13 January 2026

At the end of November, it was reported in ‘The Tablet’ that ‘more than one-third of priestly ordinations in the Catholic Church in England and Wales from 1992 to 2024 were former Anglican clergy’.  All in all, 486 Anglican priests were ordained in the Catholic Church.

Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, thought these conversions to Roman Catholicism was ‘not so much a turning away or rejection of their rich and precious Anglican heritage but an experience of an imperative to move into the full visible communion of the Catholic Church, in union with the See of Peter’.

I am cynical about this. For in 1992, the Church of England General Synod voted to ordain women priests with the first woman ordained to the priesthood in 1994. This was Angela Berners-Wilson, a fellow student at the University of St. Andrews.

The imperative to align themselves with the See of St. Peter came from this negative impulse to reject the ordination of women albeit supported by theological argument. The arguments against the ordination of women have been filtered down to the one based on a person’s sex.

Because Jesus was a man, the person who consecrates the elements at the celebration of the Sacrament must be a man. It is a very primitive argument. The existence of many intelligent, prayerful,  theologically educated, charismatic female leaders  within the Church challenges the status quo and exposes its shallow foundation.

What are all these convert priests going to do when the Roman Catholic Church starts to ordain women as deacons? No word yet  but it is surely coming for a’ that. The leadership of the Roman Catholic Church is deficient and impoverished and only persists through the elitism of male dominance amongst the clerical ranks.

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