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The Rejection of the Bill to Enable Women to be Ordained as Priests by the Governing Body of the Church in Wales
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 July 2008
Church in Wales voted by secret ballot – the first such ballot in the seventy-four year history of that Body – on the motion that the Bill to Enable Women to be Ordained as Priests be passed. The result of the vote was as follows:
1. The voting on both these motions was by show of hands but, for the sake of having a complete record, the votes were also counted by orders and the results published. Vide, the Ordination of Women to the Priesthood: The record of the debate during the April 1975 session of the Governing Body of the Church in Wales, (Penarth, 1975), pp. 23 and 31.Google Scholar
2. The Church of Ireland had legislated to allow women to be ordained to the diaconate, the priesthood and the episcopate in 1990.
3. Constitution of the Church in Wales, chapter II, section 38(5). Hereinafter cited as “Constitution” with the chapter and section numbers, following in Roman and Arabic numerals respectively.
4. Vide, Willie, Andrew (ed.), ‘Living Authority: Essays in memory of Archbishop Derrick Childs, (Penarth, 1990) pp. 165–178Google Scholar. Much of this section of the current article is drawn from or based on pp. 167–169 of that paper.
5. Op.cit., n. 4 supra p. 167, citing Constitution, II 34(1), (2) and (3). Any ten members of the Governing Body can also require a vote by orders on an ordinary motion. If, on a vote by orders, the bishops are in favour but one of the other orders rejects the motion, it can be reintroduced at the next meeting of the Governing Body, when it can be passed provided that all the bishops are in favour and there is a two-thirds majority in one of the other two orders.
6. London, 1937.
7. Green, op. cit., p. 203.
8. Vide, Constitution, II. 36–42.
9. Constitution, II. 38.
10. Constitution, II. 36.
11. Other than by the limited exception described in n.5 supra.
12. Op. cit., n.4 supra p. 169.
13. This section of the article is based on seminars delivered in 1992 and 1994 as part of the Cardiff Law School's LL.M. course in Canon Law. The author wishes to acknowledge the stimulus given by discussion at those seminars to the publication of this paper.
14. Costituzione della Repubbliea Italiana, art. 138.
15. Costituzione della Repubbliea Italiana, art. 75.
16. Certain classes of person are excluded from voting, e.g., those suffering from civil incapacity, such as mental patients, and those sentenced to imprisonment for serious crimes.
17. It could even be argued that in small provinces, such as Wales, the diocesan bishops should be unanimously in favour of the change before a positive referendum might be sought. Constitution, 11.34(3), vide n.5 supra, might be appealed to in this regard, where a two-thirds majority in one order plus unanimity among the bishops overrides a majority against in the third order when an ordinary motion is reintroduced after being defeated in a vote by orders at the previous meeting of the Governing Body. However, in that instance, it is a majority against that is being overridden, whereas in the situation under discussion there is a simple majority in favour, and, moreover, the wishes of the opponents are not necessarily going to be overridden in this instance. What the referendum tests is whether the vote of the orders in the Governing Body actually represents the mind of the Church at large on the issue in question.
18. S4C, Friday, 11 March 1994, 9.00 p.m.
19. Actually broadcast on this occasion, it being a special edition, at half-past ten: S4C, Wednesday, 6 April 1994,10.30 p.m. The Archbishop of Wales and the Bishop of Llandaff participated in the discussion, as did Professor D. P. Davies, who repeated his view that, in theology though not in law, the bishops in favour might proceed to ordain women to the priesthood, but tempered it by adding as an alternative that they might at least care to consider licensing women priested elsewhere to minister in their dioceses.
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