Why I Ordained a Woman in Philadelphia

by Right Reverend Daniel Corrigan (see biography)

from The Ordination of Women: Pro and Con, pp. 56-68,
edited by Michael P.Hamilton and Nancy S.Montgomery, Morehouse Barlow Co, 1975.
Republished on our website with the necessary permissions.

I am asked to reveal, as well as I may, my thoughts and feelings before, during and immediately following the ordination of several women to the priesthood in the Church of the Advocate, on July 29, 1974. The process was something like this:

My wife Elizabeth and I were and are enjoying retirement. Our house in Santa Barbara, California is adequate and pleasant. We still enjoy good health. We walk easily to the sea, the mountains, the shopping center, and a fine parish church. It is satisfying to keep the garden in relative order. We have time to pray, read, meditate, ponder this and that; serve when called upon. The Bishop of Los Angeles shares some of his visitations with me. We have come to know quite a few people and places. This helps make us feel at home. As is appropriate for old Christians in our tradition, we do memento Mori. So we spent—and spend the time remaining—knowing well that all is contingent.

Into this Sabbath rest came a letter early in 1974. In it were questions. Was not Dr. Jeanette Piccard your parishioner once upon a time? Have you forgotten her? Have you ever wondered how things are for her? Of course we had wondered. We had not wondered enough. The questioning mood which had been evoked moved us further. How were my former students at Bexley Hall, Betty Schiess and Merrill Bittner? The great issues present themselves to us in specific people. A growing concern for the injustice women must bear is an abstraction until known persons move through your awareness. A note to Dr. Piccard brought a lot of response for not only had I asked how she was but had suggested that some jurisdictions might have the vision and courage to act as had the Diocese of Hong Kong. So ended our period of detachment. We thought and talked of these women who had been made deacons in the church and been encouraged to believe that after proper preparation they might be ordained priests. Jeanette soon added Sister Alla Bozarth-Campbell to our intercessions. Her fine prose and poetry soon made her real to us. As we did what Ted Wedel used to call “our memory work" the passionate longing to be a priest which flamed in Jeanette during all her years burned us again, but also gave light and understanding. This same response to call had driven Betty Schiess over the icy roads between Syracuse and Rochester from day to day. This same inner drive had disciplined the tremendous energy that is Merrill Bittner into the service of women prisoners. We wept that we were party to their rejection and partly responsible for whatever crippling and distorting effect this frustration was working in them. Chiefly, we wept for them.

Then a bid to the College of Preachers from Bishops DeWitt, Paul Moore, William Meade and Lyman Ogilby to discuss “What Christian Obedience now demands of us?” The specific question was, “How could the women who had been prepared for ordination to the priesthood be helped?" It was my impression that a number of diocesan bishops who either had jurisdiction over such deacons or were sympathetic to both their cause and their plight would attend. In my answer to Bishop Meade I indicated they could have my advice for the dime it cost me to send the letter. I again suggested that some jurisdictions, or better, several jurisdictions at once might properly do as the Diocese of Hong Kong had done—ordain to the priesthood those women who had emerged from their own corporate life ready and chosen for that office. Bishop Meade died before the meeting. My response must have been given to the other signers of the bid.

I know nothing in the constitution and canons which forbids the ordination of women to the priesthood. I am aware of the tradition which does not permit the ordination of women to any holy order. Indeed, I remember many places where women were not permitted to touch the chalice or paten, nor, indeed, to launder the purificator until it had been rinsed by a priest. Now girl acolytes are everywhere and women, once licensed to read in church, soon shared with laymen the privilege of distributing the elements of the Holy Communion.

Women perform the functions of the ministry naturally, gracefully and easily. They know how to provide hospitality, they do stretch forth the hand to heal and comfort, they do listen well and many are very good at arranging and running things. Who can question their gift to offer sacrifice and forgiveness? However, I have not forgotten Mr. Auden's admonition to the effect that one cannot think that women are pure simply because they have no mustache. How we who love Mother Church have come to think of “Father” as her best, and perhaps only, representative has long puzzled me.

This change in attitude had been given canonical recognition by the General Convention of 1970 by specific provisions for women to be made deacons. I had regretted this as it shored up the belief that the canons rather than the tradition forbade the ordination of women though very few questioned the validity of the diaconate exercised for many years by deaconesses. These have not been reordained. It is my opinion that the House of Deputies, in 1973, only rearticulated the tradition and that the status quo ante of the canons on ordination prevail. These do not forbid nor do they need alteration to permit the ordination to any holy order of properly called and chosen Christian women. Many canonists share this position.

