The Rt. Rev. Geralyn Wolf
Bishop Geralyn Wolf was the first woman elected bishop of the Diocese of Rhode Island. She served from 1996-2012. She was also the first female dean of a cathedral in the Anglican Communion, serving at Christ Church Cathedral in Louisville, Kentucky from 1986-95. She was interviewed by the Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg.
The Interview
Question: Where were you 50 years ago when you heard about the Philadelphia 11?
Answer: I was in Philadelphia. I was a parishioner at St. Andrew’s Church in Yardley, where Frank Griswold [who later became the 26th presiding bishop] was the rector. And on the morning of July 29th, 1974, I received a phone call from Peter Stevens who worked in the bishop’s office. And he said to me, “What are you doing today?” And I said, “Oh, not much of anything.” This was about 7:30 in the morning. And he said, “Well, Peggy and I would like to take you on a mystery trip. Wear a skirt, and we’ll pick you up in about a half hour.”
And I was all ready to go to seminary in September, so I was sort of on the track, and Peter and Peggy picked me up and as we approached Church of the Advocate [where the ordinations took place], they said, “We are going to see the first 11 women ordained as priests.” And I had no idea. They also told me to bring a tape recorder, which was fairly new at the time. And I did. I had just gotten it. And so I have a recording of part of it as well. And that’s where I was 50 years ago and about to go to seminary at EDS [Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.]
Question: Ah, wonderful. And so, you said you were already on the track.
Answer: Sort of. I received a, let’s see, the Rockefeller brothers offered a scholarship to people willing to consider ordination, and I was a runner-up in that. And, so, EDS offered me a full scholarship as long as I would consider ordination during my first year there, which I did. I hadn’t gone through the Standing Committee or anything. I’d done nothing. I just wanted to know more about my faith.
Question: Excellent. And so, did things change for you in your heart and in your mind after the 29th when these women were ordained or… ?
Answer: Not really? And I think part of that was because I didn’t like going against the rules. And I think coming from a family that loved to go against the rules, I liked to stay within boundaries. And I had played a lot of sports competitively on a national level, and I thought, you know, there are rules to follow, and we should be following them. So even though there was great excitement at the ordination and my two friends were overjoyed, I was a little cautious. It was also the first major event I ever attended – a church event. I guess the emotionalism was also a bit foreign to me. I had been teaching at a Quaker school up until then, and there was a lot of sense of coming to consensus before you made a decision and moved on. And so I was influenced by these experiences and therefore didn’t share the excitement and joy that others were experiencing. I mean, […] I was glad I was there, but … .
Question: And so, you went off to EDS in the fall, and how did your sense of call develop – a call to ordained ministry develop?
Answer: Well, I’ll tell you, Frank Griswold was a great influence on my life. And I first met him when I was, I suspect, 21 or 22 years old, and that’s a very impressionable age, to say the least. And I was only going to be there a year, and I really didn’t like it at all. Everybody was so, again, issue oriented. Everyone was ready for a fight, arguments, and I thought I was there to learn about Jesus. And it seemed as though at every turn, people were [debating] the gay issue, the ordination of women, the Prayer Book. Everything became a battleground, which I didn’t like, but I had always felt a very close relationship with God and I felt that Jesus had called me at a young age to be a Christian, not to be ordained, but to be a Christian. And I have always felt, even to this day, that the greatest decision I made was to be baptized, not to be ordained. [Bishop Wolf grew up in a Jewish family.]
And it took a lot more courage for me to be baptized than to pursue ordination. But I felt called to the priesthood, I thought. I am not sure I ever really knew. It’s not like I had this burning desire. Again, I felt if the church said yes, it would be yes; if they said no, I could be faithful in other ways. […] I didn’t have troubles with the Standing Committee or the different committees I had to go to. In fact, so many people were complaining about the process that I thought, “If you don’t like the process, why are you even being ordained? If you don’t like your bishop, you don’t like your Commission on Ministry, if all of these things are a battleground, what are you doing here?” So that’s how I went. I think I was more naive than some of the other people there, but I didn’t particularly like the seminary.
