Religion: The Women Priests

"My brothers," announced Presiding Bishop John Maury Allin of the U.S. Episcopal Church, "the issue before us is not the ordination of women to the priesthood." What was in question last week, at a hastily convened meeting at Chicago's O'Hare International Tower hotel, was the good order and discipline of the Episcopal Church. For an emergency session of the church's House of Bishops, 150 prelates had assembled to discuss what to do about an extraordinary breach of canon law in the 3.1 million member denomination: the ordination of eleven women as priests last month in Philadelphia (TIME, Aug. 12).

Above the Law....

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