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Edited by Michael P.Hamilton and Nancy S.Montgomery,
Morehouse Barlow Co, 1975.
Republished on our website with the necessary
permissions.
Appendices
Contents
A. American Church Union Council Resolution on the
Ordination and Consecration of Women
APPENDIX
A
American Church Union Council Resolution On the Ordination and
Consecration of Women
A Resolution adopted unanimously by the 1972 Annual Meeting of the ACU
Council, in Schenectady, New York, 11 October 1972.
Whereas we, the assembled Council of the American Church Union,
believe that one of the most potentially divisive issues facing the Episcopal
Church today is the consideration of the Ordination of Women to the Sacred
Priesthood;
And Whereas, the Anglican Consultative Council meeting in
Nairobi, Kenya, in April 1971 voted to recommend the Ordination of Women to the
Priesthood by a margin of 24-22;
And Whereas, Anglicans have been led by certain press reporting
of this vote to believe that the ACC provided an overwhelming mandate to ordain
women to the Priesthood;
And Whereas, the Anglican Bishop of Hong Kong has given cause for
a breach of communion with him and his Diocese by the unauthorized attempt at
ordaining two women;
And Whereas, there are many reasons (psychological, sociological,
ecumenical, Biblical, traditional and theological) against ordination of women
to the Priesthood and the Episcopate;
And Whereas, in this time of renewal and change it is necessary
to re-affirm the Apostolic tradition of the Ministry;
And Whereas, the recent Papal Decree defining the role of women
in the Roman Communion (which also indicates that women will not be ordained to
the Roman Catholic Priesthood) results in profound ecumenical implications as
regards any attempt to ordain women in the Episcopal Church;
Therefore, Be It Resolved that this Council petition the General
Convention of 1973 that it not alter or allow this position to be compromised
or lost by the admission of women to the Priesthood or the Episcopate in order
that this branch of the Catholic Church be not torn with the tragedy of
schism;
And Be It Further Resolved that this Council provide for a
continuing committee to educate members of our Church regarding this divisive
issue and that this committee diligently publicize and articulate this position
within the life of our Church in the remaining time before the General
Convention of 1973.
Correspondence should be directed to: Executive Director
American
Church Union
60 Rockledge Dr.
Pelham Manor, New York 10803
APPENDIX
B
Orthodox Statement On The Ordination Of Women from the Orthodox-Anglican
Consultation, June 2, 1973
1. God created mankind as "male and female," establishing a diversity of
functions and gifts; these functions and gifts are complementary but not all
are interchangeable: they presuppose a role of headship for man and a different
but no less important role for woman as a guardian, witness and channel of
life. There is every reason for Christians to oppose current trends which tend
to make men and women interchangeable in their functions and roles, and thus
lead to the dehumanization of life.
2. The biblical, conciliar, patristic and canonical evidence confirms
that only men are eligible for the offices of bishop and priest. This
scriptural and traditional evidence —reflecting and protecting the order
of creation described above —cannot be challenged or relativized by
references to historical or social changes, unless one rejects the very idea of
God's Revelation in Christ once for all, transmitted to us by His Apostles and
by the Church.
3. The Orthodox Church recognizes a woman, the Holy Virgin Mary, as the
human being closest to God. It is clear, therefore, that there cannot be any
question about any inferiority of women in the eyes of God. The importance of
recognizing the role of women in the life of the Church can and must be
discussed and studied among Christians.
4. It is evident that if the Anglican communion takes the decisive
action of admitting women to the priesthood and the episcopate the issue will
involve not only a point of church discipline, but the basis of the Christian
faith as expressed in the Church's ministries. It will obviously have a
decisively negative effect on the issue of the recognition of Anglican Orders
and on the future of Anglican-Orthodox dialogue in general.
APPENDIX
C
An Open Letter
On Monday, July 29, 1974, The Feasts of Sts. Mary and Martha, God
willing, we intend to ordain to the sacred priesthood some several women
deacons. We want to make known as clearly and as widely as we can the
reflections on Christian obedience which have led us to this action.
We are painfully conscious of the diversity of thinking in our Church on
this issue, and have been deeply sobered by that fact. We are acutely aware
that this issue involves theological considerations, that it involves biblical
considerations, that it involves considerations of Church tradition, and that
it raises the vexing question of amicable consensus in our household of
faith.
We are convinced that all these factors have been given due
consideration by the Church at large, and by us. We note that the House of
Bishops is on record as being in favor of the ordination of women. We note that
a majority of the clergy and laity in the House of Deputies is also on record
as being in favor, even though an inequitable rule of procedure in that House
has frustrated the will of the majority.
All of the foregoing factors, by themselves, would not necessarily
dictate the action we intend. Nor, even, would this intended action necessarily
be required by the painful fact that we know pastorally the injustice, the
hurt, the offense to women which is occasioned by the present position of our
Church on this issue.
However, there is a ruling factor which does require this action on our
part. It is our obedience to the Lordship of Christ, our response to the
sovereignty of His Spirit for the Church.
