John Wijngaards

Johannes Nicolaas Maria Wijngaards (born 1935, in Surabaya, Indonesia) is a Catholic spiritual author and controversial theologian. Since 1977 he has been prominent in his public opposition to the teaching of the Catholic Church on the impossibility of ordaining women to the priesthood. In 1998 he resigned from his priestly ministry in protest against Pope John Paul II’s decrees ‘Ordinatio Sacerdotalis’ and ‘Ad Tuendam Fidem’ which forbid further discussion of the women priests’ issue in the Catholic Church.

Wijngaards was born on 30 September 1935 from Dietze van Hoesel and Dr Nicolaas Carel Heinrich Wijngaards, both Dutch citizens, in the Indonesian city of Surabaya. During World War II, his father was made to work on the infamous Burma Railway in Thailand, while John with his mother and three brothers were prisoners of war in Malang, Surakarta and Ambarawa. The family was repatriated to the Netherlands after the war.

John Wijngaards joined the Mill Hill Missionaries and was ordained a priest in 1959. In Rome he obtained the Licentiate of Sacred Scripture at the Pontifical Biblical Institute and the Doctorate of Theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University (1963).

His studies focused on The Formulas of the Deuteronomic Creed (dissertation, Brill, Leiden 1963). Further research resulted in The Dramatisation of Salvific History in the Deuteronomic Schools (Brill, Leiden 1969) and a 360-page commentary on the book of Deuteronomy in the well-known Dutch series of commentaries published by Romen & Zonen (Roermond 1971).

Wijngaards taught Sacred Scripture at St John's Major Seminary in Hyderabad, India (1963–1976). During that time he was instrumental in founding Amruthavani communication centre, Jeevan Jyoti theological institute for religious women and Jyotirmai, the statewide planning body for the Catholic dioceses of Andhra Pradesh. He served as part-time lecturer at the National Biblical Catechetical and Liturgical Centre in Bangalore and was, for a number of years, a member of the National Advisory Council of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India. At the same time he produced a number of books on Sacred Scripture including his well-known Background to the Gospels.

Research on the ministries convinced him that the exclusion of women must be attributed to cultural obstacles, not to Scripture or Tradition. He urged the Indian hierarchy to start a process of exploring the full ordination of women.

After a spell as Vicar General of the Mill Hill Missionaries in London (1976–1982), he became Director of Housetop, an international centre of adult faith formation (1982–2009). During that time (1983–1998) he was also Professor of Sacred Scripture at the Missionary Institute London which was affiliated to Louvain Catholic University and Middlesex University. During this time he pioneered the ‘Walking on Water’ series of video courses for adult faith formation which were co-produced by 15 countries in all continents. He wrote the scripts for nine half-hour film stories. He also produced the acclaimed 2 ½ - hour film Journey to the Centre of Love of which he was both the scriptwriter and the executive producer (see awards below).

In 1977 Wijngaards wrote Did Christ Rule out Women Priests? (McCrimmon, Great Wakering) in response to Inter Insigniores (1976), the declaration by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith in which the Vatican’s reasons for excluding women are clearly spelled out. In the decades that followed Rome stiffened its opposition to women’s ordination, culminating in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (1995) and subsequent documents by which the freedom of discussion by theologians was further curtailed. In protest, Wijngaards resigned from his priestly ministry on 17 September 1998. His request for official reduction to the status of a lay person was acknowledged by Rome on 21 February 2000. On the 27th of May he married Jacqueline Clackson in a simple Church ceremony. Wijngaards has continued publishing his reasons for advocating the ordination of women to the Catholic priesthood in a series of books, notably The Ordination of Women in the Catholic Church and No Women in Holy Orders?In 1999 he established a website that has grown out to be the largest internet library with documentation on the ordination of women.

Traditionalist Catholics decry John Wijngaards as a ‘public dissenter and heretic’. He himself maintains that speaking out does not undermine accepting the teaching authority of the Pope. He firmly opposes the illegal ordination of women outside the established structure of the Church, as is done in the so-called Roman Catholic Women Priests movement.

Since 2005 John Wijngaards has focused also on other issues needing reform in the Catholic Church. He created a pastoral website to deal with the sexual code. He drafted the Catholic Scholars' Declaration on Authority in the Church which gained international support. His Centre was reshaped to become the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research. Its main purpose is to publish independent Catholic scholarly assessments as 'a progressive theological think tank'. The Institute submitted a 'Documented Appeal' to Pope Francis, urging him to restore the ancient ordained diaconate for women.

• Grand Prix, as scriptwriter for Journey to the Centre of Love, Tenth International Catholic Film Festival, Warsaw 1995.
• The Bronze Award, for the same film at the Film Fest Houston 1997.
• The Chris Award, at the Columbus Film Festival 1997.
• The Marga Klompé Award, 2005.