Women's Ordination Controversy Simmers in Church of England, but Causes no Mass Exodus
Episcopal News Service. December 12, 1995 [95-1329]
(ENS) The ordination of women by the Church of England appears not to have caused the feared mass exodus of Anglican priests to Rome.
During a recent visit to Portugal and Spain, Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey made it "very clear that there is no rush of people" leaving the Church of England in the wake of its January, 1994, vote to ordain women to the priesthood.
Citing earlier predictions that as many as 4,000 priests would leave the church, Carey said that "the number is about 250 at the present time -- and the majority of these are elderly and not all of them have become Roman Catholics." And he pointed out that "spiritual journeys can go either way. We know Roman Catholics who become Anglicans."
In the United States, by comparison, 98 Episcopal priests -- 63 of whom were married -- have been ordained as priests in the Roman Catholic Church since 1981, the national Office of Ministry Development reported recently. During the same period, 251 priests were received by the Episcopal Church from the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches.
Despite the obvious differences between the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church, Carey argued that the relationship between the two has become deeper and warmer in recent decades. The two communions "are not at war with each other," he said, adding, however, that "no church or denomination can avoid the challenge of the ordination of women to the priesthood."
Still, opponents to women's ordination in the Church of England continue to voice grave concerns about the long-term impact. One of the three "flying bishops" appointed to minister to those in the Church of England who are unable to accept women in the priesthood said that the church's General Synod made a mistake when it cleared the way for the ordination of women to the priesthood.
Parishes could force a reversal of the decision and sweep away the synod's "silly decision," Bishop Edwin Barnes said in a recent BBC radio interview. "What we've done we can undo," he said. "We are in a phase, not of reception, but of discernment and that means discerning what is right and what is wrong."
Barnes, who said that he was still convinced that "women were incapable of being priests," cited the example of the Lutheran Church in Latvia which recently suspended the ordination of women.
At the same time there are signs that even opponents to women's ordination may be modifying their views. Bishop Richard Chartres, recently chosen as the bishop of London, said in an interview with the Church Times that he supports women in the priesthood "with enthusiasm," though he himself will not ordain them as anything other than deacons. He added that "it is my responsibility and determination that the diocese should be a place where people can flourish and their ministries can develop."
Chartres added, however, that he did not regard the question of ordination as closed, adding that "we are a world-wide church and it is especially important at times of great change that we keep in touch with apostolic teaching and with the church throughout the world."
Meanwhile, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith recently issued a three-page statement clarifying the letter that Pope John Paul II issued last year. The letter was a response to the ordination of women by the Church of England.
The papal letter, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, presented itself as a teaching but it did not claim infallibility. In it the pope concluded that "the church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgement is to be definitively held by all the church faithful."
Ratzinger's statement, however, says that the papal letter belongs to the deposit of faith and is a teaching that "has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal magisterium," the teaching authority that has evolved throughout church history.
"To understand that this is not violent or discriminatory toward women, you must consider that the priestly ministry is a service and not a position of power or privilege above others," Ratzinger wrote.
An editorial in the English Roman Catholic magazine, The Tablet, said that the clarification was made because "the Vatican sees the slowly increasing level of controversy over the possibility of women priests as a threat to unity within the communion of the Catholic faith that has to be countered forcefully."