One of the chief marks of the Church is its being the community of the
Resurrection. Ours is a risen Lord. He was raised in the power of the Spirit so
that we might participate, however inadequately, in His triumph against sin and
separation, proclaim the good news of His victory, and occasionally ourselves
walk in newness of life. His Spirit is the Lord of the Church. Hearing His
command, we can heed no other. We gladly join ourselves with those who in other
times and places, as well as here and now, have sought obedience to that same
Spirit.
This action is therefore intended as an act of obedience to the Spirit.
By the same token, it is intended as an act of solidarity with those in
whatever institution, in whatever part of the world, of whatever stratum of
society, who in their search for freedom, for liberation, for dignity, are
moved by that same Spirit to struggle against sin, to proclaim that victory, to
attempt to walk in newness of life.
We pray this action may be, as we intend it, a proclamation of the
Gospel —that God has acted for us, and expects us, in obedience, to
respond with appropriate action.
The Rt. Rev. Daniel Corrigan
The Rt. Rev. Robert DeWitt
The
Rt. Rev. Edward R. Welles, II
APPENDIX
D
Special Meeting of the House of Bishops, Chicago, Illinois, August
14-15, 1974
Final Report of the Committee on Resolutions
The House of Bishops in no way seeks to minimize the genuine anguish
that so many in the Church feel at the refusal to date of the Church to grant
authority for women to be considered as Candidates for Ordination to the
Priesthood and Episcopacy. Each of us in his own way shares in that anguish.
Neither do we question the sincerity of the motives of the four Bishops and
eleven Deacons who acted as they did in Philadelphia. Yet in God's work, ends
and means must be consistent with one another. Furthermore, the wrong means to
reach a desired end may expose the Church to serious consequences unforseen and
undesired by anyone.
Whereas our Lord has called us to walk the way of the Cross through the
questions and issues before us resulting from the service in Philadelphia on
July 29, 1974, and
Whereas the Gospel compels us to be as concerned with equality, freedom,
justice and reconciliation and above all love, as with the order of our common
life and the exercise of legitimate authority, therefore, be it
Resolved, that the House of Bishops, having heard from Bishops Corrigan,
DeWitt, Welles and Ramos, the reasons for their action, express our
understanding of their feelings and concern, but express our disagreement with
acting in violation of the collegiality of the House of Bishops, as well as the
legislative process of the whole Church.
Further, we express our conviction that the necessary conditions for
valid ordination to the Priesthood in the Episcopal Church were not fulfilled
on the occasion in question; since we are convinced that a bishop's authority
to ordain can be effectively exercised only in and for a community which has
authorized him to act for them, and as a member of the Episcopal College; and
since there was a failure to act in fulfillment of constitutional and canonical
requirements for ordination, and be it further
Resolved, that we believe it is urgent that the General Convention
reconsider at the Minneapolis meeting the question of the Ordination of Women
to the Priesthood, and be it
Resolved, that this House call upon all concerned to wait upon and abide
by whatever action the General Convention decided upon in this regard.
(This motion passed by the following vote: "yes"-128; "no"-9;
abstained-10)
APPENDIX
E
A Report on The Validity of the Philadelphia Ordinations
(1)
This report is a response to the request of the Bishop and Standing
Committee of the Diocese of Rochester "for an opinion as to the validity of
(the Rev. Merrill Bittner's) orders." Ms. Bittner being one of the eleven
deacons who irregularly underwent the rite of ordination to the presbyterate in
the Church of the Advocate, Philadelphia, on 29 July 1974, at the hands of
Bishops Corrigan, DeWitt and Welles. The opinion has been sought by reason of
the judgment of the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church that on the
occasion in question "the necessary conditions for valid ordination to the
priesthood in the Episcopal Church were not fulfilled." The question of
validity in this case is thus the question whether presbyteral order was in
fact sacramentally conferred upon the eleven deacons by the action of the three
ordaining bishops in Philadelphia.
(2)
A sacramental act is said to be "valid" when it truly signifies and
conveys the reality it is meant to signify and convey.
With all sacraments the reality in question is a certain kind, or mode,
of membership in and identification with the crucified and risen Christ, in
whom God has effectively declared his eternal purpose for humanity by
reconciling us to himself and to one another in a new covenant of grace.
For this reason the ultimate and necessary condition of the
validity of any sacramental act is the presence of God working through the Holy
Spirit the identity of men and women in and with his incarnate Word. The
sacrament "works" objectively because God in Christ "works" it through the
Spirit in accordance with his promise. This divine presence and activity is
signified and conveyed through human actions which symbolize it because they
are the covenanted means of its focal expression: in short, because they are
the human actions to which God's promise is attached.
Consequently, the proximate and sufficient condition of the
validity of a sacramental act is found in the carrying out of the human actions
which constitute the effective, because covenanted, sign of the active presence
of God in Christ. The question of validity, then, at this level, is the
question whether a certain action, considered simply as a human action, is
or is not the covenanted sign which it seems or pretends to be; and what
one must know in order to answer the question is what the conditions are
under which a given action may qualify as such a sign.
