying and which can be left to fester.
Exactly. Saying that you won’t consecrate women bishops because the “male episcopate is a focus of diocesan unity” is about as strong an argument as saying “men look way better in those cool robes than women do.” You might get by with it for a generation or two, but it’s not an argument built to go to the distance.
There’s the “headship” thing but that argument is not accepted at all by the Catholics and even some hard core evangelicals don’t go there. And even that’s pretty weak on its face. I mean, St. Paul says “women keep silent in churches” but you’ve got an ordained woman reading the gospel and preaching but that’s OK as long as she isn’t exercising authority over men?
Frankly, I have way less problem with a woman as a bishop (in the sense of exercising episcopal authority — obviously the apostolic succession is a problem) than I do as a priest (not that I have the slightest intention of being in a church that has either). But, in any event, the one logically derives from the other.
Yes Charles 52, the ordination of women is a theological matter, not just one of discipline. And yes Ad Orientem, in this respect, Rowan Williams is decidedly Protestant in his theology. None of this is frankly news.
Where the crux lies is how on earth any Anglicans of a more Catholic persuasion truly handle this matter. For myself, I have held for many years the view that Catholic theology at this point is just plain mistaken, if not muddled. Well; that comment should get the tongues wagging/fingers tapping the keyboards!
Women are not called to be priests or bishops.
The issue is one of authority. Pope John Paul II humbly stated that even IF the church felt that women’s ordination were desirable – it could never be done because there is no support for it in scripture or tradition. The Pope has no authority to invent doctrine.
Synod on the other hand…..whilst delighting in claiming the huberis of papal infallibilty…..