Musings on the Church of England and the “ordination” of women

The vast Lambeth Palace Library is bleak from the outside: a blank wall facing the Thames opposite Westminster. I still feel that it has a disappointing façade. But inside it is a feast from across several centuries: books, documents, newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, and useful research papers.

It is staffed by well-informed and interested librarians. There is a small, cozy common room where one can brew tea and store snacks. And it is a proper library, run with traditional rules: in the reading room, there is no chatting and no eating, and they make you rest a book on a cushion while you consult it, lest you damage its spine. It is fussy but somehow agreeably so.

All of which is a preamble to the discovery I made there, which (unlike the library itself) I found to be a disappointment. I needed to consult the papers relating to the ordination of women to the Anglican ministry in November 1992. I was looking forward to this. I had read lots of background material. The final debate in the Anglican synod is printed and bound in an ecclesiastical version of Parliament’s Hansard.

I found the volume I needed, and the librarian hurried with a cushion.

I am not sure what I was expecting. Some references to centuries of scholarship? Some quoting of saints, mystics, and martyrs? Some calls for deep study, debate, and reflection? A sense of history, and of mission and exploration—all centred on the mysterious call by Christ himself of men to follow Him into a specific and personal ministry?

My sense of expectation increased because I was surrounded by shelves and shelves of books that, by their very presence, somehow represented the learning of centuries. There were volumes of theology and commentaries on the Fathers, as well as the rather delightful Crockford’s Clerical Directories of the 1880s, along with biographies of various archbishops of Canterbury.

The printed record of 1992 perhaps fails to convey the passion that was present at the time. But that isn’t the main loss. The speeches themselves read poorly now. References to Christ somehow see him as a figure belonging to a distant time—a character worthy but limited in vision. References to the significance of the centrality of being male and female in God’s plan are few and covered by, for example, a reference to Christ’s “seamless garment” or generalised comments about the priesthood representing all humanity. Christ’s specific call to his apostles finds its place as merely one incident in his busy ministry.

Arguments against female ordination were not lacking in the debate, essentially focused on the absurdity of the Church of England making this decision alone, ignoring the worldwide Church and the testimony of Scripture, tradition, and history. There was serious material here, and it was presented well and with passion. But the overall effect of reading the debate is that this could only be the start. I was genuinely astonished to discover that after this one debate, on this one afternoon in London, the matter was considered settled, and by a small majority, the Church of England voted to have priestesses.

After reading through the debate and making notes, I discovered that my astonishment was not widely shared but was replaced, on the part of those who understood the significance of what had occurred, by deep anguish.

Here I am referring to those Anglicans who had been taking an active and studious part in the whole matter, up to and including the 1992 synod session. And of course, in the following weeks and months, the foundations were laid for a major realignment of the Christian presence in Britain. Today, a third of Catholic priests in England and Wales are former Anglican ministers. The ordination of women in the Church of England—but, much more specifically, the reality that it exposed of the Church of England’s self-understanding of mission and origin—was the essential reason for so many of them to enter communion with Rome.

The reason for my looking back on all of this has been the fifteenth anniversary of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham. It was established following the initiative of Pope Benedict XVI in his appeal to groups of Anglicans to come into full communion with the Catholic Church, to bring their traditions, liturgy, customs, and patrimony with them. Unfortunately, many Catholics are uninterested or downright rude (“Why don’t they just become normal Catholics?”).

But the Ordinariate has brought much that is splendid into the Church—“treasures to be shared” as Pope Benedict expressed it—and the back story, in that debate about female ordination, is important.

One thing that must be made clear (to Catholics, too) is that the debate on the ordination of women is actually going to be fruitful in new ways in the longer term. Doctrine develops in response to heresy. It is certain, and has been stated authoritatively, that the Church cannot ordain women. Over the next years, we will discover even more deeply why that is so. And in doing so, we will learn more about the importance of male and female, bridegroom and bride, Christ and His Church.

There are Christians outside the Catholic Church who are in anguish over the current nonsense across the West about people being “trans”, children being given hormones to delay puberty, and so on. A rich, beautiful, and confidently expressed affirmation of the truth of God’s plan—in ordination, in marriage, in everyday life, in the “theology of the body”–is one of the great healing gifts that the Catholic Church is able to offer.

And that means an offering by Catholics who take the trouble to study the issues involved and to share the knowledge. We must celebrate and teach the truth about the Church and her unchanging and unchangeable truth on a male priesthood, on marriage as the lifelong union of a man and a woman. We must continue to share the depth and significance of what has been handed down to us on these matters.