(3)
It is at least possible that there is available a quick response to this
question —a response which alleges in effect that a valid sacramental
action is simply a sacramental action which can be recognized or acknowledged
without doubt as an official public action of the Church.
In support of this position it may be urged that the Church, considered
as an organized human community, is itself called out and established by God to
be not merely the beneficiary of salvation, but also the historical sign and
witness of the Christ in whom God has effectively declared his purpose for all
peoples. The Church, then, is the community in which God's covenant of grace is
visibly and historically present. As such it is the sole context in which human
actions may in fact be or become covenanted signs which convey the reality of
humanity's new relationship to God in Christ. Valid sacraments are thus
sacraments which the Church acknowledges to be so; and sacramental actions
which violate the historical community of the covenant, or which occur in some
way apart from it, are invalid.
(4)
This thesis both states and implies important truths. The Church is the
people in which, through God's calling, the identity of humanity in Christ is
proclaimed by being embodied. It is, therefore, the historical manifestation of
the end to which God is bringing his whole creation. The sacraments,
accordingly, through which people's membership in the crucified and risen
Christ is objectively proclaimed and realized, are fundamentally
ecclesial realities. They are proper to the Church in its character as the
visible historical "showing" of God's covenant with humanity. Like the
preaching of the Word, they are actions of the Church which at the same time
constitute it.
The thesis, however, contains an ambiguity which must be clarified if it
is not to be misleading. We say that the Church is an historical community
which bears and manifests the eternal purpose of God for humanity:
koinonia in Christ. The fact that this is true, however —and true
in and in spite of the betrayals of its identity of which the Church is more or
less regularly guilty —cannot be attributed to the Church itself, either
as community or as institution. The Church's identity —the fact that it
is koinonia, community —belongs to it not in itself but in Christ.
Hence it appropriates that identity in living, and knowing that it lives, from
beyond itself, from outside the sphere of its communal or institutional
competence: i.e., on the basis of the grace and the calling which make it the
community by which God's covenant with humanity is signified.
Hence it becomes important to understand just what is meant when it is
said that the sacraments are "ecclesial realities," or that the Church owns,
possesses, or controls what the sacraments enact. What is meant is rather that
the sacraments are moments in the life of the Church where, by reason of the
covenanted gift of God, what it does and what God is doing correspond and
coincide. They are crucially and characteristically ecclesial because in them
the Church receives its identity as a gift —an identity which is not
simply "church" or "community" but Christ himself, who stands over the Church
in giving himself for it.
Thus the sacraments are indeed "proper" to the Church; but they are not
derived from it. They stand within its life as events, ever repeated, which it
performs and administers, but does not possess and control. What the sacraments
enact is something objective for the Church as well as something proper
to the Church.
(5)
It is essentially for this reason that the question of the validity of a
sacramental action cannot be reduced without remainder to that of whether or
not it has the Church's "recognition": i.e., whether it conforms in all
respects to the customs and laws which normally regulate the administration
either of the sacraments generally or of a particular sacrament. Because the
reality which the sacraments signify as gift and not as possession
—because they are events objective for the Church as well as proper
to it —it is necessary to assert, as a matter of principle, that
the Church recognizes a sacramental action because it is valid, not that
suck an action is valid because the Church recognizes it.
It is always possible, in short, to raise the question whether the
covenant of God's grace is simply coincident with the principles and laws of
association through which the Church normally shapes and expresses its
koinonia in Christ. Or, to put it another way, one can always ask
whether a sacramental action may not be a properly ecclesial act without
being an official ecclesiastical act. It is the possibility and
necessity of this question, grounded in the nature of Church and sacraments
themselves, which is the foundation of the distinction between "validity" and
"regularity."
(6)
This distinction —and the troublesome question out of which it
arises— became an integral part of western Christian tradition as a result
of the position taken by St. Augustine of Hippo on the status of sacraments
celebrated in the schismatic Donatist Church of North Africa. The Donatist
body, appealing to the authority of St. Cyprian of Carthage, held that only a
church whose bishops were "pure" (i.e., in practice, of the sin of apostasy)
could be a church in which the Holy Spirit dwelt, and thus a church in which
there was a true and valid ministry of the sacraments. Since the Donatists
believed that the hierarchy of the imperial Catholic Church in Africa was
derived through an apostate bishop, they separated themselves from the orthodox
body on the ground that they, and not it, represented the pure, and hence the
true, Church.
St. Augustine, whose position was in part a development of that taken
more than a century before by Pope Stephen I against St. Cyprian, had two basic
purposes in his debate with the Donatists. The first was to counter what he
regarded as a false view of the nature of Church and sacraments. The second was
to reconcile the Donatists to the Catholic Church. Both of these ends he sought
to achieve by what was in effect a single line of argument.
Augustine maintained that the holiness of the Church consisted not in
the moral purity of (its members or) its bishops, but in its participation in
the Incarnate Word through grace —a participation realized in different
degrees in its different members as they moved towards their destiny in God.
