Читать книгу Without Precedent - Geoffrey Kirk - Страница 6

I had thought to begin this introduction with an apology. Over twenty years on from the first ordinations of women priests in the Church of England, and over half a century since the debate began in earnest, yet another book on the subject might be thought to be trying the public’s patience. But apology, it turns out, would be superfluous: there are so few books.

In his invaluable collection of essays, “Aspects of Anglican Identity,”1 Dr. Colin Podmore provides a useful summary of the discussion documents related to the synodical process in the Church of England. These slender volumes begin with the report, “Women in Holy Orders.”2 In 1968, the Anglican Consultative Council (a very different organization in those days) issued a discussion document, “Women in Ministry: A Study,”3 which was sent out for debate among all the Provinces of the Anglican Communion. A short time later, the Church of England’s Advisory Council for the Church’s Ministry published a paper entitled “The Ordination of Women to the Priesthood.”4 This was the first of a number of synodical contributions by Miss (later Dame) Christian Howard. Howard was a member of a well-known Northern family with strong connections to the suffragette movement. Though lacking any formal university education (she attended finishing schools in Italy and France), she became a significant figure in the General Synod and later became a member of the World Council of Churches Faith and Order Commission and its first woman vice-moderator. Her other contributions were “A Supplement”5 and “A Further Report.”6 The first contribution of the House of Bishops of the Church of England to the unfolding debate7 was a response to the recommendations of a synod working party on the possible shape of legislation, and only in a very limited sense a theological commentary. It was in 1988 that the House provided a more substantial (140-page) report8 that addressed scriptural and doctrinal issues directly. Like the previous House of Bishops report, GS 829 was claimed to be “unanimous”; though in fact it revealed substantial differences of opinion within the House on almost every topic raised. The then religious affairs correspondent of The Times, Clifford Longley, who was present at the press launch, commented laconically that it was a very Anglican use of the term “unanimous.” The next official synodical contribution to the debate was in “The Rochester Report”9 (a substantial theological report of 289 pages, published in November 2004). It was followed by a summary in March of the same year.

Whatever one’s attitude to the result of this process, there can be no doubt that it was both more thorough and more extensive than any undertaken elsewhere in the Anglican Communion. After posing several critical questions about the synodical process, Podmore concludes his overview thus:

Whatever the answer to these questions, the Church of England can take pride in its synodical system. No one could claim that the Synod acted hastily or without due consideration. Only after 22 years of debate and discussion was a motion calling for legislation passed, and the process from then until the promulgation of the canon took more than nine further years. The legislation was prepared and revised with great care and attention to detail, and debated not only in the General and diocesan Synods but in each deanery synod. The final approval debate was widely praised for its tone and quality by those who heard a Synod debate for the first time on radio or television.10

All well and good. But such a survey of the material, useful as it is, omits the most important feature of the debate—which is, of course, the absence of any serious contributions from the academic community. The big beasts of the theological academy are conspicuous by their absence. They seem deliberately to have avoided the subject, even when they were themselves involved in the synodical process. How might the debate have been illuminated by a pithy, incisive monograph by David Jenkins, a door-stopping assessment by Tom Wright, or a measured, ingenious, convoluted defense of the innovation by Rowan Williams? We will never know. They left the debate, for the most part, to the also-rans. Back in the mists of history, it is true there were contributions (albeit brief) of some weight. One thinks of the essay by C. S. Lewis, “Priestesses in the Church?”11 and the short paper by Bishop Henley Henson.12 But even so, they are few. A matter of months before his death, I asked Eric Mascall why neither he nor his contemporaries had written anything substantial on the subject. He drew my attention to the paper by V. A. Demant13 and concluded ruefully: “I suppose we just did not see it coming.”