And actually, my second year I lived with the Sisters of St. Margaret on Lewisburg Square. And I used to say that at night I lived in the 19th century where the conversation was, “Should a woman cross her legs at the ankle or the knee?” And that during the day I lived in a quasi-23rd century that I hardly recognized. So, I had on the one side at the convent, guests were coming to get away from this new world of the ordination of women, and at the seminary, it was never enough. I think for me, the gift was that I really understood at some deep level the angst and the difficulty that both sides were experiencing. I thought the very strong Anglo-Catholic women that came to the convent had deep faith, and they were good people, and therefore I never felt antagonistic toward them. In fact, the mother superior told me I could live there, but I wasn’t supposed to tell them what I did because they were officially against the ordination of women. So, I lived in the two worlds, and I think that has served me well over the years.
Question: That makes sense. Okay, you rule-follower, let’s fast forward to September ’76 when General Convention approved the ordination of women as priests and bishops. Of course, we were already allowed to become deacons. So you were still in seminary at that time?
Answer: I was, but I was in England. I was in King’s College, London, because I really didn’t like the seminary and didn’t feel I was getting an adequate education. So, with Frank Griswold’s help, I looked into seminaries in England, most of which would not educate women, would not even entertain an application, of those I inquired. And so, I went to King’s College in London for two terms, which meant that I left seminary in my second year and went to King’s College for two semesters — two terms — and returned to the United States right before GOEs [General Ordination Exams] in 1977.
Question: Okay. And so, GOEs in 1977[…] now, did your sense of call and any of that change knowing now that it was a possibility, the rules had been changed, or did that have no impact?
Answer: No, I discerned my sense of call and actually met with the bishop and the bishop had me move with Frank to his new parish at St. Martin-in-the-Fields because he left St. Andrew’s, and the bishop wasn’t sure who they would call and if the person they would call would approve of the ordination of women or not. So, he sent me to St. Martin’s with Frank, and I wound up being his seminarian so that I could get to know the people of the parish. So, it was a rather convoluted way of going about this.
I also got along very well with the bishop because the first time we met, he told me that he coached an ice hockey team in the morning, and I played on one of the U. S. field hockey teams. So we spent most of the “interview” talking about using the wing position in terms of a strategic way of opening up the field or the ice rink and getting goals. So, he told me he had been waiting a very long time to be talking to a seminarian about ice hockey strategy, and he was happy that he finally found one. It just happened that I was a woman.
Question: That’s great.
Answer: We got along great.
Question: Now remind me, this was bishop …
Answer: Ogilby, Lyman Ogilby. When I first met him, it would’ve been 1975, I think, and I was already in seminary because you could go to seminary without having anyone approve it at the time, because they were encouraging women to attend and to test the vocation. I guess my vocation, I really had the sense after my first year in seminary, I was sort of moving that way, and then I became Frank’s seminarian assistant. And it just seemed that the whole rhythm and flow of daily Morning Prayer, daily Eucharist, retreats and time for meditation, that all fit right in with my own sensibilities. And I realize now it was a unique priesthood that he had, and I thought that all priests were like that. I only learned later that he was a rarity, but he followed this kind of life, and I just found it totally resonated with who I was and who I am.
Question: And then I know a little bit about your ministry, but what shape did your ministry take over the years from the time when you were ordained in … ?
Answer: ’77 as a deacon and ’78 as a priest? Because at that time you had to graduate from seminary in order to be ordained deacon, and you had to wait a year, so you served a year as a deacon. And I did that year at St. Mary’s in Ardmore, [Pennsylvania] and then I went back to St. Martin’s because women couldn’t even get an interview. To go to St. Mary’s — there were only two parishes in the whole Diocese of Pennsylvania that were willing to interview a woman — and one of them, St. David’s, Radner, the rector said, “I will never call a woman, but I’ll give her a chance to be interviewed.” So, what the heck? Why not go? But it was at St. Mary’s, Ardmore that I was actually called, and I hate to think of why I was called, but I did ask the rector and he said they interviewed three people. One of the men had very greasy hair, and the small committee didn’t think that they could look at him week after week. And the other was a short man, and the rector said he didn’t like to work with short men because they turned into Napoleons. So, that was my entrance into parish ministry as an ordained person.