Accordingly, he taught that the validity of sacraments depended not on the
moral character of the minister (which he considered ultimately unsearchable by
men), but on the work of God in Christ objectively fulfilled through the
minister as he carries out the sacramental sign. It is not, in short, the
Church which "makes" a sacrament, but God in Christ.
This repudiation of the Donatist view of Church and sacrament enables
Augustine further to assert the validity of the sacraments of the schismatic
Donatist body itself. For although the Donatists had committed what to
Augustine was the sacrilegious sin of schism, the rupture of charity and
community, this (moral!) defect could not alter the objective reality of the
sacraments as they performed them. The Donatists collectively were, as he saw
it, in the position of individual catholics who came to the sacraments
"hypocritically" —without desire and faith. They received the reality
which the sacraments convey —they were "branded" with Christ, but with no
benefit for their ultimate personal salvation. They ate and drank, indeed, to
their condemnation. Donatists' sacraments were, then, valid (objective
and real appropriations of the covenant of grace: ecclesial acts);
irregular (because performed apart from the Catholic Church); and
inefficacious concerned the personally appropriable fruits of the
sacraments (because received in a spirit contrary to charity). Such sacraments
would become regular and efficacious through reconciliation to the Church.
Augustine's assertion of the existence of sacramental actions which are
valid but not regular is the ultimate source of a developed theory of the
necessary conditions for mere validity —a theory worked out essentially by
the scholastic theologians of the Middle Ages. In effect the theory may be said
to answer the question what the circumstances are in which a sacrament may
qualify as an ecclesial act, an authentic appropriation of the Covenant of
Grace for the Church, without being an official ecclesiastical act. The
conditions specified are four in number.
First, the sacramental sign itself must be correctly performed.
What is at issue here is the character of the action itself —the words,
things, and gestures which are involved in it. Traditionally, this condition
has been taken to be satisfied by the presence of correct form (the words used)
and correct matter (the visible thing and/or action which the words interpret).
These together are taken to constitute the actual sign.
Second, there is the condition of correct intention. This demands
that the action, be performed (by minister and recipient) to the work and will
of God in Christ. The action, in short, must be meant as a carrying-out, and
thus an appropriation of the divine promise to mankind as that is represented
in the Church. Intention here is not tested by reference to merely private
states of mind, but by the publicly observable criterion of a serious will, as
declared in action, "to do what the Church does"; i.e., to perform the act with
the meaning which it has in and for the community of faith. However, this
intention is not understood to presuppose either a perfect understanding of, or
a perfect agreement with, everything which the Church teaches or requires in
connection with the performance of the sacramental action. Intending "to do
what the Church does" means simply: performing the particular sacramental
action as an appropriation of its meaning within the covenant of grace, even
though dimensions of that meaning may (and almost certainly do) escape the
conscious conception and purpose of the minister.
Third, there is the condition of the proper minister. The
minister of a sacrament is one who represents to the community of faith the
Christ in whom its identity and his are realized, and in doing so represents it
to itself. As such, the minister, is, as a person fulfilling a role, a sign of
the New Covenant in its character both as divine gift and as human response.
Thus the requirement of the proper minister points to the necessity that the
sacramental action be, and be perceived as, an action which occurs in
fulfillment of that Covenant —and of that Covenant as it is historically
manifested in a visible human community through which, though not from which,
the sacraments derive.
Finally, it is necessary to note that a sacramental sign is invalid
(meaningless might be a better term here) when the person who seeks to
receive it is incapable of receiving it. (One who is not baptized, e.g., cannot
be ordained.) Since it has been maintained that female sex is a formal
disqualification for the reception of the sacrament of Holy Order, this
condition is one which must be considered here.
(8)
Before examining the Philadelphia ordinations themselves, however, it it
necessary to say something of a general nature about the significance of
ordination.
It is more or less clear to everyone what the visible result of an
ordination normally is. The person ordained assumes a certain office and
a certain status in the Church. The office is traditionally, and no
doubt properly, defined in terms of functions and powers: in relation to the
sacramental worship of the Church; in relation to the proclamation and
explication of the Word in the Church; and in relation to leadership and
government in the Church. The status, which belongs to this office, is
definable in terms of membership in a "college," a community of ministers, to
which these functions and powers belong in common.
Such an account of ordination as induction into office and "college"
might be sufficient save for the fact that ordination (in the Episcopal Church
and catholic tradition generally) is held to be unrepeatable. A person may
resign or lose an office, and be returned to it again; but whatever it is that
happens in ordination cannot be resigned or lost —or returned to. A
bishop, presbyter, or deacon, once ordained, may be deprived of the office
which is properly his, but not of his order.
The meaning of ordination, therefore, does not lie so much in function
or collegial membership, as it does in what may be called "personal role."
Ordination assigns and confers a way of being related to the Church upon a
person, and not simply as one capable of carrying out certain functions. (In
this particular respect, ordination is analogous to baptism, which explicitly
actualizes for a person the relation to God which is his in Christ —a
relation which cannot be lost even though the way of life and the calling that
follow naturally and immediately upon it are not in fact followed or
fulfilled.)
