Women's Ordination in the ACNA

What I'm reading about it, and why I haven't signed the letter

Earlier this week, some ACNA priests published an open letter, titled “The Augustine Appeal” (TAA), which seeks both to “articulate the Faith once for all delivered, and chart the direction we pray our next Archbishop will lead us,” enumerating eight declarations aimed at “resolving” the “issue” of Women’s Ordination (WO) by clarifying that “that only men may be ordained to the priesthood” (D.2). As of today, nearly 300 ACNA priests have signed this letter. (Those who would like to add their names can do so here.)

The timing of the letter makes sense, as our next archbishop is scheduled to be selected and announced this June 20-23.

What gives me pause is that Declarations 2 and 5 refer to “the [consensus of the] Great Tradition,” and that I’m not certain what exactly that means. As it is not the purpose of this (or any) open letter to elucidate and distinguish its terms, or even to offer scholarly resources or reading recommendations to those who have not chosen to sign, I don’t fault the letter for not doing so. But as I don’t understand what it means, I cannot confidently affirm Declarations 2 and 5, and so I cannot, for at least this reason, sign this letter.

As I have followed the discourse around TAA, I have yet to hear satisfactory responses to issues that have been raised, for me, by some of the material that I’ve been reading.

In this essay, I intend

1. to offer a selection of my recent reading material, some summary comments, and some of the issues each piece has raised for me; and

2. to invite responses from (actual or would-be) signatories of the letter that might either resolve or further confirm my issues with signing the letter.

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Gary Macy, The Hidden History of Women’s Ordination: Female Clergy in the Medieval West (OUP, 2008).

The book is here. But Cambridge Medievalist Alison Morgan has provided a dense summary of its data, its argument, and its conclusions in these notes, and her seven pages are both more manageable and free of cost.

The authors of TAA allege, citing the “Vancouver Statement,” that WO is a “recent innovation,” but historian Gary Macy is not so sure.

He distinguishes between the theological question of ordination—what is it?—and the historical question of ordination—what has it meant?—and proceeds to examine manuscript data from the early Middle Ages to explore the latter question.

From the 5th-12th c. CE, “ordination” (e.g. ordinatio) was neither restricted to the threefold offices of deacon, priest, and bishop; nor was it restricted to men. In addition to the threefold historic offices, others were “ordained” to other orders (ordo) or positions (gradus) as well, in liturgical rites that used standard ordination language.

The church “ordained” clerics, sacristans, people in charge of books, garments dedicated to God, virgins, veiled women, subdeacons, porters (doorkeepers), lectors, exorcists, acolytes, canons, abbots, abbesses, kings, queens, and empresses. An “ordination” (ordinatio) was occasioned by one’s stepping into a new role (ordo) within their particular community, with the consent and at the initiative of that same particular community.

At this time, the authority to ordain wasn’t officially exclusive to bishops, and the authority to celebrate wasn’t officially restricted to priests. Ordained women served at the altar, celebrated, and distributed communion; heard confessions, gave penances, and pronounced absolutions; served as episcopa, wore mitres, and carried staffs. Many bishops repudiated this, but the rites were long upheld as “real” and as “valid.”

This began to change when, in the 12th c., historical circumstances required it. Per Macy: “The struggle for the control of the church between lay lords and the papal office must be seen as the backdrop to the redefinition of orders that took place as part of the struggle between priest and lord. Emphasizing the difference between laity and priesthood was an essential part of the claim to supremacy of the priesthood/papacy over secular lords.”

Macy helped by recommending some key 12th c. texts:

• Glossa ordinaria from the School of Laon (early 12th c.):

St. Anselm’s student, (also named) Anselm of Laon, transcribed the Latin Bible and added a commentary. Call it “biblical studies.” Here’s an introduction to it. His commentary (following Amrosiaster) interpreted 1 Tim. 3:11 as referring not to female deacons, but to the wives of deacons. His commentary went a long way toward making this an/the official interpretation.