No report of this conference in Washington ever came to me. I have gathered that it did not move far in the direction of ordaining those women who were then ready, and further, that the resolution on collegiality which had been passed by the House of Bishops in 1973 was a deterring factor. The word collegiality has mixed meanings. For us it had been a word to describe only the relationship of resigned or otherwise detached or unattached bishops to our house. In the Roman Church it describes the new effort following Vatican II of the Roman bishops to function together and yet move toward a greater degree of autonomy than they had hitherto exercised. It was a novelty for us in 1973 as an instrument to assure conformity.

On the Ides of March, the Agenda Committee of the House of Bishops reported its suggestions for the use of our time during the 1974 meeting to be held in Mexico. The ordination of women was not included on the agenda, though it was suggested that we could introduce other matters of interest. At that moment it was easy to remember the many declarations that had been made at and after Louisville to the effect that, “This is out of the way, at least for a generation.”

In May, Bishop DeWitt circulated a paper entitled An Open Letter to the Church on the Ordination of Women. I do not know how widely this was spread abroad. It was not signed by him nor do I know who wrote it. In his covering letter, he asked me to read it carefully and critically as he proposed to discuss it later on the telephone. This paper is substantially the one by which Bishop DeWitt, Bishop Welles and I made public on the 20th of July our purpose to proceed to the July 29th ordination. There was some evidence that our developing and emerging purpose was no secret though it had not developed very far.

Our postman thinks we must be on quite a few mailing lists. He is an accurate observer. The sermon preached by Dr. Charles Willie in St. Mark's Church, Syracuse, New York on June 9, 1974 and that preached by Dean Edward Harris on June 15, 1974 at the Philadelphia Divinity School came fresh to my door. These spoke to me loud and clear. They both said—"For God's sake, for Christ's sake, for Everybody's Sake, won't some bishops be moved to 'ordain Women Now'?" So there was the hard question which had to be faced. The only option, seemingly open, involved an enormous usurpation. Its very enormity revealed that we were confronting a great human issue. It can be said that as of mid-June several widely separated people were struggling within themselves with the very same problem. This internal agony was expressed in our reply to those who came to protest our action during the service on July 29. The statement was an effort to voice this painful dilemma:

Our common dilemma is presented at the outset by the requirement that each ordained, first, declare her belief that the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments contain all things necessary to salvation; secondly, take the canonical oath of conformity to the doctrine, discipline and worship of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America and thirdly, make a similar liturgical promise placed in the ordinal.

The conflict between both revelation in the scriptures and the doctrine of the Church, on the one hand, and the discipline, rules and regulations and common practices of the Protestant Episcopal Church on the other hand, has long been both observed and experienced.

There is nothing new in being compelled to choose the truth revealed in scripture and expressed in doctrine when this truth is in conflict with our roles and ways.

This is such a time. Neither the Word nor the great expositions of that Word forbid what we propose. Indeed, that which both declare about women in creation and in the new creation command our present action. The time for our obedience is now!

There are those who believe: 1) There can be no substantial conflict between the word of God and the constitution and canons, or the current constructions of their meanings; 2) that if a dilemma does arise we should acquiesce to what seems to be the customary understanding of them; 3) it comes over many church people from time to time that the word of God—and indeed all of our vows—now demands actions which the Constitution and Canons of PECUSA and the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer can be interpreted to discourage or forbid. There we hung from mid-June until the event.

I shall be forever grateful that my Elizabeth was so close to me all during this episode. She has an uncanny sensitivity to human need, a canny ability to evaluate what is being called for and is alert to any falseness either within us, around us or in the processes within which we are involved.

Elizabeth and I went out of circulation as we wended our way slowly to what we had planned as a quiet summer in Colorado. A close friend was dying in Denver. We shared a good deal of our time together. There seemed to be no mail for us—nor indeed any other outside communication. Just the thinking! Finally, Bishop DeWitt telephoned to ask me to come to his place on July 9 and 10. I agreed to be there. What steps could we take? Who would we turn out to be? When would we move from the question, “Shall we act?” to the question, “In what way shall we act?” “Upon whom shall we act?” Etc.

We left at the beginning of July with a son and his family for two weeks on the Big Thompson River in Estes Park. The river roared as usual under our windows while I tried to imagine what we should talk of at the meeting. And indeed it went much as I had pictured it. I did expect to see some of the people who came—others were a surprise to me and many of their individual decisions I could not have foreseen. Except for that, I was strangely isolated during the whole period during which the process of decision went forward: the trip from California, Estes Park, and the time at Aspen between July 10 and the weekend preceding the July 29th event. The mail, the telegrams of protest, the responses to our open letter of July 20 mostly reached me after the event. The summer had been planned and arranged long before July 10 and July 29 became significant. My isolation was not related to the event—it was just not easy to shift gears. I do think it was provided. I, myself, did call several bishops between the 10th and 20th. There were several of whose concern for the women I was sure. I did call the bishops of Minnesota, Rochester and Central New York to tell them of my developing intention to ordain certain deacons under their jurisdiction to the priesthood. Most of these sought to dissuade me from this action. The dean of the cathedral in Denver did find me in person. He would have persuaded me to desist. Indeed a few persons found me. I did talk with the Presiding Bishop. I told him that we might be, we were basically committed to proceed, but that, as difficult as it might be, we would reserve the final decision until the evening of Sunday the 28th. It is a fact that Bishop Welles did not arrive at his decision to act until the night of Sunday, the 28th.