But what is this "way of being related to the Church"? It has in recent
times been defined primarily in terms of the idea of representation. The
ordained person represents (i.e., symbolically focuses) the Church for
itself and before God. And so much is no doubt true. But to represent the
Church for itself and before God means to represent the Christ in whom the
Church has its identity and in whom God accepts it. Ordination thus constitutes
a person, for the Church, as a covenant-sign: it assigns and confers the
personal role of actively signifying the identity of the Church in Christ. And
upon this role, office and status immediately follow, no doubt according to
times, circumstances, and the laws of men. A valid ordination, however, is one
which assigns and confers this role as something proper to the person
ordained.
(9)
Ordination is accomplished (1) by the laying-on of hands with prayer,
(2) through the ministry of a bishop, (3) who by what he does declares his
intention of having conferred the role of bishop, presbyter, or deacon upon the
person ordained. Further, this rite must, if it is to be valid, be performed
upon a suitable subject.
The question now becomes whether these conditions were
satisfactorily fulfilled in the Philadelphia ordinations, and whether,
assuming a real distinction between validity and regularity, there are other
conditions for validity which either ought to have been fulfilled but
were not, or ought to have been fulfilled and in fact were.
(10)
The first problem which must be taken up is the question whether women
are suitable subjects for ordination. It must be noted that this is not a
question about the desirability of ordaining women in the Episcopal Church. It
is merely the technical question whether female sex constitutes in itself an
obstacle to the "working" of the sacrament of Order.
Various arguments are propounded which are intended to suggest a
negative answer to this question (though in fact, even if they were
demonstrative, there might be doubt as to their strict relevance). It is
suggested, for example, that since Jesus Christ was male and not female, women
cannot "represent" him; or that since the representatives whom Jesus himself
chose to bear his Gospel were all males, he must consciously have intended that
the ministers of the Church be for all time exclusively male. Quite apart from
the problem of the relevance of such considerations to the point at issue,
these arguments are not, as has frequently been pointed out, very effective.
The latter assumes a legislative intent on Jesus' part of which we know (and
can know) nothing; and furthermore it leaves dangling such uncomfortable
questions as whether Gentiles can properly be ordained, since all the Apostles
were Jews. The former assumes that "maleness" is that identity of Christ which
is sacramentally represented to (and by) the Church as the basis of humanity's
reconciliation with God —a doubtful proposition on the face of it. [The
proposition is doubtful even in the light of Ephes. 5:22-33, where the author
draws on the image of the sacred marriage (cf. Ezek. 16:8ff., and possibly Ps.
45) to figure the relation of Christ (as "husband") to the Church (as "bride"),
and interprets Gen. 2:24 "of Christ and of the Church." The ultimate point of
the figure is not to suggest that Christ saves because he is, or inasfar as he
is, male. Rather it is to suggest that that identity of the Church in Christ
(Ephes. 2:15f., 4:15f.) which is its salvation consists solely in the love by
which Christ "gave himself up for it," and which it returns and reflects by its
obedience.]
More traditional arguments against the ordination of women have relied
not so much on considerations of this sort, as on the belief that women cannot
fulfill a role which involves an office of leadership and authority. This view
was based on the belief that women, like slaves and children, are, either
naturally or as a result of that Fall, in a position of subjection and
dependency. These arguments, however, are themselves more than difficult to
maintain. They appeal either to an Aristotelian biology and philosophy of
nature which are difficult to defend; or else to an interpretation of Genesis 3
—its character, setting, and purpose —which theology has long
rejected. Moreover, since women do in fact occupy —and have in the past
occupied —positions of leadership and authority in ecclesiastical as well
as secular spheres, theological and philosophical aetiologies which are
calculated to show that they cannot possibly do so seem beside the point.
Of more immediate interest, perhaps, is the fact that recent discussion
of the ordination of women in the Episcopal Church has seldom adverted to the
problem of their intrinsic susceptibility to ordination. It has rather
concentrated on the issue of the cultural, social, and psychological
implications and effects of their being ordained —i.e., on the question of
the desirability of their being ordained. The assumption seems to have been
— certainly within Anglican circles in the past decade or so —that
women can be ordained, even though the Church might judge it wiser on the whole
not to do so. Indeed, one of the forms or grades of the sacrament of order (the
Diaconate) is already open to them (as are the seminary studies which normally
prepare persons for ordination); and this fact, like the majority votes in the
House of Bishops favoring the ordination of women to the Presbyterate, creates
a presumption that there is no serious doubt for the Episcopal Church about the
capacity of women to be ordained.
There is, moreover, good reason for this assumption. In Baptism, women,
like men, are made members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the
Kingdom of Heaven, They are, therefore, unless the Church's custom of baptizing
women is erroneous, capable of sharing in the identity of Christ, and, in the
lay role, of representing him. If this is true, there is no ground whatever for
supposing that women are intrinsically incapable of entering into the role of
the person who sacramentally represents to the Church its identity in Christ.
Indeed, it seems that to make this assertion would be implicitly to deny or to
qualify the meaning of women's baptisms.