Question: My gosh,
Answer: It was great, wasn’t it?
Question: Yeah. Well, he was being honest.
Answer: And when I was there as the assistant, the rector had me preach once every two months, and I never did any baptisms, weddings or funerals because he felt that people weren’t really ready to see a woman in that capacity. I could visit some homes in the afternoon or hospitals, but for the most part, I didn’t have much to do. So, I went over to a local school where I knew the headmistress, and I went back to my old days of officiating basketball games, and that’s what I did for that. It was an interesting first two years.
Question: So that was two years. What sense did you get from that congregation about their acceptance of you as a female priest?
Answer: There were no problems. I mean, some people came up and went like this [folding their arms across their chests to refuse communion], but they had had a female deacon who I think was priested […] I don’t think she ever, she never served there as a priest, but she served there as a deacon and was ordained as a priest at some point at the very tail end of her time there. And then they moved. I’m not sure that, I don’t think she stayed because they had to move. I don’t think it was because she was female. I’m not really sure what happened during that time. But she didn’t serve there as a priest. She served there as deacon.
Question: And then where did you go from there?
Answer: From there, I went to St. Martin’s to be Frank’s assistant because his assistant left. And there was not one parish that would interview me for a position, but Frank said that he petitioned the bishop and said, I’d really like Gerry to come and work with me. The bishop at first wasn’t too keen on that because I’d be going back to the parish that sponsored me, and I said to Frank, “What will happen if I come?” And he said, “Oh, well, we might lose five families or so. I’m not going to worry about that. You’re the one I’d like to work with.” So, I said, “Fine.”
And actually, when I went to seminary, Frank was not supportive of the ordination of women, and I don’t think most people know that, but in one of the books that he wrote, he said that, and I mean I knew this because we used to talk about it when I was his seminarian assistant. He really wasn’t for the ordination of women.
In fact, when he suggested I go to seminary, he wasn’t for it, but he felt that the Holy Spirit was working in me and that it wasn’t up to him to put a barrier between the Spirit and my potential vocation. And then he said it was because of sort of the incarnate reality of our working together that he realized that, yes, this was the right thing. And so then I became his assistant. And while I was his assistant and my time there was supposed to be a minimum of two years, but after about a year and a half, I was in the bishop’s office one day for something else, and the assistant bishop, [J.] Brooke Mosley, came out of his office and said, “Oh, what are you doing here?” I told him and he said, “How would you like to be the vicar of St. Mary’s Church in South Philadelphia?” I said, “Just like that?” He said, “Yeah, you want to go for an interview?” I said, “I don’t even know where it is.” So, he said, “Well, walk down there. It [is] about a mile from the office and come back and tell me what you think.”
So, I walked down, doors were locked. There was a sign that said, “Mass 10:00 AM.” Only because I read another sign did I even know it was an Episcopal church. And I went back, and I said, “I don’t know. I have to talk to Frank.” And Frank said, “Well, at least go for the interview and see where the Spirit is leading you.”
And I went there, and I first went up to the church. You went upstairs for the church and downstairs to the parish hall. I went up to the church and there was a bare bulb there, which was supposed to be the sanctuary lamp, but it didn’t have a covering at all. And I was really struck by the power of Jesus’s presence, the presence that I had experienced when I was five years old in front of St. Patrick’s Church in Glen Cove, New York, Long Island. And I was so taken by that incredible sense of Jesus’s presence that I knew that I was called to be there.