This reluctance to enter the fray has a number of causes. The waters, it is true, were already very muddy. Absurd claims were being made by proponents (some of them detailed in this book), which any serious academic assessment would have to ignore or contest. And, in due deference to the ladies, no one really wanted to do either. But more than that, there was the overwhelming conviction of the bien-pensants (especially in the left-leaning academy) that this was an open and shut case. Even to argue in its favor was to demonstrate an unacceptable degree of political incorrectness. In the Church hierarchy, moreover, there was a cliquishness, which meant that this matter, like others which were deemed unstylishly contentious, had better be avoided. “His clear preference,” wrote Gary Bennett of Robert Runcie, in the fateful Crockford’s Preface, “is for men of liberal disposition and a moderately Catholic style which is not taken to the point of having firm principles. If in addition they have a good appearance and are articulate over the media, he is prepared to overlook a certain theological deficiency.”14 “I had to change,” said Rowan Williams to Angela Tilby of his early objections to women’s ordination, “after looking around at my side and seeing the company I was keeping.”15 The result was that the only serious theological study on the subject of women’s ordination available to English readers, then and now, was an American translation of the work of a German priest published in San Francisco in 1988.16 At a conference in St. George’s College Windsor in 2000, on the then fashionable “Doctrine of Reception,” I asked Dr. Mary Tanner (sometime Moderator of the World Council of Churches Faith and Order Commission and head of the Church of England’s Council for Christian Unity and drafter of the 1988 Bishops’ Report) her opinion of the book. She had not read it.

The widening gap between the world of academic theology and the day-to-day life of the Church which this lacuna demonstrates—and the ecclesial dominance of what Bennett called men “who have nothing to prevent them following what they think is the wish of the majority of the moment”17—were the real marks of this debate. The General Synod routinely congratulates itself on the quality and tone of its proceedings; but there must surely, after reading the verbatim record of November 11, 1992, be room to doubt whether such a process and such a forum is either adequate or appropriate for such a decision. It will be said that there is no other way. In the absence of prolonged and mature theological discussion, that is certainly the case.

* * *

A word of warning: This book is not an attempt to argue against the ordination of women to the priesthood or the episcopate, in the Church of England or in any other church. The Orders of the church are not at the disposal of Popes, Councils, synods or debating chambers of any kind. They are a gift from the Lord. We may seek to illustrate the nature and explain the purpose of that donné—we can seek “to justify the ways of God to man”—but we cannot properly argue for or against it, for the simple reason that it is not ours either to attack or to defend. Historically speaking, the three-fold orders of bishop, priest, and deacon emerged in their enduring form around the end of the fourth century, along with the catholic creeds and the canon of scripture. These are the three legs of the stool (not the trio of scripture, tradition, and reason, recently foisted on poor Hooker) on which the church sits. To alter any of them in any way is a serious and dangerous matter.

. . . untune that string / And Hark! What discord follows; each thing meets / in mere oppugnancy.18

All three are now under concerted attack, not from the critics of the church, but from its own leaders. The creeds have been rendered susceptible to meanings and interpretations very far from the conceivable intention of their original drafters. The very notion of canonicity, in scripture as in other areas, has been called into question, and documents of a very different character given equivalence with the received texts. These are serious matters to which the Church of England is ill equipped to give an ecclesial response. But changes to the Orders of the church are of another dimension. Such changes objectify opinion in ecclesial structures. That is why the arguments for, and the assumptions underlying, such an innovation demand the closest possible scrutiny.

1. Podmore, Aspects of Anglican Identity.

2. Church Information Office, Women in Holy Orders.

3. Advisory Council, Women in Ministry: A Study.

4. GS 104 [Howard], Ordination of Women to the Priesthood.

5. GS Misc 88 [Howard], Ordination of Women: Supplement.

6. GS Misc 198 [Howard], Ordination of Women: Further Report.

7. GS 764, Ordination of Women: First Report.

8. GS 829, Ordination of Women: Second Report.

9. GS 1557, Women Bishops in the Church of England?

10. Podmore, Aspects of Anglican Identity, 133.

11. Lewis, “Priestesses in the Church?” (Originally published as “Notes on the Way,” in Time and Tide 29.)

12. Henson, “Ordination of Women.”

13. Demant, Why the Christian Priesthood is Male.

14. Preface to Crockford’s Clerical Directory, 68.

15. Shortt, Rowan’s Rule: Biography of the Archbishop, 95.

16. Hauke, Women in the Priesthood? Systematic Analysis.

17. Preface to Crockford’s Clerical Directory, 68.

18. Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, act 1, scene 3.