Tue 1/30 @ 4:30PM
How many remember the breathless headlines about 20 years ago when a handful of Episcopal dioceses and churches (including Bay Village’s St. Barnabas, which later returned under different leadership) broke away from the national church organization? The triggering event was one diocese’s choice of a gay bishop, and many of the breakaways cited the church’s general openness to gay clergy.
It turned out some were still fighting an even older battle, one that should have concluded nearly three decades earlier in 1977: the ordination of women as priests. I recall a number of years ago working side by side at our urban farm with a young woman who was planning to attend seminary to become an Episcopal priest, who told me of leaving the Catholic Church because she knew from the age of six she had a vocation to become a priest. It was the Catholic Church’s loss. The Episcopal Church had already decided it didn’t want the same talent drain still hampering its Catholic colleagues.
But in 1977, expanding that talent pool was controversial. A few years early, 11 women were ordained by friendly retired bishops, but fought for an equal role to men in the church — and were met by the same resistance and scorn as gay clergy a generation later. The story is told in a new documentary called The Philadelphia Eleven.
The film will be screened at Trinity Cathedral in downtown Cleveland. The event will open with an informal reception and welcoming remarks from Bishop Anne Jolly, the Northern Ohio Episcopal Diocese’s first woman bishop: B.J. Owens, dean of Trinity Cathedral; and the Rev. Nancy H. Wittig, one of the Philadelphia Eleven. It will be followed by an audience reflections period. It’s free and open to all, but registration is required. Go here.
Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH 44115