We conclude that a woman is capable of receiving the sacrament of Order,
in all its grades.
(11)
Since the rite used in the Philadelphia ordinations was that of THE BOOK
OF COMMON PRAYER ... OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH . . . , we conclude
that the matter (the laying-on of hands) and the form (the bishop's ordination
formula) were correct, and that therefore the traditional sacramental sign was
completed.
The process followed in the Episcopal Church for the selection of
persons for ordination is no part of the sacramental sign; but it may be worth
noting that the women ordained in Philadelphia were by education and training
qualified to undergo or complete this process with at least normal prospects of
success.
(12)
In the report of the Theological Committee of the House of Bishops,
question was raised as to the propriety of the intention of the ordination rite
performed in Philadelphia.
The objection suggested was complex in form. Negatively, it asserted
that "The 'proper intention' of a sacrament is not just the 'right words.' "
Then more positively it stated that what is necessary is an intention which (a)
originates in "the community," and (b) involves a clear will to maintain
community. If these conditions are not fulfilled, it is argued, the rite
"intends" contradictory things, since ordination is an act of the community
which consists in an induction of the persons ordained "into the ministerial
community."
So far as this objection involves the proposition that ordination does
not "work" except as "the community" is the ultimate (human?) minister of the
sacrament, it concerns not the question of intention, but that of the proper
minister, and must be considered in that connection. The basic issues here are
two in number. First, there is the question of the sense in which it is true to
say that ordination is to be understood as "entrance into the ministerial
community," and that this constitutes the objective intention of the rite.
Second, there is the question of the sense in which ordination (or any other
sacrament) "intends" the maintenance of community.
To begin with, however, we must state our agreement with the proposition
that "right words" are not in themselves sufficient evidence of correct
intention. (In certain cases, "right words" is the test of correct form.) The
question of intention is the question whether the rite as performed evinces the
participants' (and in particular the ministers') intent seriously to "do what
the Church does." In this connection, it seems clear that there is more than
sufficient evidence that the bishops, ordinands, and other participants in the
Philadelphia rite consciously understood and intended their action to be an
action, within the covenant of grace, by which eleven persons had sacramentally
conferred upon them the Order of the Presbyterate. This is evident first from
the solemn public performance of a rite which could, as seriously done, express
no other intention; second, from the explicit public statements of the
participants in the service; and third, from the very fact that the performance
of the rite occurred in circumstances which made its intention the most
obvious, because the most controversial, thing about it.
But, it is said, the intention to ordain priests cannot be embodied in a
rite which "fractures community," since ordination consists in induction
into the (ministerial) community. It need hardly be said that this
understanding of order is not explicitly defined in the rite of the BOOK OF
COMMON PRAYER, though it may be an arguable theological interpretation of the
phenomenon of Order. Certainly it is true that ordination has as an immediate
consequence the ranking of the ordained person in the fellowship of the other
members of his or her order in the Church. Even so, it is doubtful whether this
consequence of ordination is properly definitive of the meaning of
order, which, as we have argued earlier, consists in the conferring of a
personal role (Para. 8), not in the office or status which follow upon that
role. An ordination intends to confer on the ordinand that special
relation to the Church which belongs to Deacon, Presbyter, or Bishop; it does
not intend membership in a group, however defined, from "college" to
"club."
Even so, however, is it not true that the intention of the minister in
performing a sacramental act (and especially, perhaps, an ordination) must
embrace, as an essential aspect of the act itself, its function as creative of
community? And if this is so, must we not say that a sacramental action which
is performed in such wise as to deny or contravene community is thereby
revealed to be inadequate in intention? After all, even though
ordination does not consist in induction into a group, it does, more
profoundly, aim at the "edifying of the Church."
This amounts, it should be noted, to a proposal to redefine the
traditional understanding of "intention" by expanding the meaning of the word
to embrace not only the inherent meaning of the act but also its particular
(external) effects. Whether or not such a redefinition is legitimate, however,
the proposal is not an easy one to accept just as stated. For under what
circumstances does a sacramental action so contravene "community" by its very
performance that its objective intention must be judged inadequate? One might
answer: when it violates the laws (canons and rubrics) which are a particular
Church's "terms of association." Such an answer, however, reduces the problem
of validity to that of regularity and tacitly identifies Christian
koinonia with a particular set of institutional arrangements. On the
other hand, no other answer seems possible which does not systematically
invalidate the sacramental actions of (among others) the Episcopal Church,
since every celebration of a Eucharist in that body creates and maintains its
division from other Christian bodies and thus contravenes the very nature of
the Church. Which community is "the community?"
It is true that ordination (and indeed every sacramental action) of the
Church intends community —not because of the immediate and
conscious purpose of the minister, nor yet because the act chances to offend no
one and to violate no laws, but because the action itself, when carried out for
what it means under the covenant of grace, effectively signifies the membership
of men and women in the one Christ. The community thus intended and effected,
however, occurs in a world and takes form in a Church which do not always fully
or gladly accept or express it. In other words, the empirical and institutional
community of the Church does not, as it is and as such, perfectly coincide with
the eschatological community which sacrament intends and realizes. If it did,
this (the Episcopal Church!) would be the fulfilled Kingdom of God; and that
does not appear to be the case.
