Miriam Duignan, The Tablet – New Hall Festival, Saturday 11^th July 2026

Thank you Amanda and to The Tablet for organising this fantastic festival and for the opportunity to speak to you today. Thanks to the New Hall School for hosting us in these wonderful surroundings. And a special thank you to Root & Branch who helped to get me here today.

My name is Miriam Duignan, I am the Executive Director of the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research. When not at my day job, I can also be found in Rome campaigning on behalf of Women’s Ordination Worldwide. This often means spending time in police stations around St. Peter’s Square. If you saw pink smoke over the Vatican at last year’s conclave, you may have spotted me there. And yes, we were detained by the police after this event too for the crime of “upsetting the cardinals before they went into their conclave”. Such an offense isn’t actually written into Italian law but nonetheless, the Roman police were instructed by the Vatican to find and detain us for having staged an event that made global news asking questions about women’s ordination that they did not want raised.

But back to my day job. The Institute is named after our founder Dr John Wijngaards who was a Dutch priest, theologian, and the former Vicar General of Mill Hill Missionaries. He resigned from the priesthood in 1998 in protest of the ban on women’s ordination and set up the Institute to help Catholics everywhere to understand the truth of our tradition and our theology. We compile educational resources on issues where official Church teachings have not kept pace with contemporary knowledge and lived experience. This includes studies on same sex relationships, contraception, governance in the church and of course our largest body of work on women in ministry.

We have copies of John’s 36th and final book with us today and we’re giving a small number of copies away for free. So please pick one up at our exhibition stand. The book is titled WHY CHRIST REJECTS ALL CHURCH PREJUDICE AGAINST WOMEN and includes contributions from eight women from around the world who write about the consequences of the ban on ordination that they see in their communities.

I am here with you this morning to talk about: “The question that will not go away—women’s ordination, theology and development”. And the four main themes from this event that I will explore in relation to this question are the following:

• Catholic Social Teaching—Acting for Justice, peace, solidarity and human dignity
• The Church’s credibility and mission
• Faith in Action & rediscovering a living faith—and of course:
• Leadership and the future of ministry and the church

The reason the question of women’s ordination will not go away is because the reasons we are given to exclude women priests do not make sense, they do not stand up to scrutiny and they are not based on truth and justice. I actually take it as a very hopeful sign of health that Catholics everywhere are increasingly questioning this injustice and so many of you in this room today.

Let’s start with the basics—what do we mean when we say women’s ordination?

I am referring to what is known as the 7th sacrament—that of Holy Orders. The only sacrament that every Catholic woman is banned from receiving. Ordination is the anointing by a Bishop to initiate a vocation of service as a minister of the church. There is only one sacrament of holy orders but it has three degrees—you start as a deacon and then comes priesthood. Some also progress to be bishops. So, when I say women’s ordination, you can picture a deacon, a priest or even a bishop—the full role call.

We heard a lot about Catholic Social Teaching yesterday and we are here in the New Hall School whose focus is on activism and encouraging their students to stand up for what they believe in—especially those values of our Catholic faith.

It may not have happened to the young people here yet, but at some point, someone will question your catholic faith because of the injustice that the wider world sees in its treatment of women. You will find yourself—as I often do—trying to justify why you stay in this church. And the answer is because we believe that the good in our faith and the mission we seek to fulfil, compels us to stay and to hope, pray and to act to bring about necessary change.

I have to question how we can really be known as a church of justice, peace, dignity and solidarity when the official teaching about women and their place in the church—and society—is so blatantly based on prejudice and so contradicts our core values and beliefs?

And I ask myself, how can we claim to have a living faith when our exclusion of women from ministry is based on the very tainted and toxic teachings of a small group of medieval men. When studying the medieval theologians whose writings were used to justify the ban on women priests, what is striking is that only seven out of 29 mentioned Jesus in their pronouncements on why women must be banished from the altar. The rest were unanimous in believing women to be unfit for priesthood because of what most referred to as their “defective, inferior nature”.

We may not hear these words uttered out loud anymore but the church law banning women from ministry that came into effect ONLY in the 11th century is still in place. And for as long as we uphold that ban, the Church is effectively still condoning the terrible theology that underpins it.

In 2015, I spent a sabbatical semester at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley alongside 90 seminarians, mostly young men training for the priesthood. I took the same fundamental courses in catholic ethics and social teaching as our future priests.  Although I was inspired and filled with fervour from the immersion in the best of catholic teaching, I started questioning the contradictions I witnessed first-hand. Coming to the unfortunate conclusion that as a Church we simply do not practise what we preach.

