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OPINION: Two new appointments that challenge assumptions
By COLLEEN O'REILLY
April 17, 2008
*Dr Colleen O'Reilly is the vicar of St George's Malvern and a canon of St Paul's cathedral in Melbourne Diocese.
WHAT a week we've just had in Australia.
Two announcements have changed the face of public life yet again.
First we heard the news that Perth will have Australia's first Anglican bishop who is a woman.
Then, a few days later the Prime Minister appointed the first woman to hold office as Governor-Genera
Now Australian women can achieve anything, we were told. Personally, I am delighted by these developments.
I am glad to live in times when women are able to take up all sorts of work and positions previously not open to us. I appreciate that my participation in public life follows pioneering efforts by other women who often faced greater odds than I have.
I can never vote without recalling the suffragettes who campaigned long and hard to ensure women had the right to vote.
When I jump into my car to drive wherever I choose I often spare a thought for women in cultures where such freedom is forbidden.
Sometimes I travel overseas on my own and pass through airports where it seems the local women only travel in family groups and there's always at least one man among them.
Despite the usual childhood dreams of living like a princess I am deeply glad to live the life I have now and to be a woman in these times!
Many people, men as well as women, will be deeply affected by having a bishop who is female.
It seems that the symbolism of women, especially in the sanctuary, runs deep somewhere beyond conscious reach.
The first woman priest I ever saw was Margaret Marsh. She came from a place of almost mythical advancement - New Zealand - where women were first ordained in 1977.
So, I went to hear Margaret preach in St James' King Street in Sydney.
There was never any hope of her presiding at the Eucharist that day. She was given permission to preach as if she were a minister from another church.
Later she did preside, around my coffee table. Not being church property my laywoman's front room was beyond the reach of canon law.
That morning, in one of Sydney's oldest parish churches I watched as the Revd Margaret Marsh, vested as a priest walked in procession to the sanctuary.
It was exciting; it was amazing; but suddenly my eyes were full of tears; tears not only of joy but of grief. For the first time in all the years of continuous church going since I was baptised at six weeks, went to Sunday school at three, and watched the processions of men week by week, I knew without a doubt what negative and false notions those processions had taught me about myself.
As I watched my first ordained woman it suddenly came to me that it really is a fine thing to be a woman.
I discovered that being a woman really does have something to do with God after all.
So, I've booked my flights to Perth and will be there when this new thing happens in the Australian Church.
I first imagined the possibility in 1974 when a few women friends and I started a group in Sydney to lobby for the ordination of women.
We were na<ve and unskilled in the ways of synods but we quickly learnt and grew enormously as people along the way.
We took a place in the life of our Church in ways unimaginable to the clergy who had baptised us as children or asked us to be Sunday school teachers!
Along the way we grew in faith and shed the false innocence of not taking responsibility for the life and work of the parishes and dioceses to which we belonged.
A woman Governor- General who represents a woman monarch seems beyond opposing, no matter what view you take about Australia becoming a republic.
It will be fascinating to watch how this symbolism works in the national psyche.
Young women these days expect their education to lead to the widest possible choice of work.
Of course, juggling marriage, family and work is not easy for younger women or for their men who want more time for life outside the demands and rewards of employment.
A great deal of the remedy lies with employers and perhaps most importantly with politicians who need to wake up to how hostile 'the economy' actually is to personal relationships.
Will Bp Kaye and G-G Quentin change us? Not as much as we might dream, nor perhaps as we need, but surely these two women will challenge assumptions about women and our capacities and offer prominent role models for a new generation learning how to relate as male and female.
After all, negotiating that God given reality is about as basic as life gets.
Learning to live the reality of equality between women and men which Christ restores is still an exciting challenge.
*Dr Colleen O'Reilly is the vicar of St George's Malvern and a canon of St Paul's cathedral in Melbourne Diocese.