NEW WINE STATEMENT re ORDINATIONS – 29th June 2002

As a group of women who recognise their own call to ordained ministry in the RC Church, members of New Wine empathise with the frustration of the ordinands who have taken all possible steps to prepare themselves for ordained ministry in the RC tradition. We accept that they have discerned, each for themselves, the Holy Spirit leading them to go beyond preparation and actively seek the fullness of ordination. We understand and respect that they are acting out of primacy of conscience and wish them every blessing on their ministries.

However, there is a point at which, if private convictions take public form, as with the ordinations, everyone involved with the same cause becomes implicated by association. Parties on both sides need to recognise the full consequences of crossing the boundary between private conviction and public expression. By challenging the current authorities so publicly, the women ordinands have forced other parties to associate or disassociate themselves from their actions. As a consequence New Wine members state that they do not accept the ordinations as authentic symbolic action for the whole movement for the ordination of women in the RC Church.

The ordained women are choosing to put themselves beyond engagement with the present holders of authority within the institutional RC church. Many others, including women who have fully prepared themselves for ordained ministry, wish to continue down this avenue of engagement and witness, however tortuous, unsatisfactory and frustrating it may be. It is inevitable therefore that, whatever our private sympathies, as members of New Wine we must disassociate ourselves from the ordinations of the women on 29th June 2002 on the grounds that we wish to keep open all possible avenues of communication with the institutional authorities.

Jackie Hawkins
New Wine representative to WOW
New Wine, Great Britain
19th June 2002

See Jackie Hawkins’ own vocation story