And then I went down for the interview, and the first question — it was an Anglo-Catholic parish — and the first question was, “Do you know how to genuflect?” Well, because I had lived with the Sisters of St. Margaret, I was pretty snippy. I said, “A single or a double?” And that quieted that fellow down. And then it was, do you know how to use incense? And anyway, the bishop was there for this interview because he felt it would be helpful if he heard what they were saying. They had already interviewed three others, all men who all turned them down, so they weren’t a prize package. And so, I was there and one of the men said, “Can you go up and fix the roof? We’ve had leaks in the roof for a long time.” And I said, “I’m not sure I could do that.” To which the bishop said, “Look, you’ve had all these male priests here, and not one of them has gone up and fixed the leaks on the roof. And I suspect that if anyone could, it would be Mother Wolf.”
So, there was this, people were looking, and then this woman, this large woman put her hands up under her breasts and said, “Look, I’ve been here my whole 78 years. I’ve seen the priest come and I’ve seen the priest go and look where we are. We ain’t no place. I said, the woman can’t do no worse than the men.” And with that, I was their vicar. I went back and I said to Frank, “I had this incredible experience. I’m not sure if they really want me, but nobody else wants them, and so, you know, I really do.” So, he said, “Well, then that’s where you’re called to go.”
And as I was leaving, one of the women said, “If we weren’t poor and colored, we wouldn’t have to have you.” This was 1980 when I went for the interview and I said, “And if I weren’t female, I wouldn’t have to have you, but together we’re going to make this work.” And the honeymoon was rough, but the marriage was great. And they had had 11 priests, 22 priests in 11 years. That was their count. And I went there the second Sunday, somebody said, “Oh my goodness, you’ve come back.” I said, “Yes, I’m your vicar.”
And we started a soup kitchen, a thrift shop that paid for the soup kitchen. We started with 18 people. The first Saturday we went up to 300 on a Saturday. All the people in the parish were engaged in the ministry. There was a house next to the rectory where a tree was growing out at the top of it. It was in such bad shape. And I just started, literally, I bought one of those scrapers for wallpaper, and I just started working. And then somebody saw me working and said, “Oh, can I help you?” “Sure,” [I replied].
And then after a while, we had this contingent of people between the ages of 25 and 40 that were working on the house, and they were also volunteering in the soup kitchen. And then they started becoming members of the parish. And even though I was the second youngest when I started, all these people started coming in, black and white, young people, very energetic. And also, so we got that house totally redone with help from various parties. I mean, at the time, it cost around $70,000. And we started an intentional Christian community. And in fact, that community is still going on today, and this is 40 years later, it’s called Bainbridge House. And they had to move because my successor wasn’t too keen on them being there. They all tithed to the church. They helped the parish. I mean, we started a food cooperative because it was so hard to get food in that area of the city. And we had the best time. We were all young. We would get like 20 for the midweek Eucharist with dinner following. We were friends with each other. I know you’re not supposed to do that now, but that’s what we were. Some people moved into the neighborhood.
It was just a dream come true, except that there was no money for a secretary. I was doing the leaflets. I was figuring out who’s helping us in the soup kitchen. We had a sexton in four hours a week for the soup kitchen. If something happened at the parish at 2:00 a. m., I was next door. I had to go over there. And to tell you the truth, after six years, I was exhausted. So, I was looking for a new parish, and I spoke to the deployment officer who came down to see me in my office at St. Mary’s, down in inner city. And he said, “What are you looking for?” And I said, “Well, I think I’m ready to be a rector of a parish.” I had already been ordained 10 years by that time. And he said, “Well, that’s not going to work.” I said, “Why not?” And he said, “Because we have parishes that need good administrators and women aren’t known for administration.” And that was George Soule. I mean, I would’ve been about 37-38 at the time. He would’ve been about 65. Oh my gosh. So, we’re talking about several generations difference.
So, then another interesting thing happened, we elected Alan Bartlett to be the bishop of Pennsylvania. Frank, by that time, was in Chicago, and I had worked with Frank on the liturgical commission. So, I was in charge of planning the ordination for the new bishop. And I must say it just went perfectly well because Frank trained me well. Frank was, people always thought Frank was really nice and sweet and kind and everything else, but he had you toe the line: 7:00 a. m. Morning Prayer, 6:00 p. m. Eucharist every single day, even on your day off, because we were a community. He ran it like a monastery.
