One of the factors that has constantly bedevilled the debate about the admission of women to the priesthood is the uncertainty about what a priest is in Christianity. It must be obvious that we can’t come to any sound conclusions in this matter until we have a theological understanding of the meaning of priesthood and how it relates to the other ministries in the church. The relationship with other ministries is one of the important things to establish if we are going to arrive at a clear idea of what priesthood is. Is it a universal category that in some way comprehends all the other ministries in the church? Or is it just one among many, the central one perhaps, yet not including the others? (One of the questions we have to face after all is why many women who seek to take their rightful place in the ministry feel that they will have got nowhere until the priesthood itself is open to them. What idea of the priesthood lies behind this ambition? Is it the right one? Or is it a historical distortion?)

It is a fact that many theologians in modern times have deplored, that in the Roman Catholic Church there has for many centuries been a gradual absorption by the ordained, sacrificial priesthood of nearly all the other ministries in the church. This is well illustrated by the way in which the sacrament of Orders has been administered since the early middle ages. Ordination meant essentially giving to a man the power of celebrating the Eucharist. The climax of a long series of preparatory rites was the anointing of the hands of the candidate and the bishop’s handing over to him the sacred vessels.