Thirty-nine years ago, Enquirer editors agreed to cover a global story that still reverberates through some of Christianity’s oldest denominations: the acrimonious debate over whether women may be priests.
That 1974 event was the ordination of the first female priests in the Episcopal Church. They were rebels as were the three traditionally consecrated bishops who ordained them.
None of the women was from the Tristate. The event was in Philadelphia. It was a big deal and the Enquirer covered it, irrespective of the divisive local and national furor.
Those 11 women’s ordinations were valid but illicit. Valid because the bishops had the power to do so. Illicit because the women and bishops violated canon law.
I was the Enquirer’s religion reporter. My editors knew a story when they saw it and that valid-but-illicit flavor added zest to the event and coverage.
It was a great story, not least because of the joy of the women being ordained. Their ceremony effectively opened the Episcopal priesthood to women; the denomination removed gender as a disqualification two years later and regularized the Philadelphia 11’s illicit ordinations in 1977.
With renewed dissent, the first female Episcopal bishop was consecrated in 1989. Today’s presiding bishop is Katharine Jefferts Schori.
All of which raises disturbing questions about the Enquirer’s confused response to the invitation to cover the ordination of Debra Meyers by
Bishop Bridget Mary Meehan of the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests.
http://www.citybeat.com/cincinnati/article-28134-enquirer_takes_questionable_approach_to_covering_meyers_ordination.html
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