There was an unusual bond between two very different votes this month on the role of women in organized religion.
What the two historic votes-the Church of England`s approval of the ordination of female priests and U.S. Roman Catholic bishops` rejection of a pastoral letter that upheld church teaching against ordaining women-had in common was the praise they received from groups seeking to empower women in their churches.
The reaction to the vote by clerical and non-clerical leaders of the Church of England is easily understood: It opens the priesthood to women.
Why the groups hailed the U.S. bishops` decision is a little more complicated: It is because the proposed pastoral letter, while condemning sexism as a sin, had been diluted through four drafts until the final version had the strongest defense of the church`s ban against the ordination of women. By debating the question, the bishops finally have brought the issue of female priests out in the open.
”We`ll be popping champagne corks,” said Ruth Fitzgerald, national coordinator of the Women`s Ordination Conference, after the bishops` vote at a semiannual meeting of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington.
With conservatives and liberals alike condemning the letter, the frustrated effort was summed up by Bishop Joseph Imesch of Joliet, chairman of the committee that has been writing and rewriting the letter since 1983: ”We have managed to alienate at one time or another every identifiable male or female group.”
The bishops` futile struggle to speak to women`s concerns was in marked contrast to the Church of England`s historic decision Nov. 11.
That vote has sent the often divisive issue of empowering women past a new milepost of acceptance in organized Judeo-Christian religion.
However, the Church of England`s vote, combined with the Catholic bishops` subsequent action, have further isolated the two largest churches that do not ordain women, Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, from the rest of Christendom.
And it raises new questions about future dialogue across that chasm.
Among the many who applauded the Church of England`s decision to ordain women was Rev. Bliss Browne, an Episcopal priest from Chicago who was part of the early effort to change British hearts and minds.
Browne was transferred to England in 1979 by her employer, the First National Bank of Chicago, which would later promote her to vice president. But another of her credentials caused considerably more of a stir in London: She arrived as one of the first women priests ordained by the U.S. Episcopal Church, part of the worldwide Anglican Communion that recognizes the Church of England as its mother church.
During her 18 months overseas, she became chaplain to the emerging women`s movement for ordination by the Church of England-often meeting discreetly in unofficial ”house churches.” And she became the first woman priest to give a sermon at Westminster Abbey.
On Nov. 25, 1979, preaching to a packed house including many Anglican women who sought ordination, she said, ”Maybe women are training for the ministry in this church because that is the purpose for which they have been created, and the church perhaps frustrates that purpose at its peril.”
Nearly 13 years later, that frustration has ended-although it will probably be nearly two more years before all the
procedures have been cleared to ordain the Church of England`s first woman priest.
But the movement has been launched, and it has raised two immediate related concerns: What effect will the vote have on ongoing dialogue between the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches?
What effect will it have on U.S. Catholic bishops` consideration of sexism in their denomination?
”I think it will have a strong impact,” said Fitzpatrick, whose group is an interfaith coalition advocating opening the priesthood to U.S. Catholic women.
”It was a very favorable decision for us,” she said. ”The same arguments and concerns that the bishops raise about whether women are full human beings entitled to empowerment in the church were addressed by the Church of England, the most traditional and the symbolic mother church of Anglicans.
”I think the bishops will hear the message.”
The Church of England vote ”is another piece of handwriting on the wall that the bishops` pastoral letter on women is rushing headlong into the 19th Century,” said Sister Maureen Fiedler, co-director of Catholics Speak Out. Her group seeks ordination of women and argued for defeat of the pastoral letter, calling it ”a stark embodiment of the sin of sexism itself.”
When Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, who heads the global Anglican church, told Pope John Paul II earlier this year that he favored ordination of women, the pope said the Church of England vote would be a ”grave obstacle” to efforts to reconcile differences between the churches.
Similar concerns exist in Eastern Orthodoxy, said Rev. Dimitrios Kantzavelos, assistant to Bishop Iakovos of the Greek Orthodox Diocese of Chicago.