In our liberation theology class, we were sent out into the world—I did an evening shift in the Jesuit funded food van that served the homeless of Berkeley. Our professor drummed it into me that when faced with difficult situations and challenging personalities, we are called as Catholics to see the face of Jesus in everyone we encounter. It is a powerful image and a lovely way to look at our fellow humans who are suffering. But then it struck me—why is it that this call to see Jesus in everyone we meet cannot extend to women being able to represent Jesus as priests?

Now is a good time to list out the top 4 greatest hits in terms of modern-day excuses we most frequently hear against women’s ordination—are you ready?

First and foremost, in our modern-day repertoire of reasons given to justify an all-male priesthood is that a woman cannot act “in persona Christi” because the priest must physically resemble the maleness of Jesus. According to the teaching authority of the Vatican:

“The priest acts in the person of Christ during the Eucharist; Because Christ is male, the Church maintains that the sacramental sign requires a male to represent the Bridegroom”.

The Congregation, therefore, is the bride in this equation. Meaning that during the sacrament of eucharist when the priest is symbolically marrying the congregation including all the men, women and children in it.

I have mentioned this theory to priest friends who shudder at the weirdness of the imagery and are insulted at the suggestion that their vocation is rooted in their anatomy and that the mass requires them to assume a bridegroom role they never signed up for.

This so-called “nuptial mystery” (and yes it really is quite the mystery) was brought to the fore ONLY in 1986 as part of Pope John Paul II’s efforts to devise creative theological ideas to stop women claiming a vocation to priesthood.

This reductionist approach to ordination, not only sullies the sacrament of holy orders, it also sullies baptism. This key sacrament in Catholicism is where we are all anointed with the same oil and initiated into the community of believers as equals.

If you’ve attended a Christening or Confirmation recently, you likely heard a reading from St Paul’s letter to the Galatians that says “There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28).

This key teaching emphasizes that all divisions of race, social class, and gender vanish, as every believer is united as one in Christ. By reading it, the church publicly pledges to welcome the child and develop that child without prejudice or earthly distinctions.

But surely this runs contrary to the claim that a priest must resemble the physical maleness of Christ, as if this was his most defining characteristic and as if the validity of the mass was somehow tied to his maleness.

Now, on to excuse number 2: we are told that the church has no authority to change a constant tradition that dates back to the founding of the church.

The big problem here is that the Vatican cannot prove a constant practice of a male only priesthood. On the contrary, from the beginnings of the church, women were authorized to lead faith communities and yes they definitely did administer the sacraments.

Some women are documented as acting in what is now considered a priestly role as late as the 14th century. You can read all about it in our online academic library containing all relevant evidence (I should warn you we have 2,000 documents on this question), www.womenpriests.org.

Recently Pope Leo said that women cannot be priests because Jesus only chose men as his Apostles (I expected more of him honestly). This assertion feeds into the popular myth that the priesthood somehow started at the last supper with Jesus choosing only 12 men to represent him. We know that women were named and revered as Jesus’s apostles too—and the definition of the title, apostle, is simply: “a messenger who is sent forth”.

The prime example of course is that Jesus appeared first to Mary Magdalene and she is officially recognised by the church as the “Apostle to the Apostles”.

We also know that Jesus did not ordain anyone as a priest, let alone create a male-only leadership rule. When Jesus said, “do this in memory of me,” he was speaking to both men and women gathered at his last supper.

The fact is that the equality of men and women is the true tradition of the Catholic Church—and would have remained a constant practice had the Roman Empire not taken it over and expelled female leaders. Instead of dismantling the structures of an empire, the hierarchy of our Church replicated them and then enshrined them into doctrine—structures that they continue to refuse to correct. The Canon Law that bans women from the altar came into place over 1000 years after the death of Jesus—there is no constant tradition of a male-only priesthood by anyone’s definition.

Let’s return now to the present to expose excuse Number 3 for why women cannot be ordained. This is a big one for Pope Leo. That is, the claim that reinstating women as ministers is a risk to the unity of the church, and may cause schism.

Firstly—when was our church ever unified? From the popes in Avignon to just this week with the excommunication of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), the notion of unity seems more of a myth than reality.

And secondly—we need to bear in mind that every institution and profession that has sought to keep women out and maintain an all-male rule has claimed that allowing women entry would cause upset and that it would cause an exodus of men. A prime example of this is the Anglican Church. Do you know how many times I have been told that allowing women to be priests in the Anglican faith has not “fixed their problems” and therefore we shouldn’t bother?