The intention of a sacramental act is an intention in which the Church
wills its ultimate and true identity in Christ; and in doing so, it wills and
intends what God is making of it, not simply what it has made of what God is
making of it. The older and narrower doctrine of intention grasps this truth.
It attempts to define the community of the Church by reference to the action of
God in Christ, and not vice versa. It may be that the community which
the Church is in Christ embraces women as co-equal children of God in the
Incarnate Word. If so, the Philadelphia ordinations, in intending to confer
priesthood on eleven women, intended that koinonia.
(13)
The final matter at issue is the question whether the Philadelphia
ordinations were or were not performed by competent ministers of the sacrament
of Order. The ministers in question were bishops; but they were bishops acting
without jurisdiction, and, moreover, whether by omission or commission, in
contravention of clear customs and laws of the Church of whose nature they were
aware. Can such bishops have acted competently as bishops in the
performance of an ordination?
The objection that the three bishops did not, and in the circumstances
could not, act competently as bishops, is urged on several grounds, all of
which have to do with the nature of the Church as "community" and with the role
of the ministry in relation to that community. First it is urged that to be a
bishop is to be a "sign of unity," and that no-one can act competently as a
bishop when his action "signifies" division. Second, and in accordance with
this principle, it is urged that a bishop acts properly as a bishop only when
he acts representatively —at once of the community at large, and of the
College of Bishops. Hence the Philadelphia ordinations were not performed by
proper ministers because the action did not "originate" in the community.
The latter intention of course involves to some degree a judgment of
fact: that the impulse to ordain women to the presbyterate did not "originate"
in the community. This judgment is absolutely true if the canon law and its
procedures are accepted as definitive of the community's mind. If, however, one
looks not simply at the law, but at the community itself, it appears that both
in the House of Bishops (which is not coextensive with, but may] perhaps be
taken as "representative" of, the College of Bishops) and in the Church at
large there exists, and existed, a large and significant body of sentiment
which desires the ordination of women; and further, that there were and are
identifiable local communities (congregations) which desire the
ordination of these women. The action of the bishops in Philadelphia,
therefore, was, in the sense required, representative of a desire and intention
which stemmed from the community. Their action was not isolated nor merely
idiosyncratic, even though the community will which it represented ran contrary
to another will which is equally real in the community.
When, then, does a bishop act "representatively?" The objection, as we
understand it, suggests that "acting representatively" is equivalent to acting
as a delegate in simultaneous accord with (1) a local eucharistic
community (presumably a diocese), and (2) the College of Bishops. In this
thesis there seem to be two kinds of difficulty, one practical, the other
theoretical.
(A) What happens to the "representative" character of the episcopate
when such accord does not exist or is impossible to maintain on a given issue?
(Could Athanasius, when acting contra mundum, ordain no proper
presbyters? Or was it enough that, while disagreeing with the bishops of
Constantinople, Antioch, and Caesarea, he should agree with the bishop of
Rome?) In our experience, the Church is divided, in a variety of ways and on a
variety of levels. This fact is illustrated by the divided mind of the
Episcopal Church in the matter of the ordination of women —manifest in the
House of Bishops as well as in the community at large. Given in the state of
affairs which prevailed in this Church in July, 1974, on the subject of women's
ordination, what would an honest bishop have had to do in order to act
"representatively," or to fulfill the "mind" or "intention" either of his
colleagues or of the community? It is in fact not easy —perhaps not
possible —to say; for where significant division exists on an issue,
"representative" action with regard to it is difficult to compass, though it is
no doubt arguable that inaction is more "representative" than any form of
action when there is no common mind. There is thus, given the Church as it is,
some practical difficulty in the nation that bishops only act competently as
bishops when they act "representatively."
This general difficulty is enhanced by the fact that, given contemporary
social realities, significant and real community within the Church does not
always coincide with, or get expressed in, jurisdictionally defined community.
There may be true communities which are not jurisdictions; and jurisdictions
which are not functioning communities. Under such circumstances, the question
when in actual fact a cleric is acting "representatively" is not always
susceptible of a clear legal answer. The Church embraces not only different
communities, but different sorts of communities, only some of which are based
primarily on the geographical proximity which jurisdiction traditionally
presupposes.
(B) But there is also, and perhaps more importantly, a theoretical
difficulty. For "representation," when it is used of the relation of ministry
to Church, does not primarily signify "delegation." It means, as we have
suggested above, the symbolic focusing in and for the Church of its
identity in Christ. The ministry belongs to the Church and derives through it
for the sake of this kind of representation, not some other; and it is
dangerous to apply to the ministry ideas of representation which stem largely
from political practice. The ministry is not apart from the Church or
independent of it; but, at the same time, it is one of "the ways in which the
Church sacramentalizes its dependence upon something which is above it
—the grace and the Word of God. The bishop as a "sign of unity," then, is
a sign of the unity of the Church in Christ, in the Gospel, and in the electing
grace of God —a sign that these realities constitute the Church as one
through the succession of generations, in all parts of the world, and in the
midst of its divisions and contentions.
