Present Difficulties

Women in Ministry:
A Study

Published by Church Information Office
Church House, Westminster, SW1. 1968, pp. 29-35

Difficulties arise from two sources:

(a) Statute and Canon Law, Resolutions and Regulations of Convocation all limit what a woman is allowed to do.

(b) Custom and practice impose further limitations.

Law and Regulations (1)

These are to be found as follows:

(1) The deaconess and the Reader are regulated by Canon Law and by Convocation Resolutions and Regulations.

(2) In the case of the licensed lay worker, only her commissioning and licensing will be regulated by Canon E.7: permission to take part in Morning and Evening Prayer and to preach are to be found in Convocation Regulations (see Appendix p. 71 and 72).

(3) The Church Army captain is controlled by the Convocation Resolutions on the Office of Evangelist.

All these Canons, Resolutions and Regulations produce a confused pattern, particularly with regard to liturgical functions. They provide that lay men, whether Readers or Church Army captains may do almost everything that a deacon is permitted to do. They cannot, however, take the marriage service, nor have they been allowed to preach at Holy Communion. This latter restriction will be removed when Canon E.4 ‘Of Readers’ is promulged. Women, whether deaconesses or licensed lay workers are allowed to do even less. They too, are precluded from taking the marriage service and preaching at Holy Communion. In addition, no explicit permission is given by Canon or Regulation to allow any woman from either group to administer the elements at Holy Communion.

Practice is even more confused: preaching at Holy Communion, which is at present explicitly forbidden to those in all these groups, is in fact being done by people in each group, and even by those holding no licence at all. Canon E.4 has now been altered to permit Readers to preach at Holy Communion, but Canon D.I, ‘Of the Order of Deaconesses’, which has already been promulged, forbids this and so do the Convocation Regulations governing the taking of services by licensed lay workers. Since Canon E.4 permits women to be admitted as Readers, the position could arise, if no immediate action were taken, whereby a woman Reader might preach at Holy Communion, whereas a deaconess or licensed lay worker could not.

Strictly speaking, preaching at services other than Holy Communion should be considered in the next section, since this is already permitted to deaconesses and licensed lay workers by Canon and Regulations (see Appendix pp. 67, 71, 72). Many bishops and clergy appear to be ignorant of the legal position. In spite of the Regulations, some dioceses continue to restrict women to preaching at non-statutory services, and, in practice, some deaconesses and many lay workers preach on few occasions. The same might be said of the taking of the statutory services.(2)

No Canons or Regulations concerning deaconesses and lay workers refer to administering the elements in Holy Communion, though the Regulations governing Readers and Church Army captains have permitted them to administer the chalice in certain circumstances. Since both the Commission on the Ministry of Women in 1935 and the Committee on Women’s Work in the Church in 1943 reported that in cases of special need deaconesses should be permitted to administer the chalice, some bishops have felt able to give official permission to a deaconess for this task, and even to some lay workers. Other bishops have felt precluded from doing so by the silence of the Regulations on this point: others have given unofficial rather than formal permission. In future, Regulations to be made under Canon B.I2 and the Prayer Book (Further Provisions) Measure (see Appendix p. 70) will permit a bishop to authorise any lay person to administer the elements.

Some deaconesses in hospitals and parishes administer the reserved sacrament to the sick; others ask that, for pastoral reasons, they may be permitted to do so.

The question has been raised whether a deaconess should administer baptism only in an emergency (as may any lay person), or whether she ought not to be able, like a deacon, ‘in the absence of the priest to baptise infants’.

Further confusion surrounds the matter of the churching of women, and funerals. Deaconesses and lay workers have officiated at both but no clear directions seem to have been laid down.

There is one further matter which, while not belonging precisely within our remit, should be mentioned here: authority to pronounce absolution. The fact that such authority is given only to priests and bishops has been found to be a real hindrance in pastoral work by a number of women of varied churchmanship, including Superiors of Religious Communities and those working in hospital and university chaplaincies.

