Female clergy make unity an impossibility
by Michael Nazir-Ali, Catholic Herald:
There was a period after the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission agreement on ministry and ordination had been published — even though the first canonical ordinations of women to the presbyterate had begun to take place — when there was optimism among many that the question of the validity of Anglican Orders could be seen in a new light.
I well remember, however, the anguished correspondence between Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Coggan and the same between Pope St John Paul II and Archbishop Runcie, as well as that between the latter and Cardinal Willebrands (then head of the Council for Promoting Christian Unity at the Vatican). In the correspondence, the Popes and the Cardinal are seen as pleading with the Archbishop to prevent provinces of the Anglican Communion from taking unilateral action over the ordination of women to the presbyterate. They felt this would jeopardise the agreement on ministry, showing that the it was more apparent than real, thus making any possibility of re-evaluating Anglican Orders more difficult, if not impossible.
In his replies, Archbishop Runcie, while rehearsing some of the arguments in favour of ordaining women, expressed his inability to prevent any province of the Anglican Communion from acting independently on the issue. Runcie’s argument revealed a fault line in the Communion which was to become even more pronounced over other issues such as divorced and remarried clergy, and the ordination to the priesthood and episcopate of those in sexually active homophile relationships. Was Runcie right to hold such a radical view of the autonomy of the provinces? Had not the 1920 Lambeth Conference declared that the provinces were indeed “independent”, but independent in the Christian freedom which recognises the restraints of truth and love?
I am not alone in having been uncomfortable with such a thoroughgoing belief in the autonomy of the provinces.Sadly, however, a view of an interdependent relationship between the churches of the Communion did not prevail.
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