At our recent Deanery Chapter meeting (a meeting of the clergy) someone noticed that, for the first time, there were more women present than men.  That it should be remarked upon was perhaps remarkable in itself.

One of the most significant developments in the church of the late 20th and early 21st century has been the role played by women within the ministry of the Church.  When I was ordained, women ministers were either deaconesses or parish workers.  They were not highly regarded by some clergy.  Bishop Michael Turnbull recalls a day when he was playing in a diocesan cricket match.  His bowling was rather accurate and he had the misfortune to bowl out his bishop.  The angry prelate fumed his way back to the Pavilion with the words  - "If Turnbull ever bowls like that again, I shall turn him into ... " The Bishop paused whilst he thought of the worst thing possible and then blurted out, "a woman worker!"  One wonders what that bishop might have thought of the possibility of women workers becoming priests or, as is now increasingly likely, bishops.

We have come a long way in a short time, though not without the rifts of a church divided into those who can or cannot accept the ordination of women.   Those divisions are set to increase when the Church of England follows the example of some of her sister churches in the Anglican Communion and actually ordains women bishops.  It always seems to me that we spend a lot of energy on providing for those who cannot accept this and worry about what effect it would have on them, whereas we hardly seem to bother about the feelings of the women whose 'call' has been rejected for too long.

I have been involved in vocation work long enough to know that personal feelings of call are not all we should consider.  Alongside personal call is God's call to us to be the Church.  That involves all of us in a progressive journey of self-offering as we develop the gifts God has given us and use them in His service.  The offering to priesthood, by male and female, is a part of that.

God's call to women to exercise ministry at every level is, of course, essential if we are to be truly 'Catholic' - all embracing, universal. What persuaded me back in the 90s that women should be ordained is that up until then the least 'Catholic' part of the Church of England was its ministry.

These thoughts came when I looked at the role Mary Magdalene whose Feast Day we keep next Wednesday.  The special role she had was to be the one to whom Jesus revealed himself as the Risen Lord in the garden on Easter Day.  That is not without its significance and it reminds us that Jesus had none of the constraints about women that seem to dog the church today.  St John tells us that Jesus sent her to tellt he good news of his resurrection to the apostles.  Because of this the Eastern Church regard her as equal to the Apostles because she was 'The Apostle to the Apostles'.  If Mary Magdalene is regarded as an apostle then ordaining women as bishops, who are the successors to the Apostles, is merely catching up with early church thinking, and, dare I say it, our Lord's too!