During the month of July 1974 it came over me that this kind of decision had been demanded of me over and over again during fifty years of service as a minister in the Church of God. This kind of decision! What kind of decision? We emerge from a tradition of revolution. We are presently trying to muster up enough independence to celebrate this gift from our fathers which is well nigh spent. We live within a conform-or-perish society. We are constantly having to choose between the teachings of Jesus and the presuppositions of this society which are deeply ingrained in most of us and take precedence for us over any honest response to the obvious demands of his words and life. It is even more disturbing when we become aware that the church herself is structured like the rest of society. This has been true by and large since Constantine. We have tended to point with pride to this identity. And in all times and all places men and women have made decisions which they thought conformed to his spirit and will in the face of powerful societies which demanded conformity or death.

The vows we have taken, do define our being, shape our thinking, and motivate our actions. I realize more and more that I have been formed by my life in the body of Christ. Serious conflicts between what seemed my duty as a Christian and the demands of citizenship have emerged many times. Bishop Paul Jones of Utah made me deeply aware of the conscientious objector position when I was serving as a combatant in World War I. During the years I pressed in every way open to me for the church to acknowledge that a member of this church might conceivably, though not likely, because of his knowledge of God as in Christ which he received in this church, share the peace churches' stand against war, and that the Episcopal Church had an obligation to help him assert this right. This effort made by me and many others was thought by many to be treason against both church and state. In the last decade any known conscientious objector had a rough time being ordained in many jurisdictions.

What kind of decisions are demanded by life? What to do when non-Episcopalian relatives of members of the Episcopal Church presented themselves with their families at the altar rail, particularly at great feasts? Pass them by as the rubric suggested or feed them? Which had priority, the red rule or the outstretched hands? I remember well the first time we received Holy Communion outside our confines. I was representing us at a meeting of the National Council of Churches (ironically in Philadelphia). I was absorbed in the business of the evening and had forgotten that the agenda provided a celebration of the Lord's Supper according to the use of the Disciples of Christ at 9:30 pm. Many had remembered and were gone or going. What to do? It came over me that if I walked out it was unlikely I should ever return to the supper of the Lamb. Elizabeth joined me and we crossed the border. I mean that kind of decision.

We first made our communion with the Roman Catholics at Mont St. Michel in 1966. We simply wanted to make our communion and we did. Our world has had another dimension since then. But it was a decision.

In other areas decisions had to be made. Those poor bedraggled women work longer hours than the law allows for less pay than the law allows! The last three men I buried died from silicosis which could have been prevented! The man I buried this afternoon died of lead poisoning. His friends mutter that the “lead is loose in the can plant!” The church members responsible for these conditions tell me it is none of my business and I had better forget it! Shall I? I guess I can't forget or keep still. The chief parties to this violent strike have been gathered by God into this room to attend this vestry meeting. The governor has not been able to get you into the same room but your devotion to God has brought you here. Tonight God doesn't care about the furnace, nor the roof, nor the proposed new lighting. He had brought you here to end this violence, and they did! But not until they had said “It is none of your business.” And so on through the years— decisions, decisions, decisions—like these.

I am affirming that the lifelong effort to conform our life to the vows which have been taken moves us into change, change in ourselves, change in our understanding of the scriptures, the creeds, the Thirty-nine Articles, the Ten Commandments, church history, etc. These changes challenge us to cross frontiers, to go into Samaria, Tyre and Sidon where we cry out, “What in God's name am I doing here?” So faithfulness to part of our vows leads into conflict with other parts. Some of our rules and ways no longer express the understandings to which we have been led. This process goes on within the church—not just the Episcopal Church—but the universal church and is for the sake of the “Coming Great Church”—no matter how she may evolve.

Those who have been involved with institutions in the twentieth century will know how frozen these become and how unable to respond to the most obvious appeals for the services they were created to render, e.g., schools, hospitals, social services and courts of justice. Their capacity to create mechanisms further to slow them down is frightening.