”Our ecumenical relationship has virtually ceased with the Episcopal Church,” he said. ”We can participate in ecumenical prayers services but no serious communal discussions.”
Although no official reactions to the Church of England have been received from national or international church hierarchy, Kantzavelos said,
”We can assume that warm dialogue would have a serious obstacle because of this vote.”
Greek Orthodoxy has discussed the possibility of ordaining women as deacons but not as priests; it already ordains married men, unlike Roman Catholicism.
Half of the 30 provinces within the Anglican Communion already ordain women priests. Most are small units, however, so the 1,100 women ordained in the U.S. Episcopal Church represent more than 80 percent of all Anglican women priests in the world.
Few statistics are available to quantify what is conceded to be a growing presence of women priests and ministers in U.S. churches. The most recent survey done by the National Council of Churches estimated there were 21,000 female clerics in some 300 U.S. denominations in 1986, twice as many as in 1977 and four times as many as in 1951.
Accordingly, women grew from 4 percent of all clergy in 1977 to 8 percent in 1986, the study noted.
Since then there are signs that the increase has been sustained, perhaps even intensified.
When the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America completed its merger of predecessor Lutheran churches in 1988, there were 1,077 ordained women among its 17,053 ministers, said spokesman Carolyn Lewis. And, she added, while the number of ministers increased by fewer than 400 over the last four years, women ministers increased by more than 400, growing to 1,500 in 1992.
”And more than half of ELCA seminarians last year were women,” she said.
In repeated studies among American Baptists and Presbyterians, two mainline U.S. Protestant denominations, Rev. Edward Lehman, a sociology professor at the State University of New York in Brockport, found that ”two- thirds to three-fourths of church members approved of women clergy, while only 5 to 10 percent were vehemently and vocally opposed.”
But Lehman also found that ordination of women doesn`t necessarily translate into power, at least not quickly.
”Ordination is one thing, but placement is a whole new ballgame. It takes ordained women more interviews and more time than ordained men to get hired by a church,” he said. ”And women ministers are paid 70 percent of what men get. By every criteria-salaries, allowances, insurance, retirement benefits-women come out second to men.”
In the nation`s largest Protestant denomination, the 15-million member Southern Baptist Convention, there are 64,000 ordained men and 810 ordained women. The denomination, coming under increased control by conservatives, has 33,000 men and only 38 women as senior or sole pastors heading churches.
Fitzpatrick said the Women`s Ordination Conference is aware of such inequities ”because our membership includes women clergy from other denominations, including women rabbis.
”But we also know that those women`s gifts to minister are somewhat recognized,” she said. ”And while ordination isn`t the whole answer, major decision making in the Catholic Church is done only by priests, bishops and popes, so women don`t have a say in anything.
”We have at least 500 Catholic women in the U.S. who feel called to ordination.”
The Church of England estimated that 1,200 women deacons will seek ordination to the priesthood.
Last Thursday, retired Bishop of London Graham Leonard said in an article in the Catholic Herald newspaper that those opposed to women`s ordination might consider forming a breakaway church still Anglican in character but under the authority of the pope.
Chicagoan Browne has bittersweet memories of the early days of the women`s movement that finally led to approval of female priests in the Church of England.
”A lot of the women will realize that dream, but some won`t,” she said. ”Some of them went to other denominations to be ordained. And some of them died without seeing this change.”
The vote ”has been a long time coming, but all the signs in England were pointing in that direction,” said Bishop Frank Griswold of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago. ”And the Church of England is perceived as the mother church of the Anglican Communion, so I believe this decision will influence other Anglican churches across the world to do the same.”
He doubted that the Church of England`s vote ”will shock the Vatican, because so many other Anglican groups, such as the U.S. Episcopal Church, already ordain women.”
Nonetheless, he said, ”I have studied in England for a number of years and am aware of the old cathedrals and continuity of tradition. The decision to ordain women is much more of a jolt there.”
As the Anglican representative in Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue in the U.S., Griswold has been invited to the Vatican later this year.
”I am supposed to have a brief audience with the pope,” he said. ”It will be interesting to see what we talk about.”