The reality is that all churches and all communities are messy—wasn’t its Pope Francis who told us to make a mess? The Anglican church—likes all churches—had problems before they welcomed women back into priestly roles. Women should not be scapegoated for whatever challenges and crises Anglicanism has faced over the decades.

The truth is, that excluding women and going against our own tradition and ethical teaching is too high a price to pay for a very selective unity. So many Catholics have left the Church because they cannot tolerate the sexism it stands for—yet when right wing groups who want to maintain a system of male supremacy threaten to leave in protest, it is women who are expected to bear this cost and be silent in the service of not upsetting some minority factions.

And finally—our 4th of the greatest hits of excuses, is the claim that women should not be ordained because it will “clericalize” them. This suggests that women will assume the worst traits of a small minority of clerics who are preoccupied with status, titles, privilege and power.

But if clericalism has become such a risk to all potential priests, why does the church still ordain men? We still pray for vocations for men and new applicants are warmly received believing that their vocation to service is real and hoping—maybe assuming—they will end up being good priests. So why is it that when a woman expresses the same calling, she will be accused of seeking clerical privilege and power.

Tied into claims of clericalism is an equally false claim that only Western campaigners are clamouring for women priests and that these demands are off putting to women in the “global south.” The idea that non-Western Catholics do not want equality was completely disproven by the Synod. In parish feedback documents submitted to the Vatican’s synodal office, almost all of them mentioned the status of women as the number one concern. Because parishioners—male and female alike—see women doing the work to keep churches running and object to the fact that, should they express a vocation to full time official ministry, these women would be rejected solely on the basis of their sex.

This current chorus of objections to ordination of women fail to respect core tenets of our faith.

For example—we believe that priesthood is a vocation:

There are thousands of women around the world who know that their true vocation in life is to be a priest and their spiritual calling and talent for priesthood is real. Solidarity means that women’s sense of vocation must be taken seriously. They must be considered on an equal basis to men based on equal human dignity and equal baptismal dignity.

The Church accepts and encourages the vocation to religious life—there are over 600,000 religious sisters in the world today. Why is it that this vocation is respected but the call to ordination is not?

If it were true that God does not call women to priestly ministry, why not test that by letting the system that helps men discern also help women discern?

And when it becomes clear that many women are as called, as devoted, as capable as the men, why would we bar them? Justice also demands that Catholics have access to women ministers as well as men. The people of God deserve the best pastoral care in their moments of joy, crisis and suffering, and those kinds of gifts exist beyond biological sex.

Ultimately, for as long as there is a need for priests, for as long as priesthood is a requirement to administer the sacraments key and lead parishes—women should absolutely be among their number.

We believe in Dignity and Justice:

We heard yesterday about the moral leadership of Pope Leo in his recent encyclical on AI and the rights and dignity of workers. Catholic Social Teaching also references the solidarity of participation—that is the ethical commitment to shared responsibility and active inclusion. But how can the Catholic Church be a credible voice for the rights of workers when it is women who do the majority of the church’s labour yet are not allowed to receive an official blessing and institutional support for what constitutes priestly work?

It is women who are compensating for the current shortage of priests in parishes throughout the world. They are already ministering in parishes, hospitals and schools in every corner of the Catholic world. These are the people we all know—the hospital chaplains who sit for days praying with a dying patient and their family but have to call in a priest to administer the last rites.

These are the religious sisters in remote areas who cannot lead their communities in celebrating the Eucharist at Sunday mass and must wait for a male priest to fly in to “bless the bread”.

These are the parish catechists who work for months to prepare parents and children for baptisms and confirmations but would never be allowed to administer those sacraments with the families they are closest to. A man must always step into every sacramental situation and take over. The message we receive loud and clear is that women can support and serve under strict supervision but must always defer to the authority and control of men. This is undignified, unjust and a betrayal of our own teaching. Rather than include women as priests, it seems the institutional church would prefer to limit access to the sacramentality that is essential to Catholic life.

Everyone here is dedicated to building peace and tackling poverty but it is women who bear the greatest burdens of war, disease, poverty, and violence because these harms are rooted in the belief that women are not deserving of equality. Until the Church confronts its own sexism, it cannot fully address the causes of human suffering. By teaching and modelling women’s inequality, it helps sustain the conditions that make such suffering possible.

The Catholic church should be leading the global conversation around misogyny and condemning violence against women and girls. But instead, the 1.2 billion Catholics and the surrounding culture see Catholicism grant a spiritual stamp of approval for disordered male-female relations that contribute to negative, sexist socialization.