Custom and Practice

Anomaly and uncertainty over what is legally permitted is matched by a great unevenness of practice. What women are in fact expected to do, especially in parishes, varies widely and for reasons which often seem to have more to do with custom and prejudice than with the actual needs of the parish or the ability of the worker. This attitude is found even among some clergy who have women workers on their staff. ‘At times I feel the rector feels I am likely to teach or express heretical views because I am a woman.’ There is a hesitation about according to women workers a true colleague relationship: ‘His feeling is that all lay workers and deaconesses are very valuable, but that they should be kept very firmly “in their place”. This affects my status with other bodies.’ This ambivalent attitude spreads to the laity who are, in any case, likely to be even less clear as to the role of the woman worker: (for them so often, lay=non-professional). I am often asked by the congregation to do jobs which they could easily do for themselves.’ On the other hand, parish work may reasonably be wide in its ramifications. It is rare now to find the comment that ‘I do far too much cleaning because we cannot afford paid help’, but women often see all sorts of apparently irrelevant jobs as part of their ministry. It is a Church Army sister holding a responsible diocesan post who writes: ‘I accept everything from visiting an old person to helping clean the brasses in church, serving at the altar, preaching or collecting second-hand clothes for the Church Army as all part of my job’. Presumably many clergy could make a similar list.

Some of those working in the field claim that women must carry a share of the responsibility for their conditions of ministry, whether satisfactory or otherwise. ‘It is the person not the job that seems to give her position’, and ‘each woman has to prove anew the validity and legitimacy of her ministry often in the face of misconceptions and unconscious prejudice’. Is this unconscious prejudice simply part of the struggle between men and women through which every profession seems to pass? Or is it part of the unresolved tension between clergy and laity? Any woman may have cause to feel discriminated against on both counts in church work. She may react aggressively and be accused of being unfeminine, or she may accept the situation and reinforce the prejudice of the discriminator.

Though difficulties are by no means confined to the parish worker, it is in this area that the older concepts of ministry most frequently limit a woman’s opportunity to give all that she has to the work. It is not so much hostility as thoughtlessness and lack of imagination on the part of the clergy and laity alike which frustrate the parish worker.

In what ways are these difficulties felt? The three major limitations relate to security, to finance, and to responsibilities hampered or denied.

(1) Security The woman worker’s agreement normally provides for three months’ notice on either side, with the consent of the bishop. While this may be similar to the provision for an assistant curate, the curate may expect to be an incumbent reasonably soon, whereas a woman always remains an assistant. We cannot think it right that women workers should continue to have so little security of tenure in contrast to that enjoyed by the majority of their clerical colleagues. This matter has been considered by the Morley Commission, some of whose conclusions are referred to in the next Chapter. The contrast with the almost complete security of tenure of an incumbent would matter less were it not that too many examples exist of women workers having to move because the incumbent changes or money is short or the parish decides to have a curate, or even because in pastoral matters she has stood up to the churchwardens in an interregnum. One woman who was asked to leave in order to make way for a curate, writes: ‘undoubtedly we are needed, but not always wanted’. In some cases, a senior woman worker is still equated with the newest curate, or even regarded as his junior in status because she is not of the clergy.

(2) Finance Salaries of women workers are, like those of the clergy, subject to considerable variation. Those of parish and diocesan workers are usually determined by dioceses and related to those of the clergy. Those of the church social workers are more often related to salaries of other social workers. Following the presentation of the report, Gender and Ministry, to the Church Assembly in 1962, additional money was made available by the Church Commissioners to Diocesan Stipends’ Funds. In most cases, this led to a rise in the salaries of women workers and, in particular, to the establishment (in many cases for the first time) of a proper incremental scale. It is now realised that it is no use to set up a scale unless proper grant provision enables parishes to pay it. It is when a woman worker begins to earn a salary higher than that of a curate that real difficulties tend to arise and we commend for consideration the system adopted in some dioceses of carrying all, or most, of the increments on a diocesan grant.

