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There is division within America's Episcopal Church as well, even as it moves this week to consecrate Anglicanism's third female bishop, Jane Dixon. At least five U.S. dioceses and various parishes still refuse to recognize women priests. Far more divided is Australia, where the largest diocese (Sydney) is staunchly conservative. Since traditionalists believe women simply cannot be valid priests, they do not recognize female priests or sacraments they perform.
THE CATHOLIC WOMEN'S REVOLUTION
For years Catholics have watched the Anglican drama and felt the issues and arguments seeping into their own debates. More than theology, it is everyday experience that has reshaped the perceptions of men and women alike. The crucial turning point came with the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), when the world's bishops emphasized, among other reforms, the equality of the sexes and the importance of the laity. Church members were to be no longer mere assistants to the clergy but full-fledged participants in the church's mission.
Thus inspired, women began studying theology and filling leadership posts as the number of priests began falling. The Women's Ordination Conference and nuns' groups began open agitation for women priests. "Prior to the Second Vatican Council, women never did anything in the sanctuary," says the Rev. Thomas Rausch of Loyola Marymount University. "But now for 20 years Catholics have become used to seeing them proclaiming the Scriptures and sometimes even presiding at noneucharistic liturgies. That means that the whole consciousness of the church begins to change."
Then the new possibility arose that laywomen (and laymen) could fulfill most priestly functions. Under the Vatican's canon law code of 1983, parishes could be run by nuns or laity under the supervision of priests who visit to celebrate sacraments. Nearly 300 U.S. parishes are without a priest, reports Ruth Wallace of George Washington University, and three-fourths of them are led by women. If present patterns continue, the number of male priests will have fallen 40% between 1966 and 2005, which will increase the demand for women substitutes.
The women leading parishes do everything from preaching to counseling to serving Communion hosts previously consecrated by a priest. Once church members become accustomed to a female presence at the altar, they tend to make the argument for ordination on practical rather than theological grounds. "We have a shortage of male priests," says Michele Clark, a leading laywoman of American Martyrs Church in Manhattan Beach, California. "We have three priests now; we're looking to have just one by the year 2025 -- and that's for 4,500 families. There's definitely a pastoral need for women in the priesthood."
A solid majority of American Catholics now favor women priests, in contrast to 29% in a 1974 poll. But if parishioners are pleased with women leaders, the women are not universally impressed with church work. Barbara Flannery, a mother of three, led a parish in Palmer, Michigan, for seven years but finally quit last year. "It was too many hours and also too much responsibility for too little financial compensation and too little emotional support from the male end of the hierarchy," she says. When clergy gathered, she adds, she suffered quietly from "the feelings, looks, innuendos. I was never quite a part of the group."