“What is to prevent me?”

[Editors’ note: Kori Pacyniak is a 2019 awardee of the Lucile Murray Durkin Scholarship for women and non-binary persons discerning priestly ordination. This is the third and final in a series of reflections from our 2019 awardees on how the scholarship impacted their journey over the academic year. Read the first reflection from Molly Minerath here, and the second reflection from Kate Fontana here.]

For much of my life, I have felt out of place – called to ordination in a tradition that restricts the priesthood to cis-gender men. After coming out as trans and non-binary, I worried that I would be out of place in the very places I had called home – feminist, progressive circles of Catholicism. I came to discover that my pursuit of my call to ordination excluded me from some places, while my transness was seen as a stumbling block in others. However, there were also communities that affirmed me and my gender identity, that celebrated me for who I was. In a world where almost everything is divided into a binary gender system – from baby clothes to razors to teas, being non-binary means a lifetime of creating liminal space, of defending your existence and challenging individuals and institutions to rethink their rigid categories. It means re-negotiating my relationships with gendered institutions and spaces. It means having the courage to live authentically – despite the risks – because anything else is unthinkable.

As I completed my discernment process with RCWP before my ordination to the priesthood this past February, I kept coming back to the story of Phillip and the eunuch in Acts 8. In this passage, the Ethiopian eunuch, a high ranking official of an African queen, is reading Isaiah in his chariot when Philip hears God telling him to go to this eunuch. Together they read and discuss Isaiah, and then when they get to some water, the eunuch says, “What is to prevent me being baptized?”

Throughout my life and my vocational journey, it feels that every time I have asked “What is to prevent me from being ordained? What is to prevent me from answering my call to the priesthood?” the institution has come up with an answer – my gender, my sexuality.

This presumably black eunuch, who we can read as part of LGBTQIA+ community if we’re trying to translate and render the story to our context, who is entrusted with the Queen’s treasury, and who is coming back from Jerusalem, has the boldness to ask Phillip, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” knowing full well that his status as a eunuch may have prevented him from entering parts of the temple, holding out hope that Phillip is preaching a different theology, one of radical love and acceptance.

I imagine Phillip in that context, trying to figure out what he signed up for, because presumably nothing he has learned has prepared him for this. There in front of him is someone who wants to be baptized, who wants to know God, who is searching for something – and there, in the middle of the desert, is water. So indeed, what is to prevent the eunuch from being baptized?

How many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer individuals have gone to their priests, their religious leaders and asked: what is to prevent me from being baptized? What is to prevent me from being married in the church? What is to prevent me from being ordained? What is to prevent me from serving the church I love?

My answer has always been, “nothing.” I am proud to serve a community – Mary Magdalene the Apostle – where the answer is “nothing.” We have water if you are willing. Because neither gender nor sexuality should prevent anyone from serving the church they love.

We, as the church, have an obligation to do better, to welcome all – to baptize and ordain those who are called regardless of gender and sexuality, to broaden our understanding of gender and sexuality to include the entire spectrum of God’s creation. It may be difficult and uncomfortable to unlearn the heteronormative language and gendering that we’ve been taught, but the only way to become comfortable is to practice. It may be difficult to follow in Phillip’s footsteps and be willing to baptize the eunuch in the middle of the desert, to bring the living water of Jesus to the margins. Uncomfortable though it may be, something happens in that liminal space at the edges of our comfort zones. If we are willing to be open to the movement of the Spirit, we unlock the potential for growth, to expand our view and understanding of gender and sexuality, to embrace all of God’s diversity. I am grateful that WOC has lived into their commitment of gender equality to include non-binary persons, who are excluded from pursuing ordination, to welcome trans and non-binary persons, to affirm that there is nothing to prevent them from being baptized – or ordained.