And so, we must examine the church’s credibility both to us personally and to the world. How many people in this room have had moments when you want to run for the hills and leave this all behind? But we cannot abandon the ship—the Holy See is just too powerful and influential and its leadership is betraying the will and the ethics of its people. How much more powerful would calls for peace and equality be coming from an institution that wholly and credibility practiced what it preaches?

For us to develop into a more just and living church we must face the fact that at the root of this issue lies the desire (by a small but powerful minority) to maintain an exclusively male realm. We must recognise the psychological issues and societal damage that makes some men seek refuge from a world in which women are equal. And for many, the perfect place of refuge is the institutional church where they can believe inequality is sanctioned by God. Is refusing to ordain women, at the end of the day, a matter of the power and security of a few men? And if so, that’s a terrible spiritual burden to inflict upon all of us. We must take a stand against our church becoming a bastion of bigotry.

The future of leadership requires us to be vigilant against tokenism and trinkets of hope and false progress:

The first example of this is the endless debate and years of Vatican commissions to study women deacons. Great efforts have been made to push for the diaconate for women to be reinstated and to avoid altogether the discussion of women ever becoming priests.

Some will claim this can be justified because there is so much evidence for women deacons and less so for priests. But we must remember that there is no evidence for male priests in the first centuries of the church. In fact, there was no such concept or title of priest until around the year 400.

There are of course women who have a vocation to be deacons and not priests. The same is true of men of course, but they have the luxury of making that choice.  If a woman feels a calling to be a deacon, that’s wonderful and she should have our full support. But we can’t stop at the diaconate in our quest for full equality.

And secondly—The recent appointments by Pope Francis and Pope Leo of women to leadership roles in various Dicasteries have been celebrated as signs of progress for women in the church. But, while it is wonderful to see women receive promotions, we remember that administration is not ordination. In fact, it could be argued that administration is a way to keep women away from ordination. Why? Because every elevation of a woman is meant to inspire gratitude to the pope and church authorities. That expectation that we should be grateful (and be implication also be quiet) can easily be weaponized against those of us who continue to push for true equality. How easily we can be labelled as asking for too much, which inspires a backlash against church reformers and women’s ordination campaigners.

Let’s not forget that the three women who head Vatican offices now are still under the supervision of men, and their influence in the small circles of clerics they meet will not address the global crisis we are faced with.

The Catholic tradition has a strong doctrine on the primacy of conscience which states that as human beings we are endowed with the capacity to discern between right and wrong. It follows then that, if we believe the ban on women’s ordination is wrong, we are obliged by our conscience to vociferously object.

And so—what are we supposed to do about this? Well, you tell me. We are in a room filled with experts. And we need every one of you. There is no wrong way to play your part in the pursuit of justice for women in our church.

We need the priests who push the boundaries to let women preach despite that being banned; the theologians who continue to develop theology that supports women’s full equality; the reform groups who organize events that foster dialogue and help raise awareness; the teachers who encourage students to ask questions about women and give them honest answers. We need the campaigners who carry banners saying what so many people are thinking, risking detainment and arrest. And, in an ideal world we need Bishops who we know to be sympathetic—to do more than just pray for us. They are the ones who can lobby the Vatican and who knows—even start a trend of ordaining women themselves—they can’t fire them all!

Regardless of what you feel most called to do, we must be a people who never stop asking the question—Why—for God’s sake—are we not ordaining women?

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Catholic leaders demand transparency from Vatican office conducting secretive “study of women”

Immediate release: Monday, July 29th 2024

(The below is a copy of the letter sent to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith)

Dear Monsignor Armando Matteo,

We are writing as leaders of worldwide associations of Catholics deeply committed to the implementation of synodality throughout the Catholic Church, to ask for the publication of the criteria and procedure of selection, as well as the names of the members, of Study Group 5 on “Some theological and canonical issues around specific ministerial forms”.

At the end of the Press Conference of 09/07/2024 which presented the Instrumentum laboris for the October 2024 session of the Synod on Synodality, the names were published of the members of fourteen of the fifteen study groups which will investigate some of the issues which emerged during the October 2023 Synod gathering.

The only study group whose names were not and have not so far been published is the above mentioned Study Group 5 which deals, among other things, with the possibility of restoring the diaconate for women.

Instead, the press release specified that that study group has been entrusted entirely to the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), “according to the procedures established in its own Rules of Procedure with a view to the publication of an appropriate document”.

