Long Island to Ordain Women Priests
Episcopal News Service. February 2, 1989 [89021]
NEW YORK (DPS, Feb. 2) -- The Rt. Rev. Orris G. Walker, Jr., Bishop Coadjutor of the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island, has announced that on Saturday, February 18, at 2 P.M., he will ordain three women to the priesthood. This is an historic announcement; the three women ordained at the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Garden City on Saturday will be the first women priests to be ordained in the diocese.
The three candidates for the priesthood, Anne Elliot Lyndal (a graduate of George W. Mercer, Jr., School of Theology, in Garden City), Noreen O'Connor Mooney (a graduate of General Seminary), and Janet Fulton Bragg Campbell (also a graduate of General Seminary), have already been ordained to the diaconate and are currently engaged in active ministries in the diocese.
Lyndal, who was ordained to the diaconate in 1979, has, since 1981, served as staff chaplain in The Hospital Chaplaincy, New York City, and deacon assistant at Holy Trinity Church, Hicksville, New York. Holy Trinity is sponsoring her for the priesthood.
Mooney, who was ordained deacon in 1983, was assistant rector at All Saints Church, Great Neck, New York (1983-85), interim chaplain at St. John's Episcopal Hospital and Nursing Home, Far Rockaway, New York (1985-86), congregational developer at St. James Episcopal Church, Noyac, New York (1985-87), campus minister at Suffolk County Community College, Riverhead, New York (1987), and is now serving as deacon-at-large in the Suffolk archdeaconry. She is sponsored for priestly ordination by All Saints, Great Neck.
Campbell, who was sponsored for Holy Orders by St. Paul's Church, Brooklyn, was ordained deacon in 1988. She is now assistant vicar at St. Peter's Church, Chelsea, in New York City -- the parish that is sponsoring her ordination to the priesthood.
The Episcopal Church in the United States has ordained women since 1976. There are now more than 1,400 women ordained to the diaconate and the priesthood, and on February 11, the Rev. Barbara C. Harris will be consecrated Bishop Suffragan in Massachusetts, becoming the first woman bishop in the Episcopal Church in the United States -- and in the worldwide Anglican Communion. Until now, Long Island has been one of the few dioceses not ordaining women to the priesthood. However, Long Island's diocesan, the Rt. Rev. Robert C. Witcher, announced at the diocesan convention in November that a change in ordination policy would be forthcoming; that he would turn supervision of the diocesan ordination process over to Walker, his coadjutor.
On January 25, Walker announced his plan to ordain to the priesthood the three women deacons who had been approved for ordination by the standing committee of the diocese.