Canadian woman to go to Germany for ordination

Michele Birch-Conery of Vancouver Island was ordained to the Catholic priesthood on June 26 on a ship on the Danube River. She wrote this article for CNT.

I think I've nourished the desire for a long time, but rarely sustained the thought of being ordained to the Catholic priesthood. Not until the manifestation of the women in Europe, on the Danube in June 2002, did I involve myself in this issue, except to affirm others' efforts.

After joining a religious congregation in the U.S. in 1963 and later leaving it, I returned to Canada in 1985. Then I found my birth mother.

In the early 1970s, I had supported a sister from my religious congregation in her involvement in the deaconess movement. She believed that if we could recover the history of the deaconesses of the early church and ordain women deacons, then the priesthood for women in the Roman Catholic Church would follow. It did not.

So it seemed to me a bolt out of the blue when women appeared for their ordinations on the church-ship in Germany in 2002. I thought that the image of the "ship of fools" would not be lost in their imaginations or those of their supporters, and in the minds of European people in general.

In centuries past, ships laden with lepers circled towns, but no one could disembark. The ships were originally leprosariums, and then asylums holding the "mad" and later, as the name changed, the insane.

I was deeply stirred by this happening. I admired the women's courage, and my desire to support them was immediate. A year later, men bishops, whose names cannot be revealed, ordained Dr. Gisela Forster and Dr. Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger to the episcopate.

It was clear to me that I should do more than support them. I chose to begin the program of theological study they were conducting in November, 2003. I considered this movement of mine tentative, but then, prior to my first assignment, I accessed from my heart a flood of blocked- off writing.

How was it that, for years, I had only been able to eke out a poem here and there or, with the exception of my doctoral dissertation, short fragmented pieces of work? If this were true for me, surely it must be the same for thousands of women.

In January, 2004, I came home from teaching an evening class and found an invitation to ordination to the temporary diaconate from our women bishops in Germany. On e-mail, it was a gentle call, open, spacious and non-interfering. The subject line read: "A question. An invitation."

Here was room for considered choice but it, too, felt like a bolt out of the blue. I did not want to stay awake all night. I said, "Yes." It was a response from my heart, and I astonished myself, but possibly not our bishops, or our program director and spiritual companion, Dr. Patricia Fresen.

I have had many brilliant college-teaching Sisters who have mentored me. I loved our study in contemporary theology, and I discovered that I am a literary person.

I had come to my congregation as a registered nurse, so to start with, I related to embodied knowing more than to abstract thought.

I linked this way of understanding to a friend's activism and to Mary Daly's belief about inequalities endured by women. I found I needed to go elsewhere to learn more. The issue of women's equality within the church necessitated my learning to speak the unspeakable. Many theologians have found their way into some strategies for this, especially those who became feminist.

My concern was with creative language itself and the inclusion of the imagination in our theoretical discourses. I went to the University of Montana to learn literary writing and I completed a Master's degree in Fine Arts. I then left my congregation and re-entered nursing to support myself and to engage in further graduate study.

My questions now led me to the University of Iowa, where I found mentors who could support me in ways of writing that are capacious enough to reach those spaces where we are silenced. I specialized in theories of imagination and later in feminist literary criticsm. I completed my doctorate in Modern and Contemporary British and American Literature.

I teach at a college on Vancouver Island. It is a rural college located in a resource-based community. Most of the students are part-time learners; eighty percent are women, and presently, our First Nations' people's participation is growing. I teach English Literature and Women's Studies in open, inclusive kinds of conversations grounded in student participation and teamwork in their research. All of the students have a way of politicizing me in unforeseen ways. We question and converse with respect though our issues are sometimes painful, and even conflicted. We agree to hold our tensions, respectfully. We grow with each other and we consider our work together spiritual.

My theological study necessarily became an avocation then, but it re-opened when, in considering the situation of women and religion globally, the students and I came to understand that, unless we address our patriarchal religions with their belief systems that support inequalities, particularly for women, we have only gone part way in our knowledge of justice.

I was thus in a position to recognize what I saw in the many ordinations of women in different Christian denominations and other faiths, and most recently, in the valid but illicit ordinations of our Roman Catholic women in Europe. It was working for justice for women worldwide.

I attended the first women's ordinations in 2002 on the Sisi River out of Passau, Germany, and I stood with the other women anchored offshore, just outside the city of Regensberg, with hope for our future together along with those supportive of inclusive church communities.

This month our women bishops will ordain us at the same time as male bishops in North America and Europe ordain men in cathedrals. This is a political statement, but that is not all it is. I hope for a way through, around, and back in, so that we may move and reach each other in our spiritual depths.

The Catholic Network for Women's Equality emboldens me, contributes to my envoicement, particularly in the letter of support they've written for me and the other women in this year's ordinations. Without this network, I might not even have heard of the women called forth recently from deep within the church. Nor would I have had the time to re-engage my concerns about our church and equality for women except that I happened to be on a year's sabbatical.

I yearn for our envoicement and for our being included. I don't claim to know how to do this but I will learn from those who have ideas and experience. We must mentor each other as we go because we cannot be selective in our inclusivities. We are relinquishing violent, exclusionary practices. We can't do this from our hearts and grace, alone; we must do it through law. For some of us, this means church law but for all women in all situations, it means global law.

I will minister as I am called and invited. It may be irregularly but I believe the rest will unfold. My questions about the sacraments and my priestly presence will be next. As faith- filled people say, "The road is made by walking."

Michele Birch-Conery writes from Vancouver Island.

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