What that statement omits is that those Rules of Procedure -presumably the Regolamento proprio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede (Regolamento proprio) dated October 1995 – have never been published: they are to this day still secret.

Both past experience and what we know from other published canonical rules pertaining to the DDF, do not bode well for transparency. And since it has been deemed necessary to examine the question of women’s inclusion in such an environment of secrecy, we believe that this is a breach of your obligations to Catholic constituents who have the right to know why women continue to be excluded and deserve to have full disclosure of the discussions taking place.

The publicly accessible Rules of Procedure of the DDF specifically for doctrinal examinations have long been criticised for their disregard of the fundamental right to, and basic requirements of, a fair trial as set out in international law (UDHR Arts. 8-11, complemented by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [ICCPR, 1966] Art. 14).

Among the infringements most relevant to present purposes are the fact that proceedings of all doctrinal examinations are to be closed to the public (in breach of UDHR Art. 10-11 which mandates proceedings to be public) and, more crucially still, there is no requirement that either the prosecution or any external expert be independent from the judges: their selection is left entirely at the discretion of members of the DDF. It appears that the same procedure is now being applied to Study Group 5, with the DDF given full discretion to hand-pick its members in secrecy, without making them public.

Similarly, the past record of the DDF does not inspire confidence. Since 2016, the DDF has hand-picked and overseen three successive study groups on the subject of women deacons: every time, their members were made public, although – crucially – they were chosen entirely by and at the discretion of the DDF, without providing any rationale or criteria for their selection, and their reports have been kept secret.

To this day, the findings, arguments and reasoning of those three commissions have not been made public. Again, it is not superfluous to recall that the same happened for two earlier study commissions on women deacons overseen by the then Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in 1973 and 1992–97. In short, of the six such pontifical study commissions on women deacons since 1973, only one has published its findings.

To sum up: the recently published Instrumentum laboris states in its introduction that “These study groups, made up of pastors and experts from all continents, use a synodal working method” (emphasis added).

However, the DDF is still keeping secret:

1. the selection procedure (including the selection criteria) of the members,
2. the names of the members themselves, and
3. the final reports or, if no agreed statement was reached, the various contributions informing the work of the previous commissions,

This is deeply disrespectful to the People of God and makes a mockery of synodality. According to the Instrumentum laboris 2 (76), “If the synodal Church wants to be welcoming, then accountability and transparency must be at the core of its action at all levels, not only at the level of authority…those in positions of authority must be concerned with how the Church respects the dignity of the human person, for example, regarding the working conditions within its institutions.”

The issue of the role of women in ministry, including ordained ministry, is absolutely crucial to faithfulness to the gospel and the common good of the church, and its examination needs to be as rigorous and independent as possible.

Accordingly, we ask the DDF:

1. to publish as soon as possible the selection criteria and procedure, as well as the names of the members of Study Group 5;
2. to ensure that their findings are made public as soon as they are available; and
3. to start an open worldwide consultation of Catholics, including Catholic academic and professional associations, on reforming its own regulations for selecting external experts, with the goal of bringing it up to the best standards of openness and transparency adopted by civil society.

As a recent example, the “Proposed Constitution for the Catholic Church” coordinated by the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research and signed by more than sixty canon lawyers, bible scholars, church historians, and theologians, suggested that external expert advisors:

“shall be selected via an open and transparent peer-review process, whose criteria for selection must include relevant expertise, lack of conflict of interests, independence from church representatives and church leaders, and good standing within the relevant scientific community” (Art. 72).

Catholics have a fundamental right to education and to information, particularly concerning an issue, such as that of the role of women in ministry, of such import for the common good of the church. Such an inalienable right, based on their dignity, cannot be set aside with the excuse that to make public the debate on contentious theological issues could “scandalise” some of them.

We take this occasion to express our consideration and esteem in Christ.

Dr Luca Badini Confaloneri, Academic Director, Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research

Co-signatories:

Catholic Church Reform International

Catholic Women’s Council

Catholic Women’s Ordination

Root & Branch Community for Reform (UK and International)

Spirit Unbounded

We are Church International

Women’s Ordination Worldwide

Contact:

Miriam Duignan (Executive Director): T +44 7970 926910 E miriam.duignan@wijngaardsinstitute.com

Dr. Luca Badini Confalonieri (Academic Director): T: + 44 7446 283699 E luca.badini@wijngaardsinstitute.com

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John Wijngaards, What They Don’t Teach You in Catholic College: Women in the priesthood and the mind of Christ, (Lafayette, Acadian House Publishing, 2020), hb, 216 pp, ISBN: 978-0999588444, £16.99. Also available as Amazon Kindle ebook, £7.99.

