HANDMAIDS OF THE LORD Women Deacons in the Catholic Church


Jane Coll Gracewing, 448pp, pbk 978 0852447727, £15.99


Certainly I appreciate thoroughness. But the exhaustiveness of Jane Coll’s handbook Handmaids quickly threatens becoming exhausting. It is long – nearly 450 pages – and comes with no fewer than seven appendices (including one split into Sections A to E). Tere is a dizzying division into subsections, requiring four styles of chapter heading. Twenty-four passages are marked ‘Summary’, with four major ‘Conclusions’ and four minor ones in a separate chapter – ‘Gathering Together’ – the twenty-first of twenty-four numbered chapters. I came quickly to the opinion that Handmaids of the Lord lacks a certain coherence of thought, or clarity of argument, which manifests in an over-elaborate presentation of the material. Tis need not have been so much of a problem had Coll decided to produce a compendium of resources concerning the issue of the ordination of


women as deacons: however, Handmaids is billed as a thesis, the persuasive force


of which is dulled by the superfluity of material. A pracising Roman Catholic and


parish catechist, Coll upholds the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church that women cannot be ordained as priests. However, she suggests that the exposition of this


teaching is is


sometimes inadequate, and proposes that the debate


oſten


misdirected. In very much the role of a critical friend, she also argues that traditional Catholic teaching on the equality-in-difference of men and women is not always put properly into pracice, and is concerned to promote ways in which the contribution of women to the ministry of the Church can be beter enabled and enriched. Tere is in this approach an appealing balance of fidelity to the Tradition with a sense of the urgency of the Church’s mission.


While interesting and useful to the


debate, some of Coll’s excursuses are either tangential (and thus distracing), or – in providing too great a weight of background or preliminary explanation – slow the pace of the book. It is not clear for what sort of audience this work was intended. Potentially of particular interest to readers


DIRECTIONS, the (two- page)


section on


‘Anglican Arguments’ has one sentence on the dialogue between the denominations when the ordination of women was proposed in the Church of England: the other seven paragraphs appear to be based upon ‘a conversation with a female priest from an


Anglican background’, evidently thus qualified to represent and articulate the Anglican mind on such maters. Tere is no mention here or in the bibliography of Consecrated Women? (ed. J. Baker). I could go on – but, in the interest of brevity, I shan’t.


Richard Norman Two Cities


The ruins of Athens are cast up by the Thames; These fallen cities the graveyards of their gods Similar in hubris, whether to blaspheme the oracle


Or second-guess the futures in commodities.


A yellow light arpeggio in the stream Reflecting haunted buildings Given over to Cronus and Aphrodite It is past lunchtime so The priests sleep and the traders carouse; Only the ferryman still exacts his fare.


We are alike in our demise, Cynics cursing the polis; Sophisticates despising civic pride When a people forgets its manners, it has died


The Society of Mary May Devotion (Photo by John Salmon)


Peter Mulen June 2014 ■ newdirections ■ 25


of NEW


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36