The church is such an institution. Some of those who love her and believe in her mission struggle to keep her as they remember her while others who also love her struggle to find enough freedom within the corporate life to enable the changes which they think may not be deferred. This struggle occurs within the Body of Christ. And, just as our individual understanding of the Gospel changes and grows during our lifetime so the corporate understanding of the Gospel is enlarged or deepened from age to age. As Christians we spend our lives pondering the word of God, seeking to understand that word better. Clergymen are to teach from it— we are to test ourselves, other men, programs and societies by the insights gained from this lifelong exercise. We are called upon at every age to shape our actions by the habits of being developed by a sustained effort to live as becomes it. It does sometimes turn out that the doctrine, disciplines and worship of PECUSA are not adequate to reveal or embody that word. It sometimes happens that the Constitution and Canons cannot legitimize our developing understanding of that lifegiving word. A time can come, can come many times, when a person's thoughts and feelings are torn between the word and the rubric. Even as we choose what we believe the word demands and we move in obedience, we hear our own soul cry, with the taste of death in the mouth, “What in God's world am I now doing?”

During our years we have had to make many decisions if we were to maintain a living relationship to the word. And our response to the hard choices which face us now has been formed by all the previous efforts to keep the word and the action together. Even now the four horsemen of the apocalypse fill the time and space that remains. We are forced to consider slavery, war, disease, famine, political and economic injustice, genocide, racism and the subjugation of women with whatever light we may have received from our life in Christ. We now must live with utterly new images of the Universe, the Earth on which we live; a totally new understanding of our own inner life and the diverse lives and minds of the people of the earth. O Christ the way, the truth and the life, what is the unique light you would lume within me? For it is not enough for a discipline to consider; response (what response?) is required if we are to follow that One!

My life is deeply rooted in this land and in this church. Existence seems more immense and awesome each day, but I am here and the treasure of my own life supports me. Walt Whitman's song sings and rings in my ears more movingly than in my adolescent being sixty years ago. July 1974 served to bring together my most important understandings. On the night of Saturday July 27 we retired after an exhausting day at Bishop DeWitt's. It came over us that he had not retired nor scarcely would. We went back to the kitchen to be together. I dug out Robert Frost and read aloud “West-Running Brook.”

. . . “the Brook runs west . . .
What does it think it's doing running west
When all the other country brooks flow east
to reach the ocean? It must be the brook
Can trust itself to go by contraries

And then, “The Road Not Taken”:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less travelled by,
and that has made all the difference.

Quietly to bed—to sleep.

And in those July days Theodore Roethke chanted, enchanted, reenchanted against the background music of the Big Thompson and the Roaring Fork:

I wake to sleep and take my waking slow
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What's there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep and take my waking slow
I learn by going where I have to go.

And—"The Manifestation" by Ted Roethke:

Many arrivals make us live; the tree becoming
green, a bird tipping the topmost bough,
a seed pushing itself beyond itself,
the mole making its way through the darkest ground,
the worm, intrepid scholar of the soil—
Do these analogies perplex? A sky with clouds,
the motion of the moon, and waves at play,
a sea wind pausing in a summer tree.
What does what it should do needs nothing more.

And then!—When?—It has been done. Consummatum est.

In the green morning, before
Love was destiny,
The Sun was King
And God was famous.

The merry, the musical
The jolly, the magical
The feast, the Feast of Feasts, the festival
Suddenly ended
As the sky descended
But there was only the feeling,
In all the dark falling,
Of fragrance and of freshness, of birth and beginning.

Delmore Schwartz

Even so— Come Lord Jesus—Jesus Maranatha. |

Biography

The Right Reverend Daniel Corrigan was ordained in 1924. A native of Rochester, Michigan, he holds the Bachelor of Divinity, the Master of Sacred Theology and the Doctor of Divinity degrees from Nashotah House in Wisconsin. In 1940 he was a fellow at the College of Preachers at Washington Cathedral.

Bishop Corrigan has been rector of St. John's Church, Portage, Wisconsin (1925-31), Zion Church, Oconomowoc, Wisconsin (1931-44), Grace and St. Peter's Church, Baltimore, Maryland (1944-48), and St. Paul's, St. Paul, Minnesota (1948-58).

Consecrated Suffragan Bishop of Colorado in 1958, Bishop Corrigan became, in 1960, the director of the Home Department of the Executive Council. Upon retirement from that post in 1968, he spent a year as minister to Amherst College and two years as dean of Bexley Hall in Rochester, New York.

Bishop Corrigan is presently Assisting Bishop in the Diocese of Los Angeles.

Online Gender Courses Catherine of Siena College Select from skill building and academic gender courses. Enrol now for courses to start on January 2009. Apply for scholarships that give free tuition. Test courses can be studied at highly reduced rates.

Join our Women Priests' Mailing List for occasional newsletters: Email: Name: Surname: City: Country:   An email will be immediately sent to you requesting your confirmation.