This short book with a very long title is most timely. The subject-the ordination of women-may still be taboo in ‘Catholic college’, but it is now widely and openly discussed among Catholics, with several recent books bringing substantial theological and historical support to the debate in favour of change. This author, however, began arguing the case for women ministerial priests nearly fifty years ago and has maintained his position consistently through the long years when the subject was explicitly declared ‘off-limits’. The book is an account of his campaign (which cost him his ministerial priesthood) as well as a cogent presentation of the case.

The essential reason the institutional Church gives for rejecting women’s ordination, according to Wijngaards, is that Jesus wanted it so. On the contrary, he argues, not only is that argument unfounded in Scripture, there is ample evidence that Christ-the risen Jesus-wants women to be able to serve as ministerial priests in our time. The constant ‘tradition’ of exclusion reflects ‘human preferences and customs’, not the mind of Christ.

After detailing the historical facts of women’s exclusion, he shows that this boils down to ‘cultural prejudice’-the innate inferiority of women—or dubious theology-woman not being created fully in the image of God, or of the male Jesus. The mediaeval Church, including Aquinas, combined both. Dismissing such outdated notions, our author then argues that Jesus, though, as a man, subject to the knowledge and culture of his time, ‘never meant his choice of just men for the twelve apostles to establish a permanent rule’; indeed Scripture, particularly the writings of Luke, contains ‘clear pointers’ to Jesus’ openness to women’s ‘full participation in Holy Orders’. Priesthood, as Christ intended it and Hebrews describes it, is based on love and service; it does not ‘include a requirement of gender’.

Moreover, despite official opposition, the faithful have consistently believed a woman could be a ministerial priest; it is implicit in much Marian devotion. Now, in the twenty-first century, the sensusfidelium is clearly in favour. However constant and forceful traditional opposition may be in this case, the Church’s long-held position on equally major questions has changed: witness slavery, nulla salus, etc. Wijngaards concludes: ‘It is time for the Church to listen to what Jesus Christ really wants’.

Useful appendices include relevant papal documents and a ‘timeline’ of key dates.

Though brief, this book presents a very well-researched, most readable and compelling case, based on a lifetime of serious study. Well worth the 3 hours and 36 minutes which Kindle says it will take to read.

The post Review of Wijngaards’ book in RENEW appeared first on Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research.

1. Recognise that the SOURCE for women’s openness to ordination lies not in emancipation but in baptism.
2. Understand Rome’s arguments for its ban on women priests and know how to refute them.
3. Be familiar with the theological reasons for ordaining women.
4. Create opportunities to educate people for change.
5. Make women visible in church.
6. Support integrity in the Church and voices of protest.
7. Jesus Christs wants also women in the priesthood, not just men. Proclaim it!

Two related useful diagrams can be found here:

Arguments of church authorities

Arguments of modern theologians

Read also my latest book:

John Wijngaards, WHAT THEY DON’T TEACH YOU IN CATHOLIC COLLEGE. Women in the priesthood and the mind of Christ, Acadian House Publishing, Lafayette USA 2020.

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by John Wijngaards, Acadian House Lafayette, Louisiana USA 2020

review by Jackie Clackson in NETWORK. Journal for all women interested in spirituality, theology, ministry and liturgy, Spring Issue No 146, March 2021, p. 23.

John Wijngaards shows how in the Church there is still so much outmoded tradition which is clearly in need of reform. In this readable book, which I heartily recommend, he draws upon personal experience as well as theological scholarship to get to the depths of this question: Can women be ordained priests in our church of today? His resounding ‘Yes’ comes through from his efforts to explore the mind of Jesus during his life and how it is manifested in our Christian sense of faith.

The book highlights the role of cultural prejudice against the full humanity of women throughout tradition over the years; the stories showing Jesus’ regard for women, as found in scripture; the devotion for many centuries to Mary as Priest; the ordination of women to the diaconate during the first millennium; the hardening of Vatican opposition in the light of the ecumenical ordination of women. He describes the church’s disastrous error in its constant teaching on slavery. Is it not obvious, he asks, that the church hierarchy is equally wrong in forbidding the ordination of women to the priesthood?

We can be really moved by the vision of Jesus as a person of his day who has no
prejudice against any person he met. The woman at the well came at a time when
she knew no one else would be around and be scandalised by his sharing this
space with a ‘fallen woman’. But we see that on the contrary, Jesus, who just
happened to be there at the time she came to collect her share of water, had no
illusions about her way of life, and treated her in a friendly way just as he related to everyone else!

