"HAS A WOMAN NO SOUL?"

Shannon News, 3 July 1928, Page 4

"HAS A WOMAN NO SOUL?"

MISS ROYDEN TO MINISTER. "How can you expect people to believe you when you exclude women from spiritual office, and, at the same time, affirm her spiritual equality with man?" "How dare you think, as I" once heard a clergyman say, that it is a depressing sight to see a church filled with women? "Has a woman no soul, gentlemen?" Facing an audience of about 300 clergymen at the Chapter House in Sydney, Miss Maude Eoyden, the famous English lecturer hurled these questions.

Taking as her subject the position of women in the ministry, the lecturer said the time had come when they must put their beliefs into practice. They must recognise vocation wherever it existed, she declared, and her audience, which included Coadjutor-Bishop d'Arey-Irvine, and other high officials of the Church, applauded. Even St. Paul came in for a mild vocal chastisement owing to his attitude towards women.

' "It does not matter," said the leefiurer, '' whether St. Paul wanted women to wear hats in church or not. The difficulty is that he said Christ was'the head of man, )and man was the head of woman.

\ "That," she declared-with emphasis, 'Ms a matter we must challenge. When He made that assertion St. Paul fell below his inspiration." i There were some women, she said, who were so intensely conscious of sex that they would do anything rather than approach a man for advice. To whom should she go but to one of her own sex who was authorised. The Church she contended should have a practical answer to such problems.