What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Florence Li Tim-Oi – Celebrating 70 years since her ordination

    I’m just off to celebrate a Eucharist because it is a Feast Day – the Conversion of St Paul. The standard, if rather weak, in-joke is that one is going to pray for the Conversion of St Paul rather than simply remember the Conversion of St Paul – not least because Paul had things to say that have not been terribly helpful to a modern world where women and men are equal.

    As I celebrate the feast today I’m going to be remembering with thanksgiving this woman: The Rev Florence Li Tim-Oi and celebrating 70 years since her ordination.

    Florence Li Tim-Oi

    She was the first woman to be made a priest in the Anglican Communion and today is 70 years since it happened. It happened in wartime when there were no men around and it happened secretly and without the permission of synods and decision-making bodies simply, I suspect because they couldn’t meet at the time.

    The most extraordinary thing about Mother Florence is that once the war was over, she gave up her license to act as a priest (but not her orders) until such time as her church accepted the principle that women and men could equally be regarded as priests. In her part of the world, that meant waiting until 1971.

    I can’t imagine what it was like to wait so many years to be treated as an equal.

    No, wait a minute.

    I can.

    , ,

14 responses to “Newman. Pope. Feast Day.”

  1. David | Dah•veed Avatar
    David | Dah•veed

    Well, el Papa, gave us the Ratsfinger again. Twice in one trip.

    http://mundabor.wordpress.com/2010/09/20/saucy-pope-wears-leo-xiiis-stole-in-westminster-abbey/

    That has to be a record! Twice in four days.

    Kelvin, do the RCs lump everyone in the Encyclical? I ask because your orders are not really English orders are they?

    Reply
  2. Kelvin Avatar
    Kelvin

    Thanks David | Dah•veed – I think that all Anglicans are lumped together. I am indeed not in English orders.

    Its worth reading Apostolicae Curae all the same. Much of the argument focuses on the actual form of the Anglican ordinal at the time.

    Reply
  3. ryan Avatar
    ryan

    David | Dah•veed,
    In fairness to Benedict, it was a very nice stole. One wonders if he has two millenia of papal vestments to chose from – The Vatican must have the Mother of all Dressing Up Cupboards! 🙂

    Reply

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