From the beginning, Christian baptism has been given in the same way to women and men, thus showing equality in the way we share Christ’s priesthood in principle. It was only later that a hierarchy in the Church grew up to demand new rules and regulations – and especially to create a disparity by insisting on difference in the kind of calling and service women and men may take up in the Church.

This book will help people understand the background to many of the underlying prejudices and misinformation which the hierarchical system in the Church has been teaching us all for so long! Nowadays we clearly recognise, as is pointed out in Chapter 2, that ‘having women in the priesthood would greatly increase the positive
impact that the Universal Church has on the world.’

In short: easy to digest and powerful in content, like a plate of pink salmon served with Brussels sprouts! The book has enjoyed good reviews in Ireland, the USA, Spain and the Netherlands with more expected to follow.

Jackie Clackson

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NEW WOMAN – ME!  no 13

caught up as I am
in the maelstrom of events,
an as yet undecided
head-on collision
of conflicting emotions
is erupting in me —
the force of the fire which is the source
of the struggle for my basic rights
also feeds the asphyxiating smoke
of hate and aggression

helped by the chill
of indifference in me
my passion to survive whole and intact
is fighting
to control the fire

as long as there remains
a sufficiently warming
spark of love in me
I will not give a chance
to the asphyxiating smoke
of lethal aggression

© Tina van Lieshout
translation John Wijngaards

MEDITATIONS

desert journey three selves in me me broken in pieces male and female my choice irrepressible thrust the money dragon and the religion dragon evolving identity women carry the church

the force of time I accuse women I accuse men my inner struggle past present future my dream and God saw that it was very good phallus worship on the way

Tina van Lieshout was a Dutch Catholic woman who felt called to the priesthood. Her diocese refused her admission to the priestly formation programme which she challenged in high-profile court cases. She lost. Being both a gifted artist and poet, she described her despair in a series of paintings and meditations. But she also expressed through them her determination to realise her potential as a free and equal person.  Her work was published in the Dutch book Ook in de Naam van de Moeder en de Dochter [= ‘Also in the Name of the Mother and the Daughter’], Wilco, Amersfoort 2000. She died in 2010.

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NEW WOMAN – ME!  no 9

“handling the heavy body of the church”, the bishop’s vicar general said,
“is a man’s job;
you may pray”

“the priesthood”, the vicar general told me,
“is a man’s job;
you serve God in a different way
you protect young life and nourish it
you see to it that all is ready on the table
that everything is whole and tidy
you maintain and clean the church
but being a priest is a man’s job”

but we, women of this time,
we spread our frozen wings
the one after the other we will fly away
and the heavy body will in the course of time
feel no ground under its heavy feet

© Tina van Lieshout
translation John Wijngaards

Historical note: Remember Tina belonged to a farming community. In this painting Tina portrays the Church as a bull. Bulls are notoriously heavy, fierce and unpredictable. Only the strongest farmhands can handle them.

MEDITATIONS

desert journey three selves in me me broken in pieces male and female my choice irrepressible thrust the money dragon and the religion dragon evolving identity women carry the church

the force of time I accuse women I accuse men my inner struggle past present future my dream and God saw that it was very good phallus worship on the way

Tina van Lieshout was a Dutch Catholic woman who felt called to the priesthood. Her diocese refused her admission to the priestly formation programme which she challenged in high-profile court cases. She lost. Being both a gifted artist and poet, she described her despair in a series of paintings and meditations. But she also expressed through them her determination to realise her potential as a free and equal person.  Her work was published in the Dutch book Ook in de Naam van de Moeder en de Dochter [= ‘Also in the Name of the Mother and the Daughter’], Wilco, Amersfoort 2000. She died in 2010.

The post tina meditation women carry the church appeared first on Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research.

NEW WOMAN – ME!  no 5

I am a free woman
even though I have made my choice
nothing has been decided by me – has it?
I could still say “no”….
disappear from the limelight
into an eternal forgetting

however, I myself
have already been chosen,
my destiny has been decided
I must keep saying “yes”,
for all to see and in the limelight
to shoulder the task entrusted to me

© Tina van Lieshout
translation John Wijngaards

Historical note:  Tina came from a simple farmer’s family in Brabant. I believe that Tina wrote this poem when she finally decided to take the Church to court, first before a county magistrate, then on national level in the Netherlands, and finally at the European Court of Human Rights.  John Wijngaards

MEDITATIONS

desert journey three selves in me me broken in pieces male and female my choice irrepressible thrust the money dragon and the religion dragon evolving identity women carry the church

the force of time I accuse women I accuse men my inner struggle past present future my dream and God saw that it was very good phallus worship on the way

Tina van Lieshout was a Dutch Catholic woman who felt called to the priesthood. Her diocese refused her admission to the priestly formation programme which she challenged in high-profile court cases. She lost. Being both a gifted artist and poet, she described her despair in a series of paintings and meditations. But she also expressed through them her determination to realise her potential as a free and equal person.  Her work was published in the Dutch book Ook in de Naam van de Moeder en de Dochter [= ‘Also in the Name of the Mother and the Daughter’], Wilco, Amersfoort 2000. She died in 2010.

