This is an attempt to see what some of the underlying assumptions in the current debates on the ordination of women in the Roman Catholic priesthood are. It seems to me that the debate is not getting anywhere because of the lack of common language of discussion. In such a quandary, the best thing to do would seem to be to look at the implicit assumptions of both sides. Perhaps we are really present at one of those night battles which both Newman and Matthew Arnold saw as characteristic of controversy in their own day, where neither side understands either the explicit arguments or the implicit assumptions of the other. If so, the best service an observer can do would be to see how these implicit assumptions plug into wider world-views.

One of the major arguments for the ordination of women is that the Church is inevitably affected by the social structures and cultural values of the age it is living in. Therefore the supposed argument from tradition lacks weight. There were not women priests for the same reason that there were not women lawyers or engineers. Objection to the ordination of women is just another case of the way in which religion of any sort seems to become a bulwark of extreme conservatism in social ideas, perhaps because of religion’s sociological role in stabilizing society and maintaining identities over time. Another form of this argument is that the Church cannot afford to continue neglecting the very great pool of ministerial talent that undoubtedly exists among women.