Religion: Divided over Women

America’s Episcopal Church has long managed to be “all things to all men”—and women. Internally, it has accommodated its various factions with a reasonable degree of harmony. Externally, it has functioned as an ecumenical bridge between Protestantism and Catholicism because it contains elements of each. Those days may be over. At the church’s 13-day General Convention, which ended in Minneapolis last week, the Protestant side took firm control of the church, and both internal and external relationships will never be the same.

Turn and Turn. The once placidly prosperous church, which has 3 million members, was torn up in the late 1960s over a program of grants to radical minority groups. That was just a prelude to the cosmic war over permitting women to be priests and bishops. The proposition had been rejected in 1970 and 1973, but the Minneapolis convention finally voted in favor of the full ordination of women,* breaking with a practice dating to the earliest days of the church. In the House of Bishops, 60% voted yes, a slim margin to carry conviction and impel churchwide support for such an emotional issue. In the House of Deputies (made up of priests and laity who vote separately on important decisions), it was an eyelash victory because of the house’s peculiar voting system. If the priestly delegations from just three of the 114 dioceses had voted differently, the motion would have lost.

Conservatives pleaded that the church wait for a broader agreement before taking the momentous step. “We are a house divided. The good people in the pews back home have not decided this issue,” said Connecticut Laywoman Ann Robinson during the deputies’ mannerly debate. But Canon R. Stewart Wood of Indianapolis said further delay would “let the guts of the church turn and turn and turn.”

While infuriating the right, the Episcopal convention came dangerously close to incensing the left as well. Fifteen women had already undergone unauthorized ordinations to the priesthood. The House of Bishops last week voted to recommend that dioceses require them to undergo a second conditional ordination service so there would be no question about their status. The women and their supporters promptly vowed that they would never take such a humiliating step, and the bishops backed down, favoring public services to complete the ordinations.

The Minneapolis decision has international implications. The world’s 47 million Anglicans seem destined to be divided into two camps. The U.S., Canadian and a few other churches have now authorized women priests, and the mother Church of England seems likely to do so eventually. But some of the former colonial churches, particularly in Africa, will refuse.

Besides that, the decision opens a new breach between Anglicans and the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. In August, during the most substantial international Anglican-Orthodox talks in years, the Orthodox theologians decreed that women priests would be “a very serious obstacle” to improved relations. Responding to the vote. Father Nicon Patrinacos of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America said the “letter of the law” prevents the Orthodox from consulting with a church whose order differs from their own. Thus world Or thodoxy must now debate whether ecumenical talks can proceed.

On the Roman Catholic side, Pope Paul VI, in a publicly released letter, had already warned that women priests would add “an element of grave difficulty” to Anglican-Catholic talks, which until now had made substantial progress toward some sort of reunion. Liberal Catholics who favor women priests, of course, hope their own church will change. But once word of the Minneapolis decision reached Rome, the Vatican element that opposes ecumenical progress felt its skepticism confirmed.

One Vatican source who has been sympathetic with the opening toward Anglicans says that the way in which the U.S. Episcopalians made their decision, and the concept of church authority it implies, is as upsetting as what they decided. “It seems to us a very odd way to change a practical tradition going back many centuries—simply by counting heads.” Besides that, “there wasn’t any formal consultation between the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches on this question.”

Dishonest Translation. The more immediate question is what effect the Minneapolis convention will have on the U.S. Episcopal Church. Aside from the women’s issue, a substantial part of the laity is disturbed about the heavily revised version of the venerable Book of Common Prayer that won overwhelming approval at Minneapolis and will be up for final ratification in 1979. At an open hearing in Minneapolis, the air was filled with phrases like “a monstrosity,” “a mishmash,” “a dishonest translation.” Those who favor the prayer book that U.S. Episcopalians have had in substantially the same form for two centuries are now reduced to pleading with the 1979 convention to allow local option in the use of the older, traditional liturgy.

But the women’s issue remains the most disruptive. No sooner had the bishops voted than 36 members of the hierarchy signed a declaration of independence. Though vowing that they would not bolt the Episcopal Church, they declared, “We cannot accept with a good conscience the action of this house.”

They even denied the authority of the convention to decide such an issue without an “ecumenical consensus” with Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. The Right Rev. Robert Terwilliger, an assistant bishop in Dallas, called it an “internal schism.” One segment of the church will refuse to recognize women priests who have been ordained by the majority. If the church at large forces the recalcitrants to accept the women on grounds of equal justice, or if women activists haul the conservatives into court—as they have threatened to do—the next few years could be tumultuous.

At convention’s end a new conservative coalition of 15 organizations and publications called the Fellowship of Concerned Churchmen stated that those who hold fast to the “apostolic” view of the priesthood and the traditional liturgy must “refuse all cooperation, including financial, with the apostate national church.” At a meeting early next year, the fellowship will try to figure out how it can preserve its faith without departing from the Episcopal Church altogether.

*Since 1970. Episcopal women had been eligible for ordination, but only to the order of deacon