The post tina meditation my choice appeared first on Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research.

NEW WOMAN – ME!  no 15

the woman fled to the desert
where she finds a place prepared for her by God
to be nourished there
for twelve hundred and sixty days (Revelation 12,6)
words from a far past, so often heard
so frequently read
as if it were a different reality
until I suddenly see how the present,
in spite of all misery and powerlessness,
is growing into this apocalypse

and it seems that now the counting of times in revelation
has come to pass,
that if we women want to free ourselves
from our life in the desert
we will have to find our own way
with creativity and dynamic energy
to a new personal experience of God
after ‘one time and two times and a half time’ (Revelation 12,14b)

as for me, that moment has come

© Tina van Lieshout
translation John Wijngaards

Note – Chapter 12 in the book of Revelations describes the struggle between the woman and the dragon, a struggle during which the woman eventually escapes from the dragon. Tina obviously applies this to herself.

Revelation 12,5-6 reads: “The woman gave birth to a son, a male child, who ‘will rule all the nations with an iron sceptre.’ And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.”

The text in Revelations 12,13-14 reads: “When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the wilderness, where she would be taken care of for a time, two times and half a time, out of the serpent’s reach.”

MEDITATIONS

desert journey three selves in me me broken in pieces male and female my choice irrepressible thrust the money dragon and the religion dragon evolving identity women carry the church

the force of time I accuse women I accuse men my inner struggle past present future my dream and God saw that it was very good phallus worship on the way

Tina van Lieshout was a Dutch Catholic woman who felt called to the priesthood. Her diocese refused her admission to the priestly formation programme which she challenged in high-profile court cases. She lost. Being both a gifted artist and poet, she described her despair in a series of paintings and meditations. But she also expressed through them her determination to realise her potential as a free and equal person.  Her work was published in the Dutch book Ook in de Naam van de Moeder en de Dochter [= ‘Also in the Name of the Mother and the Daughter’], Wilco, Amersfoort 2000. She died in 2010.

The post tina meditation my dream appeared first on Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research.

NEW WOMAN – ME!  no 17

every time again confused spirals of thought
from a complacent church leadership
collide ferociously against my indignant soul
deeming themselves infallible and showing no scruples
this leadership announces God’s predilection for the male
a male ‘God has created like himself’

my fantasy and my feeling of wounded self-respect create an image
— in analogy to the biblical golden calf —
of the pope devoutly kneeling before the gilded phallus
as counter pole I see my own experience of God
it rehabilitates my relationship to ‘God–with-us’

in creative freedom I picture to myself from biblical texts
how God’s presence shows itself
hidden at plain day light in a column of cloud
as a column of fire in the darkness of night

© Tina van Lieshout
translation John Wijngaards

Biblical Note 

God led his people out of Egypt through the desert: “The LORD went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night. He did not deprive his people from the pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night.” (Exodus 13,21-22)

But Aaron made a golden calf for the people. “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. They have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They bow down to it and sacrifice to it and say, ‘This is your god, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt’.” (Exodus 32,7-8)

MEDITATIONS

desert journey three selves in me me broken in pieces male and female my choice irrepressible thrust the money dragon and the religion dragon evolving identity women carry the church

the force of time I accuse women I accuse men my inner struggle past present future my dream and God saw that it was very good phallus worship on the way

Tina van Lieshout was a Dutch Catholic woman who felt called to the priesthood. Her diocese refused her admission to the priestly formation programme which she challenged in high-profile court cases. She lost. Being both a gifted artist and poet, she described her despair in a series of paintings and meditations. But she also expressed through them her determination to realise her potential as a free and equal person.  Her work was published in the Dutch book Ook in de Naam van de Moeder en de Dochter [= ‘Also in the Name of the Mother and the Daughter’], Wilco, Amersfoort 2000. She died in 2010.

The post Tina meditation phallus worship appeared first on Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research.