• Decretum Gratiani (ca. 1140):

Call it “Canon law.” There is a full critical text here. By referring to female priests and deaconnesses throughout, even critically, it attests that women had been ordained to both (holy) orders. Inauspiciously, it argues—on the basis of 1 Cor. 10:7 and with help from Aristotle—that, unlike men, women are not made in the image of God and therefore not qualified to be ordained to the holy orders. Female leadership in the Old Testament was God’s accommodation to an imperfect world before the inauguration of his New Covenant.

• Peter Lombard’s Sententia (ca. 1150)

Call it “Systematic theology,” which addresses, among other things, ordinatio.

Here’s an expository paper, summarizing its articulation of orders/ordination. An overview: Just as there are seven sacraments, there are seven orders, which likewise flesh out the sevenfold gifts of the Spirit: “wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and the fear of God” (cf. Isa. 11:2-3). The seven orders are Doorkeepers, Lectors, Exorcists, Acolytes, Subdeacons, Deacons, and Presbyters (Priests). The first five being “regular orders” and the latter two being “holy orders.” Bishops are a kind of priests. The so-called “holy orders” are distinguished in that “the primitive church was said to have only these;” “we have only these from the Apostles;” and “over time the Church itself has created the subdeacon and acolyte.”

Macy quotes Lombard’s definition of orders: “If, however, one asks: what is it which is here called order, it can indeed be said to be a certain sign, that is, something sacred, by which a spiritual power and office is given to the one ordained. Therefore a spiritual character is called an ordo or gradus, where the promotion to power occurs.” Macy comments on the significance of this definition: “This is new: ordination is tied now to power rather than to vocation, to status not to appointment.”

Even as Lombard purports to be faithful to the tradition by distinguishing which orders are “holy,” he invests these two “Apostolic” orders with new and restrictive power.

• The Fourth Lateran Council (1215):

This council confirms and legislates the theological proposition introduced by Peter Lombard. Speaking of the Eucharist, it determines that “this sacrament no one can effect except the priest who has been duly ordained in accordance with the keys of the Church, which Jesus Christ Himself gave to the Apostles and their successors” (Section 1).

• Abelard’s letters to Heloise

Abelard, another student of Anselm at Laon, passionately resisted the new and sudden restriction of priesthood to men only. Gary Macy’s 2006 paper says more about Abelard’s letters than his book does.

Abelard was not alone in his passionate defense of women’s capacities to serve in ordained roles. For more voices, I recommend the latter parts of Volume 1 of Sister Prudence Allen’s The Concept of Woman, published in 1997. I recommend this especially to signatories of TAA who have called for “the further development of a robust biblical anthropology, underwritten by the Great Tradition, that elucidates the significance of sexual difference” (D.5). Prudence Allen’s work of retrieval and compilation will help you do that.

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Lombard’s definition remains operative today.

In order to sign TAA, one would have to understand the changes effected in the 12th/13th c. as an orthodox corralling of renegade ordination practices. A reformation of sorts. But even this would be a strongly clericalist and institutionalist argument—a Roman Catholic argument or, at the very least a strongly Anglo-Catholic one. Having read the list of signatories, and recognized the names of many Anglo-Catholic brothers, this makes sense to me. But seeing the names of some decidedly Reformed and anti-clericalist colleagues surprises me. I imagine they agree more with the effect of TAA than with its premises about “the consensus of the Great Tradition.”

By my reading, the events of the 12th/13th c. are a clericalist innovation, intolerant of expansive grassroots ecclesiology, (a) confirming that ordination is a conferral of power rather than an installation into a new local ministry, and (b) restricting the ministry of the altar to men, particularly to celibate men.

I invite TAA signatories to help me reconcile (the issues that) this historical data (has raised for me) to your letter’s premise that there exists an unbroken Great Tradition of orthodoxy regarding Holy Orders. I have yet to hear an account of the 13th c. reforms that make the story feel unbroken.

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Catholic Theological Society of America, “Appendix A: Tradition and the Ordination of Woman,” from CTSA Proceedings 52 (1997), 197-204.

You can find this eight-page essay here. Here’s the context:

On Pentecost 1994, Pope John Paul II published the encyclical Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (OS), responding to widespread interest in the ordination of women to the priesthood. His conclusion is unequivocal:

Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church's judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force.

Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.

In response to an official Dubium, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) presented a Responsum late in 1995 that confirmed JPII’s position at every point.

In this essay, the CTSA points out that JPII’s declaration was an ordinary exercise of his magisterial duty to teach, and not a declaration ex cathedra. As such, they find permission to raise questions that match the questions raised within the ACNA:

The essay raises and addresses them each in turn:

1. Is a sex-based restriction to ordination to the priesthood founded on the written Word of God?

(Worth noting: While TAA appeals to the “plain and canonical sense of the Bible” (no. 3; citing the Jerusalem Declaration, Art. 2), JPII makes his biblical argument by pointing to the fact that Jesus did not appoint women to the apostleship.)

Jesus chosen twelve men for apostolic ministry, and no women. Therefore, it is Jesus’s will that only men should be ordained to the priesthood. So runs the RCC biblical argument in the 1990s. The CTSA presents several of the reasons why a plurality of reputable Catholic Bible scholars haven’t found this line of argumentation satisfying:

• The Twelve were “sent,” not “ordained.” Apostleship and priesthood are different things.

• Since Jesus left the Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to make future decisions about its organized ministry, it is doubtful that he intended to lay down a prescription for the sex of future ordinands.

• Jesus chose twelve men to fulfill the symbolic role of the twelve patriarchs of a restored Israel. Just as one patriarch was named Levi, so was one apostle (Matthew). But there is no analogy: The patriarchs aren’t priests; nor did Jesus restrict priesthood to male descendants of this Levi.

2. Is a sex-based restriction to ordination to the priesthood from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church?

Inconveniently, all of the anecdotal citations of the Fathers presented by the Vatican in its publications against priestly ordination is problematic:

• Irenaeus (Against Heresies 1.13.2) is cited as criticizing the Gnostics for allowing women to minister the sacraments, but his actual objection is to Marcus’s superstitious invocation of the dæmon “Charis” to consecrate the elements. If you read the paragraph, you’ll see that the “deluded women” are simply brought up as demonstrations of the extent of Marcus’s deception.

• Tertullian is cited (On the Prescriptions of Heretics 41.5) as objecting to women teaching and baptizing, but (a) he does not object to women’s ordination in principle, but specifically the speedy and “wanton” promotion of both men and women and (b) the Church permits women both to baptize and to teach today.

• The Apostolic Constitutions (III.6) repeat Tertullian’s position, but does not provide any additional reasoning.

• Firmilian, in a letter to Cyprian (Epistle 74.10), objects to a baptism and a Eucharistic celebration by a certain woman, but his concern is not with her sex but with the fact that she does it as a false prophetess under demonic influence.

• St. Epiphanius consistently and vehemently opposes WO, but his reasoning is based on the inferiority of women: “Women are unstable, prone to error, and mean-spirited” (Panarion 1.6). Whether St. Epiphanius is correct in his conclusion or in his reasoning, he is at odds with both the TAA and OS: In declarations nos. 4 and 6, the TAA “affirm[s] the inherent dignity and equality of women.” And in OS, no. 3, JPII clarifies that “the nonadmission of women to priestly ordination cannot mean that women are of lesser dignity nor can it be construed as discrimination against them.”

• St. John Chrysostom bases his argument on “the greatness of the tasks a bishop must perform,” assuming the inability of a woman to fulfill such tasks.

The argumentative reliance on the inferiority of women continues in the 13th c. commentaries on Lombard’s Sententia. Here is Thomas Aquinas: “In the feminine sex no eminence of degree can be signified, for a woman, by the very fact that she is a woman, has a state of subjection, this is why she cannot receive the sacrament of holy orders” (Commentary on the Sentences, IV.D25.Q2.A1.Q1.2).

(As an aside, the silliest part of Lombard’s argument, which Thomas also upholds, is the symbolic significance of the tonsure. Here is Lombard: “the cleric signifies through the tonsura his openness of mind through which he contemplates the glory of God by revealing the face.” Here is Thomas: “Furthermore, the crown-shaped tonsure is required in those to be ordained, even though it is not necessary to the sacrament. But the crown and the tonsure do not befit women, as is clear from 1 Corinthians 11:6.” With the help of Aristotle’s philosophy of gender, the Scholastics argue that the male head’s propensity to baldness is a natural sign of its mind’s proximity to God, its head’s readiness to wear the crown, and its soul’s vocation to rule.)