So, these people from Kentucky came to see their dean consecrated [and] ordained as bishop of Pennsylvania. And so, I was the one that was in charge of this, and I was the emcee, and I’m really good at that. I’m not good at a lot of things, but I’m really good at that. So when they were searching for a new dean, it was incredible, but a priest from the Diocese of Pennsylvania who was opposed to the ordination of women read their profile and thought I fit. So, he put my name in, and that’s the way it was in Pennsylvania at the time.
I mean, I sat and ate with the Catholic Clerical Union, and I was on committees where people disagreed, but we really enjoyed each other, and it was all okay. I mean, it was just the way it was. And I never felt that I was there to prove anything or to change their minds at all. My job was to just be there and enjoy them and have a good time with them.
Question: And now I want to jump to your dean position because am I right to think that you were the first female dean in the Anglican Communion?
Answer: I was.
Question: And let’s just situate it. It was in …
Answer: 1986, February, I was seated as the dean.
Question: And this was, remind me the name of the cathedral,
Answer: Christ Church Cathedral in Louisville, Kentucky, where we’re going to be during General Convention.
Question: […] Can we jump to a feeling of a call to the episcopate? How did that happen?
Answer: So, at Christ Church Cathedral, they had a high altar. I was supposed to change that. The bishop there did not want women to do baptisms, weddings or funerals. I was already ordained 10 years. This was David Reed and whatever you read — he’s died recently — and whatever you read in The Living Church that he approved of the ordination of women, forget that. That was his wife putting that stuff in, because I actually wrote to The Living Church to say that was not true. And I said, “Who wrote that obituary?” And it was his wife. And I had a lot of trouble there. I was a Northerner, not a Southerner. I’m not a sweet southern lady. I’m feisty. I’m opinionated. I like to have fun.
I’m moving altars. You want me to move the altar? The altars going to be moved. I’m going to talk to people, but it’s going to happen. So, my time there was with people who adored me and people who couldn’t wait until I left. And it was not much in between. And that was a very, very difficult time for me. Also, I was single. I didn’t have any friends there. It was a very lonely time.
So, then I used to get, as the only woman dean, I used to get all these profiles for bishop, and I looked at them and I thought, “No, this is not for me.” And I didn’t even know who else to tell them to look at, but one came, from the Diocese of Rhode Island, and I thought, “Yeah, yeah, I could deal with this. I could do things like this.” And so I filled out all the appropriate papers, and lo and behold, they came and visited. And by that time, I had added a new service at 9:15 and changed a lot of things. And I guess they seemed to like me. So, I was one of four, one of five, one of four, I don’t know. However, there were three women in the election and one man, and a lot of people were not pleased with the slate. And so five other people from Rhode Island put their names in. So, there were nine of us on the day of the election.
Question: And this was, what? […] Remind me, please, bishop, this was what year?
Answer: ’96. Well, ’95 would’ve been during the process. And I was elected in ’95, September of ’95. And I really thought, I had seen the profiles of the four of us, and I thought I had the most experience. But I always say to people when they come to interview me, I said, “You have to understand what I’m going to tell you is true.” So they really like it. I am telling the truth. They’re interviewing somebody who’s going to tell the truth, but they don’t like it when I get there and do what I said I would do or not do. So, I looked at their profile. They had 65 parishes. Some of them had very few people, they were out in sticks. And I said, “Look, it looks to me like you need to modify your sense of diocese. You need some right sizing. You need to merge some parishes, maybe close some.”
