Preface to Joanna Waller’s Disertation
Introduction
“The fact that women were ordained for the first twelve hundred years of Christianity will surprise many people”.[1]
It certainly seems to have confused the members of the recent papal commission considering the question of whether a female ordained diaconate could be considered; so much so that they are reported as being unable to reach any definite conclusion, and are suspending their joint work, to continue studying independently.[2]
The ministry of the diaconate, and that of priesthood, differ from each other in the Church, the one being lower in the hierarchy to the other, and providing fewer and different forms of service to the faithful, but the form of ordination used for each is in essence the same, hence the eagerness with which advocates of women’s ordination have been awaiting a decision from the Commission studying the matter. They will have to be patient.
This volume will consider in detail the present discipline, which excludes women from all forms of ordination in the Catholic Church, and will seek out the roots of this teaching in a variety of sources, from social attitudes towards women through the centuries, to the very earliest days of the Christian Church, including its scripture and writings. The present climate is one of uncertainty about the future of the ordained priesthood and the role of women in the Roman Catholic Church, in a fast-changing world, in which women feel empowered to require equal treatment and equal respect in every context, and where women and men are challenging structures that continue to reserve particular roles to one sex, and exclude the other.
The historical approach taken is chosen because of the importance attributed within the Church to the writings and judgments of mediaeval canonists and theologians, and in some cases of the early Fathers, and the use of some of the same arguments within the present rulings on the issue. Indeed, the arguments from ‘tradition’ and, to a lesser extent, from Scripture form the only objections to the ordination of women by the Roman Catholic Church. The way in which Scripture is used in particular to justify the exclusion of women is characteristic of a form of the ‘proof-text’ method, in which a proposed argument is supported by searching through the canon for stories or teachings which are plucked out of context to be used as conclusive.
[1] Macy, G. The Hidden History of Women’s Ordination: Female Clergy in the Medieval West (Oxford, OUP, 2008), p. vii.
[2] https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican/francis-women-deacons-commission-gave-split-report-their-role-early-church [last consulted June 2019]
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