Long Island Ordains First Women to Priesthood
Episcopal News Service. February 23, 1989 [89034]
GARDEN CITY, N.Y. (DPS, Feb. 23) -- On Saturday, February 18, the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island gained its first three women priests. In the Cathedral of the Incarnation, filled with friends and supporters, Bishop Coadjutor Orris G. Walker, Jr., ordained Ann Elliott Lyndall, Noreen O'Connor Mooney, and Janet Fulton Bragg Campbell. Participants in the ceremony spoke of the service as historic, as a sign that the Church now has a whole priesthood, as a step in growth and change for the new priests themselves and for all the members of the Church. "It moves Long Island into the mainstream," was one comment hear at the service.
Until February 18, Long Island was one of the few remaining dioceses in the Episcopal Church in the United States that had not ordained women priests. The event in Garden City seemed especially significant, coming just one week after the consecration of the first woman bishop in the Episcopal Church, Bishop Barbara C. Harris of Massachusetts.
In the sermon, the Rev. Linda Stroheimer of Lehigh University addressed new and old elements in the Garden City ordination: although the ordination of women represented a new thing in the life of the Church in Long Island, Stroheimer said, ordination was an old thread in the life of the Christian. She said that each new priest would be transformed, made a priest forever, and that in the act of ordination all of the people of the Church would change and grow.
There was strong participation by the congregation throughout the ceremony. When Walker asked the people, "Is it your will that Anne, Noreen, and Janet be ordained priests?" their response, "It is!" reverberated from the great vaulted ceiling of the cathedral. When, at the prayer of consecration, the bishop laid his hands on the women, a cloud of priests surrounded them, those in front laying their hands on each ordinand, those in the rear laying their hands on priests in front of them to form a chain.
The new priests were all ordained deacons in the Diocese of Long Island and were supported by parishes in the area. [See DPS 89021.]
Lyndall, a 1978 graduate of George W. Mercer, Jr., School of Theology in Garden City, was ordained to the diaconate by Diocesan Bishop Robert C. Witcher in 1979. She has been a staff chaplain in The Hospital Chaplaincy of New York City since 1981, and has served as a deacon assistant at Holy Trinity Church, Hicksville, New York, her sponsoring parish.
Mooney, a 1983 graduate of General Theological Seminary, was ordained deacon by Bishop Witcher in 1983. Since then, she has served in a number of ministries in the diocese, including assistant rector of All Saints Church, Great Neck, New York, her sponsoring parish.
Campbell, a 1988 graduate of General Theological Seminary, was ordained deacon in 1988 by Bishop Witcher. She was initially sponsored for Holy Orders by St. Paul's Church, Clinton Street, Brooklyn. St. Peter's Church, Chelsea, where she is now assistant vicar, sponsored her ordination to the priesthood.
Lyndall waited more than nine years and Mooney more than five years for ordination to the priesthood. The Episcopal Church has ordained women priests since 1976, and there are now more than a thousand carrying out their ministries. Change was announced on Long Island at the diocese's 1988 Diocesan Convention. Witcher, the diocesan bishop, had opposed the ordination of women to the priesthood on theological grounds, but told convention delegates that he would no longer stand in the way of women moving on to the priesthood in his diocese; he announced his intention to turn over all matters concerning ordination to his coadjutor, Walker. [See DPS 88253.] Before he was elected in 1987, Walker had made it clear that he favored the ordination of women, and a poll of the diocese showed that a majority of Long Island Episcopalians favored this view, too.
After the ordination, Lyndall said that she looked forward to an excellent relationship with Witcher, to being treated with "affection, courtesy, and respect, as he always has."
The new priests celebrated their first Eucharists on Sunday, January 19: Lyndall at Holy Trinity, Hicksville; Mooney at St. James, Brookhaven; and Campbell at St. Peter's, Chelsea.
Special greetings were sent to Mooney and her sister priests by the Rev. Florence Li Tim Oi, the first woman ever ordained to the priesthood in the worldwide Anglican Communion. She was ordained in wartime China in 1944 to minister to Anglicans in Japanese-held territory.