Anglican Women

Anglican women get noticed. Is it because they are ordained?

La Croix International reports that eight women will represent the Anglican Communion at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in New York in March 2020. I am surmising, based on official titles, there are five laywomen, two “reverends,” and one bishop selected by the commission. So a nice representation of roles.

This seems notable to me because, while I admire La Croix’s ecumenism, I wonder that they did not inquire about who would be representing the Roman Catholic Communion. Ordained women? Not a chance.

A search of the Vatican news website reveals 57 entries in the last few years about both the UN and women, but none about a delegation to the commission itself. The Vatican is not on the list of member states elected to the commission, but that does not seem to exclude them from participating.

Now that the Women’s Ordination Conference is an Economic and Social Council (ECSOCO) accredited non-governmental organization (NGO), we can hope our representatives will be noticed, as well as those of The Grail and others who have been attending for years.

I chose to write about this because of an Anglican Journal article that came to me about a meeting of ordained US Episcopal and Canadian Anglican women in leadership positions, “all of whom have broken through the stained-glass ceiling that, in the past, was impenetrable,” as characterized by Canon Judy Rois, executive director of the Anglican Foundation of Canada.

This group has been meeting since 2010, before there were bishops in the United Kingdom, to prepare women who might be appointed and to provide support and encouragement to them. The US picked up the “Leading Women” conference, and this was the first year that the Canadians joined in.

These women did get noticed because they met at Mundelein, the seminary of the Archdiocese of Chicago. Do you get the visual? Sixty-eight women and all those men preparing for priesthood, eating in the same dining room?

At this meeting, a minor theme was women’s uncertainty about moving on up. Archbishop Melissa Skelton, one of the organizers, was in a position to notice that “some ordained women experience a ‘profound ambivalence’ over whether or not they should pursue higher leadership positions. They might believe that to do so might seem ‘too overtly ambitious,’ or tell themselves that they are unqualified when they are in fact overqualified.” Important to say and hear, for them and for us.

Canon Rois reflected on the group and the meeting:

My experience was that all of these women have moved past punching their fists in the air demanding recognition—or allowing a victim mindset to prevent a resolute and forward outlook. Each of the women I met had a sense of hope and anticipation as they looked to the future.

What I think many women took away with them was a strong, supportive network of women in Canada and the U.S., women who could be called upon for advice, counsel and support. I also think they returned home with hope and a sense that positions in the church previously not available to them could in fact be possibilities now more than ever.

How much this applies to our own situation! WOC has a ministry of “walking with women called,” and a scholarship to help women to obtain education for ministry, but we do have to punch our fists in the air to demand recognition, not to move up but to move at all. Fortunately, WOC and WOW and all our allies constitute a “strong, supportive network” to provide “hope and anticipation.”