According to a footnote, the CTSA says that Bonaventure and Duns Scotus say the same in their Commentaries at IV.D25.Q2.A1. But I can’t online versions to verify this for myself. Duns Scotus, though, says that the decision to exclude women from the priesthood “must have been made by Christ” because if the Church had excluded them on its own authority, “it would have been an injustice to women.”

3. Is a sex-based restriction to ordination to the priesthood set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium?

Unlike the ACNA, the RCC actually has a definition of infallibility, which has a pretty high bar. This comes from sec. 25 of Lumen Gentium, promulgated in 1964:

Although the individual bishops do not enjoy the prerogative of infallibility, they nevertheless proclaim Christ's doctrine infallibly whenever, even though dispersed through the world, but still maintaining the bond of communion among themselves and with the successor of Peter, and authentically teaching matters of faith and morals, they are in agreement on one position as definitively to be held. This is even more clearly verified when, gathered together in an ecumenical council, they are teachers and judges of faith and morals for the universal Church, whose definitions must be adhered to with the submission of faith.

If this were our standard of infallibility, we do not come close to meeting it.

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“To restore orthodoxy to Holy Orders”

Declaration no. 8 in TAA calls the bishops to “find a creative solution to restore orthodoxy to Holy Orders,” but I believe we already have, permitting individual dioceses to practice WO. Here’s why:

• Good Bible scholars contest the sex-restrictive interpretation of the New Testament;

• The anecdotal evidence I’ve heard cited from the Church Fathers doesn’t appear to stand scrutiny (see above);

• Just as the historical situation was significant enough in the 13th c. to warrant the institutional Church to redefine ordination itself and to revoke previously conferred orders; and just as the historical situation in the 16th c. was significant enough to warrant to remove the requirement of clerical celibacy; perhaps the historical situation which occasioned Vatican II is significant enough to relax (or at least to tolerate the relaxation of) the 13th c. sex-restrictive requirement for ordination to the priesthood.

• To this point, anti-WO meme-makers have asked, rhetorically, whether Jesus has simply changed his mind about WO in the late 20th c. To them, I’d respond by asking whether Jesus had changed his mind about the definition of ordination in the 13th c. And I’d tell them not to worry about being like The Episcopal Church, since I know that’s a concern. I’m inviting them to engage in the same lines of inquiry that the RCC is engaging in America.

• Macy’s work on innovations in the Middle Ages suggest that “the consensus of the Great Tradition” is neither sex-restriction, nor the definition of the “powers” of each order, but the remarkable and worldwide persistence of the threefold office as it has adapted over time. The mysterious strength of the threefold office may be its ability to be bent by the winds of historical circumstances without being broken by the spirit of the age.

Per Lombard, the biblical qualification for the seven orders, including the two holy orders, is the sevenfold gifts of the Spirit: “wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and the fear of God.”

It has been observed both by ACNA clergy and by onlookers that there are two open letters circulating: In addition to TAA, which has nearly 300 signatures, there is another letter calling for transparency in the ecclesiastical trial of Bp. Ruch in the wake of the deposition of (former Bp.) Atkinson, this one with nearly 100 signatures. It has also been observed that no one who has signed either letter has also signed the other. Commentators are calling it a Right v. Left moment in the ACNA. I simply want to point out that, in both of these letters, the clergy (and laity) of the ACNA are desirous of a restoration of orthodoxy to Holy Orders, and that that is a good thing. I think we could all stand to read the Fathers more patiently, to nuance our Medieval history by reading more extensively, to clarify our discernment of “the Great Tradition,” and to insist on holiness of character both in our own lives and in the lives of our brother and sister clergy.

I hope that those of you who have much to learn might find the readings I’ve curated to be useful.

And that those of you who have much to teach might help me better understand the Great Tradition and how it bears on Holy Orders.