The Church Workers’ Pension Fund at present provides a standard pension at age 60 of £10 per year of service. The premiums normally come equally from central funds, the diocese and the parish or committee; no payment is required from the worker. The premiums, though not heavy for younger workers, and the cost of National Insurance add a sizeable burden to the finances of parish or committee. A retired worker, whose total income falls below £525, may have it made up to that sum by the Pensions Board in co-operation with the dioceses.(3) Ultimately the proper solution may be a non-contributory pension similar to that provided for clergy.

(3) Responsibilities There has often been too little concern to see that a deaconess or lay worker shares in the church’s decision making processes. She will normally attend staff meetings and the PCC but she does not always attend chapter meetings nor does she usually share in the church’s government.

The comment in Gender and Ministry (p. 17) is still true: ‘the most costly burden that women workers have had to carry has been the grudging attitude of the Church itself, both clergy and laity, towards their ministry’.

It must not be thought that frustration is necessarily widespread. Most women workers are too busy doing the job to spend much time feeling frustrated. And there has been real advance. Nevertheless, the question still remains: is a woman free to give of her best in the service of Christ? Or is she prevented from so doing by circumstances which could be altered? The answer to this may well depend on whether or not she is treated as a colleague in every sense of the word, and whether she is given responsibility for definite areas of work.

Some say that ordination as a deaconess leads to a greater degree of acceptance by the church. Though some deaconesses and lay workers would agree, others hold that the ambiguity of the deaconess’ status leads to a greater degree of frustration. There is evidence that those outside the Church accept a deaconess as a minister more readily than do church people.

Can these difficulties be lessened by more fellowship and mutual support among women workers? Undoubtedly membership of their community or society gives community sisters and Church Army sisters a much greater sense of security than appears to be the case for other workers. In the Methodist Church, the same strong fellowship is found among members of the Wesley Deaconess Order, who are all trained together, deployed in a unified manner and meet annually in the Convocation of their Order. Possibly because the Order of Deaconesses in the Church of England is less centrally organised, it does not seem to have so marked a degree of fellowship and mutual support. In some dioceses, where deaconesses and lay workers meet regularly together, they experience a very real fellowship. Proper arrangements for the pastoral care and fellowship of workers are very important. Not all bishops show the same sense of responsibility for their women workers in dioceses as for their clergy.

Church social workers in particular often feel isolated from the everyday life and backing of the Church. Some of them find both among the clergy and church people in general little understanding of the work which they themselves regard as a sharing in the Church’s caring ministry. One senior worker writes: ‘Those of us who value our licences for more than a piece of paper with the bishop’s seal and signature, as a share in his cure for souls, are often frustrated by the disregard of the Church for our responsibility in ministry. It seems that, having won the battle for recognition by social work we are fast losing it in the Church.’

Much responsibility for workers has often been delegated to the Head Deaconess, the Secretary of the Board of Women’s Work, and the Organising Secretary for Diocesan Social Work without any diminution of the bishop’s real concern. Such women are full members of the diocesan team and so demonstrate possibilities for women’s ministry. In order to play their full part, such women need a knowledge of theology and should preferably be trained church workers. We much regret the recent decrease in the number of full-time and fully trained Secretaries of Boards of Women’s Work.

All workers, in whatever field, would surely echo the question of a Church Army sister who is working in a prison: ‘When does the Church pray for its women workers?’

Footnotes

(1) Statute Law includes: the Prayer Book and its rubrics since they were annexed to the Act of Uniformity, and also Church Assembly Measures once they have received the Royal Assent. Canon Law, though it is binding only on the clergy and not on the laity, regulates a number of matters which affect the laity. After nearly twenty years, the revision is almost complete and those Canons which here concern us either are, or shortly will be, promulged. Resolutions of a Convocation, if agreed by both the Upper and Lower Houses, are declared Acts of Convocation, and may be implemented by Convocation Regulations. (For relevant Canons, Resolutions and Regulations, see Appendix.)

(2) Banns of Marriage. For opinion of the Legal Board, see Appendix p. 73. 30

(3)The Church Army officer is not covered by these arrangements; the Church Army has its own pension scheme.

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