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by Una Kroll
from Voices of this Calling, pp. 33-35.
Edited
by Christina Reesand published by Canterbury Press 2003.
Republished
on our website with the necessary permissions
Una Kroll felt called to priestly ministry when she was 19 years old. She
spent a long period as a medical doctor, missionary, deaconess, deacon,
Christian feminist, author and broadcaster, before becoming a priest when she
was 71 years old. Most of her life’s work has related to the plight of
disadvantaged women in her own and other countries and she believes that her
spiritual life has been enhanced by her work for women in society. She now
lives a life of prayer as a solitary in life vows in the border town of
Monmouth in Wales.
By
the time I became a priest in January 1997, I had passed the retiring age for
clergy in the Church in Wales to which I then belonged. Ordination was the
culmination of a 50-year struggle to admit to myself that women could become
priests in the Anglican Church, then, with others, to work to convince the
Church that they would be an asset to the ordained ministry. By the time it
became possible for women in the Church in Wales to be ordained, I knew many
women bishops and priests from overseas, and women priests from England, and I
had seen many of them in action.
At
the time I was perplexed by the English and Welsh churches’ insistence on
restricting women’s ministry, so perplexed that I seriously considered not
offering for ordination myself. However, I wanted to know how female priests
could make positive contributions to a Church that had been dominated by male
ministry for nearly 2000 years. I knew that I wanted to explore that potential
from inside the ordained ministry rather than from outside; so I agreed to go
ahead.
On
the day of ordination I was happy, more happy than I could show at the time. I
was also anxious. I had previously spent years and years in the company of
Anglican and Roman Catholic women debating the wisdom of our joining a
‘men’s club’ and getting caught into existing institutional
norms of behaviour. Would we be swamped, coerced into acting according to male
tradition rather than according to our female nature? Would we become
‘clericalized’ and dominate the laity in authoritarian ways? Would we
be able to complement male styles of authority in new and different ways? How
would the image of priesthood be changed by the inclusion of women in its
ranks?
Now,
five years on, I am still asking these questions. A few of my women friends
seem to think that the struggle is over, ‘we should just get on with the
job and wait to be assimilated into the structures’. Some, however, still
feel that they cannot truly be themselves, or be valued as they deserve, within
a predominantly male institution where there are no women bishops. Others,
having worked in the prevalent culture of male ministry, are disillusioned and
are seriously considering leaving an organization which still oppresses women,
denies them effective voices in the government of the Church, misuses their
talents and makes no adequate provision for their childbearing and rearing
roles in families.
Nevertheless, I am happy to be a priest who is a woman. I continue to try to
understand how and what my womanhood contributes to my own parish ministry. I
am, however, deeply saddened by the apparent loss of the precious solidarity I
had with other women - and some men - during the years of struggle and waiting.
I
came into the priesthood hoping for, and expecting, change. I hoped that the
coming of women would end the male clergy’s preoccupation with justifying
their existence by overwork and multiplication of committees and structures. So
far, I have seen no essential change in male attitudes towards ministry;
moreover, some of the women who are now priests have assimilated an attitude of
justification by works. I thought that women’s delight in worshipping God
in and through prayer of various kinds would change our public acts of worship
- without loss of their essential form. I think this has happened to a limited
extent but sometimes against fierce resistance. I expected a greater
appreciation of lay talents and gifts, as well as of clergy gifts; I know that
many people in the Church are working towards this end. Nevertheless, those who
make decisions about ministry still seem to tolerate many situations in which
lay people and clergy, stipendiary and self supporting, are being ‘burnt
out’ by overwork, underuse of the talents of women priests and the laity
and inadequate consideration for their human needs.
I
believe that women priests will contribute to the fulfilment of my hopes
through effecting these and other positive changes in church structure and
life. Personally, I want to spend my remaining years encouraging younger women
priests, and others whom I admire and cherish, to celebrate the advent of women
into the ranks of the ordained clergy and to make the fullest possible use of
their gifts. Before that can happen, however, there need to be widespread
changes in attitudes towards women priests whose talents and ways of working
are often seen as threatening. There needs to be much more opportunity in all
churches for listening to women’s points of view. Nothing much will change
in England and Wales until we admit women into the episcopate and
wholeheartedly begin to celebrate the equal and complementary nature of men and
women in the Church and society.
For
myself, becoming a priest has been like coming home; for the first time in my
life, I know myself to be the person who God created me to be. Priesthood has
enlarged my love of my own womanhood, enabled me to appreciate and celebrate
the Godgiven differences between men and women and, above all, to feel
responsible to God for the gifts God has given me and which now can be used in
a way that was formerly unknown to me. I thank God for all that.
Una Kroll
Read also: Ordination in the Anglican
Church &
A short biography of Una
Kroll.
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