The question, then, about the bishops who performed the ordinations in
Philadelphia is not whether their action was controversial (and thus
"unrepresentative"), but whether they were bishops in and for the Episcopal
Church and whether their action was an ecclesial one —one in which
their role as bishops was exercised in and for the body in which they are
constituted as bishops. That it was just that is most clearly attested by the
fact that they, and the persons whom they ordained, are presently under
discipline in the Church for the irregularity of their act. They acted neither
apart from the Church nor independently of it, but extra-legally within it.
Their action, therefore, was precisely not that of episcopi
vagantes; it was an ecclesial exercise of episcopal order, carried out in
response to, and with reference to, a communally-based conviction and desire.
In these circumstances, the question whether the three bishops acted
competently as bishops requires an affirmative answer.
(14)
For the reasons given above, it is our conviction that the proper
verdict on the ordinations performed in Philadelphia last July is that (in
traditional terminology) they were valid but irregular. The implications of
this statement, however, must be spelled out with some care.
In essence what the statement means is that it is possible for the
Episcopal Church to acknowledge the women ordained in Philadelphia as
presbyters, and in doing so admit them to the office and status which properly
belong to their order. In other words, what took place in Philadelphia was an
unratified ordination, which may, without any form of re-ordination, be
"authorized" or "recognized."
On the other hand —and equally clearly —the verdict of
validity does not require the Church so to recognize the Philadelphia
ordination. In the case of the Sacrament of Order, its full and normal effect
is enabled only by ratification, since the sacramental role conferred naturally
issues in the exercise of office in and for the Church. Consequently, while
recognition does not constitute validity but presupposes it, authorization
alone can clarify the practical ambiguity of the status of those irregularly
ordained. Until such recognition is given, the persons ordained remain priests
for the Episcopal Church; but they are not priests of the
Episcopal Church.
Thus a question remains; and it is a question which cannot be settled by
dwelling on the matter of validity. Even though the ordinations were valid, the
question of their ratification is open; and that question must be settled on
the basis of a decision about the rightness of having women ordained to the
Presbyterate and, ultimately, the Episcopate. To ratify the ordinations
involves a judgment that they possessed not merely validity, but also the
quality of bearing sincere witness, on an issue of moment, to the nature of
Christian community.
The Rev. Richard A. Morris, Jr., D.Phil., Professor of Dogmatic
Theology, General Theological Seminary (New York City)
The Rev. Eugene R. Fairweather, Th.D., Keble Professor of Divinity,
Trinity College, University of Toronto (Canada)
The Rev. J. E. Griffiss, Ph.D., Professor of Apologetics and Dogmatic
Theology, Nashotah House (Wisconsin)
The Rev. Albert T. Mollegen, D.D., retired Professor of New Testament
and Christian Ethics, Episcopal Theological Seminary in
Virginia
January 15, 1975
APPENDIX
F
The Ecumenical Impact of the Proposed Ordination of Women: A
Statement by the Joint Commission on Ecumenical Relations of the Episcopal
Church— adopted 1/30/75
The Joint Commission on Ecumenical Relations has discussed the possible
ecumenical impact of the proposed ordination of women to the priesthood and
episcopate in the Episcopal Church.
We must report a variety of conflicting speculations about what the
results would be for our ecumenical relations if the Episcopal Church were to
take this step and we do not feel able to forecast exactly what the result
would be.
In Orthodox relations, ordination of women to the priesthood and
episcopate would clearly be an additional obstacle to unity efforts but would
not in all probability terminate contacts and conversations.
In Anglican-Roman Catholic relations, it is evident that Roman Catholic
opinion can be found on both sides of the question, although Roman Catholic
practice is not likely to change quickly.
In relations with non-episcopal churches, our failure to admit women to
these orders is at present an obstacle to unity.
In the role of the Church as a sign of God's will for human unity to
those outside its fellowship, it appears that, in the U.S.A., the subject is
widely seen in the context of the pursuit of equality for men and women in
daily life.
In each of these areas, the task of the Episcopal Church must be to
consider the question in an earnest search for God's will, and to seek to
explain its decision in terms understandable to the various parties
concerned.
The issues underlying the proposal to ordain women are, we believe,
matters which should be of concern to all parts of the universal Church. It
seems to us obvious, however, that there is no reasonable hope in the
foreseeable future for the convening of an Ecumenical Council in which the
churches might face this question collectively.
The Joint Commission on Ecumenical Relations believes that the Episcopal
Church must make its decision, as the Lambeth Conference of 1968 anticipated,
acting as a province of the Anglican Communion and on the basis of a widely
shared conviction about the meaning and significance of Scripture, Tradition,
and theological reflection. As the Episcopal Church attempts to discern God's
will on this matter, our Commission would express the earnest hope that we may
do so without the sacrifice of our Church's internal integrity and unity, which
are essential to our ecumenical task.
Contents of “The Ordination of
Women: Pro and Con ”
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