Anglicans backpedal on ordaining women: new vote makes both opposing views official.
LONDON--The Church of England voted to ordian women as priests Nov. 11, 1992. Exactly one year later it backed down and voted to give official recognition to two opposing views on women's orders. In effect, the ordination of women will now be conditional.As soon as the result of this year's vote was announced, a group in the public gallery, dressed in black, unfurled banners saying "Shame" and set up a quiet, rhythmic chant of "shame, shame, shame."
Then someone dropped 30 pieces of silver into the hall below. When protesters failed to respond to a warning, stewards were sent to remove them from the building.
What had gone on in the year between the two votes? How could the large two-thirds majority in favor of the ordination of women one year be converted into an even more massive majority to reduce the scope of their ordination the next?
At the heart of the change was a growing realization that the form the legislation took was a mistake. The Priests (Ordination of Women) Measure did not simply say women would be made priests. Though many people hoped for a single-clause measure, it was clear that many opponenets would never come around to accepting women priests. A complex measure was prepared that tried to provide for the opposing position in two ways.
First, any bishop could declare his diocese, and any parochial church council could declare their parish, a no-go area for women priests. Second, any clergyman who left the church on this issue was entitled to large "compensation" payments.
No one liked the legislation, from either side. It is even reported that some members of the drafting committe never intended it to become law: They thought the measure would narrowly fail in 1992, which would give them the opportunity to present a different proposal the next time the issue came up.
But in the last days before the 1992 vote a few lay members of the general synod changed their minds, and the measure obtained the necessary majority. If two lay members had voted the other way, it would have failed. The scenes of jubilation in the yard of Church House and the hours of singing Jubilate Deo by candlelight are now legendary.
The opponents then formed a strong and united front called Forward in Faith, and began to speak more openly of "priestesses." It was a convenient way of indicating they did not think a woman priest was a real priest.
The recently retired bishop of London, Graham Leonard, became in effect the leader of those who wanted to "go to Rome." During the coming months he held many meetings with Cardinal Basil Hume, archibishop of Westminster.
Leonard was the focus for a number of wild rumors such as that the Anglican traditionalist rump might become a personal prelature of the Catholic church, like Opus Dei.
But there has been a time lag on the departures. Opponents who intended to "go to Rome" could not be sure of qualifying for compensation unless they waited for the measure to complete its long progress toward becoming fully legal and canonical, which will happen only next Feb. 22.
Leonard's successor as bishop of London, David Hope, meanwhile became the unofficial leader of those who wanted to negotiate better terms for opponents within the Church of England. Chief among their objectives was some way in which they could be hermetically sealed off against bishops who had "tainted hands" because they had laid them on a woman's head in ordination. If a bishop had ordained a woman, then he had performed an invalid sacrament, it was said, and so the validity of all his other sacramental acts was called into question.
Hope was never happy about the no-go areas allowed in the measure. He spent many months of agonized prayer deciding whether or not to declare the whole of London a no-go area for women priests. In the end he came up with an alternative solution that had not been foreseen in the measure.
A bishop appointed by the archbishop of Canterbury would be permitted to enter the London diocese to ordain women, leaving Hope and most of his auxiliary bishops with "clean hands." Meanwhile, in areas where there was an auxiliary bishop prepared to ordain women, particular parishes could, at their own request, be ministered to by a bishop from another area who had "clean hands."
This solution was thought to be very clever, and it satisfied both opponents and those supporters of women priests who had dreaded the prospect of all the women in London being denied ordination.
Meanwhile, as the months passed, absurdly exaggerated rumors found their way into the press, fanned by campaigners among the opponents, that thousands and thousands of Anglican clergymen were on the point of becoming Catholics.
In a thoughtless moment, Hume let slip the unguarded phrase, which he afterward retracted, that this "could be the conversion of England, for which we have prayed all these years." What Hume might have been praying for, the Church of England bishops viewed with an alarm bordering on desperation because the sums payable in "compensation" could have bankrupted the church.
About this time it was also coming to light that incompetent investment had lost the church some 800 million pounds. The church faced an extremely severe financial crisis, even without paying a penny of "compensation." By some means or another, the "conversion of England" had to be stopped.
At the same time, pressure was building up from another quarter. Because the Church of England is an established church, the measure had to go through parliament where it was running into difficulties.
The first hurdle was the Ecclesiastical Committee, which was entitled to ask as many questions as it wanted, delay as long as it wanted, and vote the measure "expedient" or otherwise. Parliamentary committees are cross-party groups, supposedly representative of a good spread of opinion. Only ater did it emerge that as many as 11 of the 30 members of the Ecclesiastical Committee believed that women's ordination was, in their own words, contrary to "orthodox Christian doctrine."
This was far from representative of parliamentary opinion, for the measure eventually sailed easily through both chambers of parliament, gaining a 10-to-1 vote in favor in the House of Commons.
Before the measure was allowed to reach the point, the Ecclesiastical Committee had wrung from the bishops a promise that a new Act of Synod would be passed, making significant new concessions to opponents.
It was this Episcopal Ministry Act of Synod that provoked the cries of "shame" Nov. 11. The act extends the principle of David Hope's London Plan to the whole country. "Flying bishops" -- not their official name but the term popularized by the media -- will be appointed with the deliberate aim that they enable other bishops to keep clean hands.
Theologically the act goes further. From now on the Church of England will recognize "two integrities," or two contrary positions on women's orders.
The ordination of women will go ahead, beginning in March 1994, but two legitimate viws will be held on the status of women priests.
For some these ordinations will be real, comparable to the ordinations of men. For others they will be invalid, even though they are canonical and legal, insofar as the law of the land and of the church now permits them.
Both positions will have official representation within the Church of England, as a reflection of the fact that the wider church has not yet come to a common mind on the matter. And the bishops have made a public pledge that this arrangement will be permanent, even though in private many say they expect the tradionalist wing to die out naturally within 15 years.
The most controversial clause of the act is the one that says there will be no discrimination against opponents in future ordinations to the priesthood or episcopacy.
This is the clause that ensures the act is more than a pastoral provision of a transitional nature. It means that priests will continue to be ordained who do not recognize the orders of their female colleagues, and bishops will be appointed who teach an alternative doctrine of ministry.
The act provides for a break in communion within a single church -- "institutionalizing schism" as someone pointed out in the synod debate. Beyond that, it means that discrimination against women will be officially blessed, while discrimination against opponents is officially outlawed.
Catholic reponses have so far been muted. This is partly because the whole argument is so the theologically complex that the media has largely lost interest in the event. Decisions of enormous consequence have slipped through with comparatively little public exposure.
But there is also a sense that Catholics should not interfere in a sensitive Anglican debate. However, Catholic Bishop Alan Clark has gone on record as saying the Church of England should not be "fudging around" on the issue.
Two rather different Catholic responses are just beginning to form out of the mist. One is to see the Act of Synod as a new barrier to ecumenism, on the grounds that a church in internal schism, with two parallel orders of priesthood, lacks theological coherence.
The other is to see this last-minute concession to opponents as a saving grace for ecumenical relations. If women are in effect only conditionally ordained, then the act may provide the opening needed not only for Anglican opponents, but also for the Catholic hierarchy, to dismiss the priesthood of women in the Church of England.
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| Title Annotation: | Church of England |
|---|---|
| Author: | Hebblethwaite, Margaret |
| Publication: | National Catholic Reporter |
| Date: | Dec 3, 1993 |
| Words: | 1589 |
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