And they had heard this, but nobody had ever done anything about it. And I said, “You have to understand if I come, this is what I’m going to be doing.” […] Somebody said, “Well, what hooks you?” And I said, “Well, bad liturgy hooks me, and I don’t change words.” I said, “If you want somebody to change words, I’m not your person. If you want to keep all your parishes open, I’m not your person.” Because it didn’t matter. I mean, it mattered to me, but it didn’t matter to me because what mattered to me was that I was a Christian and I had the courage to be baptized. That’s what mattered to me. Didn’t matter so much what I did, even though, yeah, it does, but it doesn’t. So if you don’t want that, don’t – you know, go call somebody else, which I’m learning now is so appealing to people.
“She just tells us who she is,” which people […] shouldn’t be smitten by that so much. They should also look at what they’re looking for and begin to see the chemistry, everything else. But on the day of the election, we all had to be there. One of the people dropped out right away. He was in a Title IV case that I reviewed later and found that there was nothing behind this case. But the woman who was reviewing it, her husband, in fact, was one of the other nominees. So, talk about a conflict of interest. So, I made sure I really went into that one to see if it was true.
There were a lot of Title IV-like cases. They didn’t really have the same kind of Title IV [then], but I had over 25 of them. And you sleep with somebody in your parish, you’re deposed. I mean, I could either depose or not deposed. I deposed. Nowadays it’s a little different and you can do other things, but I didn’t put up with that, and I didn’t have to be popular. I hated being unpopular, I hated it.
And I had, again, some people who thought I was great, and some people who thought I was ruining the church. I’ve never been just a moderate type person. And even the gay and lesbian community, they were angry with me. Now, I had a lot of gay guys on my staff, but I wasn’t going out marching. I said, “I don’t march. I didn’t march for the ordination of women. I’m not marching for the ordination of gay people. I’m not standing up at convention doing all these things.” I said, “That’s not how I operate. I just do what I think I need to do. I’m going to hire the best person if you happen to be gay or straight, but don’t expect me to be a great advocate for you at the other level. That’s somebody else’s work.” And they do it well, and they may not have any people on their staff, they just talk about all this, but I’m not sure that they actually have these people or they’re talking about justice, but I’m not sure they have a soup kitchen. You know what I mean? Yeah.
So that angered some people. And, oh man, I used to get letters and all kinds of things, and it was just a really hard ministry. My whole ministry was framed with women’s ordination, [the 1979] Prayer Book, freestanding altars from high altars. The hymnal was easy compared to all this. The whole gay issue and on and on and on. I mean, I started with the 1928 Prayer Book. I even know, page 66, Holy Communion. And we had to make – people of my generation – we had to make all those changes and explain to people why not just make them, but actually teach what is happening here in this church. What is your faith deep down? What is it that Jesus is calling you to do and to be, and is he the center of your life? Because if he is, a lot of these other things really don’t matter that much.
Question: And that for me is another question that I’ve been asking all of you, which is, and I think you’ve said part of it already, which is what are the lessons here for the church for the next 50 years out of your experience as a pioneer in women’s ordination, but also just in these other things you’ve talked about? What are the next lessons for the next 50 years?
Answer: Well, I think there’s several lessons, and one is that “Don’t think you’re right just because you think you’re right. You may be right, but maybe you’re not. Because you think something is true doesn’t mean it’s actually true.” So, it’s okay to test the spirits, and it’s okay to be in a room with people who totally disagree with you because they may have something that you have overlooked. Just like the women at the convent, they were opposed to the ordination of women, but they had deep and abiding faith. And please, I want to say to the church, “Let’s not … like this new shield we have.” Have you seen the new shield? [Yes.] Well, I don’t like the new shield. Are you surprised after what I’ve said during this whole interview? [The Pride shield was developed to celebrate LGBTQ+ inclusion in the Episcopal Church.]
I don’t like the shield because I know a lot of people in places that I serve that are totally opposed to the ordination of gay people. They’re totally opposed to all kinds of things, but doesn’t mean that they’re bad people, and it doesn’t mean that they don’t have faith. Some of these people have enormous faith. I know a guy who’s been contributing to the historic black colleges since the 1960s, and he supports Trump. So, somebody’s going to say, “Oh, I don’t understand that.” You know what? You don’t have to. You just have to accept that this person is doing two things, one that is beautiful and one that you may or may not agree with, but here’s a man of great faith. That’s what moves him to do what he’s doing. So come on, church, be really sympathetic to those who disagree with you.
I’d say another thing is it’s time to get Christian formation as part of the heart of the church community. We all worship. That’s okay. And then we go to coffee hour, which I’ve gone to churches without a collar on in a different state. You think people are warm, friendly, kind, welcoming, and inclusive, like their sign says? No, they’re not. They all go and sit with their friends at the coffee hour, and I understand that, but don’t put it on your sign because that’s not who you are. Better to say […] it might be more interesting to say, “We’re a bunch of sinners who really don’t like newcomers and we don’t like you to sit in the pew.” I mean, that might be more interesting to actually go to a church like that; see what it’s like. […] Christian formation, the coffee hours are nice, but there’s a way to have fellowship and teaching time. And teaching in a way that maybe it’s a 20-minute teaching and 20 minutes in a small group to talk about it. I would say most people know so little about their faith that they go to General Convention and it’s a bunch of people having a good time, and then they’re voting on important issues that they know very little about from a faith perspective. That bothers me an awful lot.
I would say in terms of worship, yeah, we’re going to need churches that have inclusive language and all of those things, but don’t put it on the whole church because I’ll tell you, I’ve got young clergy who do not want that. Men and women, they do not want that. They want to stick with the Prayer Book. I have a cousin who was just ordained a priest. He’s 32, he’s my cousin’s son, and he doesn’t want all these newfangled things. And you would think he’s a great guy. And we’ve got people the same age as he is who say the same thing. And of course, we have people who want to change the creed, and I think you have to take both these seriously. But I don’t like legislating everything because then I have to adhere to rules. Well, here we go: rules. So I like rules and regulations, but I don’t like it when the rules are so tight that there’s no room for real creativity and expansiveness. I think most of the liturgical creativity today is poor. It’s poorly written. It’s poorly performed. I don’t understand why we don’t have the arts as part of our liturgy. We’re still using these same ugly things from Almy – sorry, Almy – and all these other church places. But we have sewers in our churches. We have people with all kinds of talents, and we don’t use them.
And I’m just, so either I’m in the 23rd century, or I’m some kind of old rock back in another time. I like to have fun in church, but I like to be serious in worship. And I like to think that […] my job is to create that vessel in which people can hopefully come to a relationship with Jesus. And I do that more from an Anglo-Catholic model than I do from an evangelical model. I think ritual and solemnity are very important, and I also think drawing people into a sense of their relationship with Christ is also important.
And, so, that’s my third piece in where the church should be going. I think we do a lot with mission, but I’m not sure we do a lot with faith. I think we’re still afraid to talk about Jesus and our experience or non-experience with Jesus. I want to feel that. If you have doubts, that’s fine. Mother Teresa had doubts. I’ve had doubts. Doubts are fine, but let’s be honest about it. Let’s work through all these things. I mean, if you didn’t have any doubts, I think you’d be, you’re not crazy, but it’s such a magnificent faith that we have. Of course we should have doubts, because it’s so unbelievable. It’s mystery here. So, the church in the next 50 years, I would say worship, formation, relationship with Christ, outreach, I said to my own parishes, I said, “We only have three things we’re working on: worship, formation and mission. That’s it.
Question: And I want to ask you [for] the listeners who will be watching this, you are now an assisting bishop in the Diocese of Long Island, correct?
Answer: Assistant
Question: Assistant bishop. Okay, great. And do you have a geographic responsibility or…?
Question: I’m part-time. I go and do whatever Bishop [Larry] Provenzano, the diocesan, wants me to do, where the visitations are, any kind of interventions, vestry meetings. I am so happy not to make decisions that I feel that this is the best time of my life. I was always such a source of controversy. I mean, you should see the newspaper articles I have from Rhode Island. I have about 20 of them, and they’re all over the place. I’ve had consultants come in because people were upset with my ministry. I have had all these things. I’ve gone to bed in tears some nights and in echo chambers wondering, why did I say that? Or what’s happening here? And now I feel as though I’m like a grandmother, an old lovable dog going out.
Question: Well, there’s a lot to be said for having that position in life.
Answer: I love the clergy, and I mean, I’ve been around the block so many times. Nothing’s new. And my goal is to be supportive of the diocesan bishop and of that diocese and to bring Jesus to the people that I meet.
Question: Wow, that’s great. My last question is what haven’t we talked about that when you thought about having this conversation about the last 50 years, you wanted to be sure to say; what haven’t we talked about, if anything?
Answer: Well, I do think that we need to be careful about keeping the balance between men and women in the church. One of the reasons we talked about the ordination of women is because we needed that complimentary-ness, [that] balance of ministries. And I think that we’ve lost some of that. I go to a parish, I’m the celebrant, a woman, the priest is a woman. All the readers are women. And I’m thinking, wow, 50 years ago, we would’ve complained about that if it was all men. But it’s okay if it’s all women. And I think we really need to go back to that understanding of the balance.
I think it’s a new age. And, so, we need to, in some ways, draw from the past that which was deep and true, and bring to the present and incorporate that also which is deep and true. And be careful to do that without too much emotionalism. I know women said to me in my diocese in Rhode Island, there were two parishes that would not have me do anything sacramental. That was okay with me. I called them in, what do you need? And that’s when I got another bishop from the House of Bishops. That was fine with me. There were women in my diocese, we had to have a meeting over this because they wanted me to just go in and change that. Well, [Diocese of Washington Bishop Suffragan] Jane Dixon did that, and she had the guts, determination, wisdom, everything else to do that. I had the guts, determination, wisdom, everything else not to do that. [Bishop Dixon served from 1992 to 2002.]
And we have to see that we represent different sides. But it’s okay. It’s okay to operate out of what you can deal with, instead of trying to do what you absolutely […] God didn’t make you to do. So, by the time I left Rhode Island, unbelievably, I had celebrated the Eucharist in every parish. One was six days before I retired and handed over the crozier. And that was fine. I never had to celebrate there but I got along great with the people because they were so afraid I was going to walk in …
I mean, I could go on and on, but I would say another thing that we still do is that when a man is busy, he is doing good works out there. When a woman is busy, she’s abandoning us. Where is she? Where is mom when we want her? Dad, he works really hard and we’re so happy. He’s on all these committees and he’s part of the Rotary Club, and he plays golf Wednesday afternoons with the corporate leaders of the town. But when she’s gone, she’s never around. So I think that’s a piece. I think another piece is women still need to gain the trust. Men are given the trust; they can lose it, but women come, and they’re not necessarily trusted. They have to gain it.
I don’t know. I could also say, look, this is a profession, it’s also a vocation. My sister has to get dressed to work, to go to her work. We should get dressed to go to our work. And wearing short shorts with a collar, I don’t think, does it for me. Come on, let’s get professional here. You can have office hours, please, I know you like to be on Zoom all the time, so you don’t have to go into the office. But there’s a professional way of behavior as well, men and women. Probably the men are worse than the women in this regard. So, somebody said, “Do you mind that I wore shorts?” And I said, “Yeah, I do.” And he said, “Why?” I said, “Because you’re not at the camp. You’re here. Why wear a collar if you’re going to wear shorts? And if you’re in the office and your neighborhood, why not wear a collar so that they understand the church is present?” It’s all kinds of things like that. But it’s generational too. And I recognize that. And I said to [Bishop] Nedi Rivera, “Nedi, you and I, we’re passing on the baton. I’m not on any General Convention committees.” Nedi said to me a couple of years ago, “Aren’t you sorry about that?” And I said, “Part of me says, ‘I’m sorry.’ The other part says, ‘Do you want to go to all those meetings, you know, and listen to all those people? No. Hand over the baton.” And there it is.
Question: That might be a great place to stop. This has been great.