Impressions of a Woman Priest

by Joyce M.Bennett

from Women Priests? Yes - Now! pp. 88-96, ed. by Canon Harold Wilson, Denham House Press, 1975.
Republished on our website with the necessary permissions.

The Reverend Joyce M.Bennett worked in the Diocese of Hong Kong and was ordained priest on Advent Sunday 1970.

That people consider what a woman has to say about being a priest should be a matter of interest never ceases to amaze me. How many male priests are asked two-and-a-half years after their ordination what this sacrament of ordination has meant to them? I could wish that alongside these enquiries of the women ordained in Hong Kong in 1971 and 1973 could also come similar questioning of the men ordained in middle life in England and elsewhere, for there is certainly an increasing number of such men. Certainly in Hong Kong it would be true to say that the women priests are well accepted and we do not see their ordination to be as big an issue as the recent action in the Protestant Episcopal Church of the U.S.A. or the statements by some contestants in England would suggest it might be. The ordination in Hong Kong was canonically in order and approved by the overwhelming majority of the Chinese branch of the Anglican Communion in the Diocese of Hong Kong and Macao. What more is there to say ? Our Chinese friends smile indulgently at the gasps of joy and delight of our overseas visitors who have unexpectedly found themselves at the clergy celebration to be receiving Communion from the hands of a woman priest who has just consecrated the elements. Such comments and their ensuing questions are unnecessary in the eyes of the Hong Kong Anglicans.

Consider the meaning of this sacrament that we receive when we take the bread and wine. The Lord is present and surely the priest who conducts the service and consecrates the elements should efface self and strive only to enable the communicants to draw near and receive into their hearts their Lord and Saviour. I do not honestly believe that to the vast majority of our Chinese Church members it is a matter of relevance, as they worship in a service of Holy Communion, whether the priest is a man or woman. I am not thereby claiming they will not have their own personal preferences among the clergy of the Diocese, but I do hold that they treat the women priests completely as they treat their men counterparts.

What then has it meant to me to be ordained priest? Undoubtedly there is the great joy of being able to celebrate the Holy Mysteries and to enable others to worship and receive more frequently the life-giving food which we bless and break and the cup which we bless and share with all those willing to be known as of the company of Christ. To be a priest means that we can not only preach the Gospel by word, but also proclaim it by deed. When we say that Christ loves and forgives, we must show this by action; when we can share the Body and Blood of Christ with the ones who are forgiven and who know that we too have received their forgiveness, we are witnessing to the non-Christian world around us that the God whom we worship is indeed the God of love and the God of forgiveness.

Perhaps some may wonder how this is practical in my own particular sphere of work, which is a large Girls' Secondary School. But I know that Pauline Shek, my School Chaplain and Assistant to me in this vast parish of the school, would join me in declaring the importance of our work in the school. She was made Deacon in November 1971 when I was priested and she was ordained priest two years later in 1973 after serving the two years as a Deacon required in the Diocese of Hong Kong and Macao for honorary clergy. She remarked to me last year how meaningful she found her ministry in the school and how large our parish was, with 1,150 girls and over 60 on the staff. We find, too, that we reach out through them to their families and friends, so that our parish is by no means restricted to emotionally immature teenagers.

Before my ordination, I certainly never experienced having a male member of the staff come to my office and, kneeling down on the floor, beseech me to pray for his little girl, lying in hospital dangerously scalded by boiling soup. And that man is not yet baptised! The non-Christian Chinese (or shall we say the non-baptised Chinese?) have a very real respect for the ordained priest in Hong Kong. And I have found that my ordination as priest has enabled me more fully to minister to the whole body of staff and students.

Our weekly communion services have brought together into a wide fellowship of prayer the Christians from many different denominations as well as the non-Christian seekers. Since my ordination, both Roman Catholic and extreme Evangelical Protestants, who had not previously received Communion at the occasional pro-terminal communion services, have now done so in the weekly service. Barriers are being broken down. Our weekly communion service is after lunch on Wednesdays and held in the midst of the busyness of staff and students alike. But to this service come a goodly company including many non-Christians; we must not forget that about 80 per cent of the girls and 30 per cent of the staff are non-Christian. They are searching for meaning in their lives and they are looking for help; they need the love and caring of our Lord to be found among the committed Christians of the school. Every week there are unbaptised or unconfirmed students and sometimes staff who come forward with the communicants to receive the priest's blessing in the name of our heavenly Father. In the last two years a good number of those who came up for a blessing in the past have now committed themselves fully in baptism to their Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. And among them have been staff members as well as students.

It is relatively easy to speak in these terms of the outward opportunities that have come in my ministry. Undoubtedly these have also been accompanied by considerable inward satisfaction. There are few girls' schools which have the privilege of having a priest as the Principal and Headmistress. We have seen the school greatly blessed during these last two years. A colleague on the staff, who was previously with me on the staff of another of our Anglican schools, was expressing recently her great joy at serving at St. Catherine's. I know she would join me in attributing this inward happiness in overcoming innumerable conflicts and times of testing to the grace bestowed on us by the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is impossible to relate here the details of many of these occasions; they belong to the secrecy of confessional and the confidences given to the pastor in the capacity of spiritual and moral counsellor.

I have been working in Hong Kong since 1949 as a C.M.S. missionary and as a Deacon in the Chung Hwa Sheng Kung Hui (Chinese Anglican Church) since 1962, but I know that since my ordination to the priesthood I have been able to help others at a deeper level and with a more effective ministry. There is a mystery here and it belongs to the mystery bound up with the grace of Orders, a grace which most surely exists. Spiritual strength that one did not know one possessed was shared as the need arose.

This is no claim to perfection in the task of pastoral counselling, but I am sure the sevenfold gifts of the Spirit are indeed poured out on the recipient through the laying on of hands by the Bishop in ordination. It is important, too, to note that those gifts are given to be used. The Church rightly does not ordain unless the priest has a specific sphere of work to enter. At ordination we are commissioned to be faithful dispensers “of the Word of God and of His holy sacraments”. There should be no question of the ordained minister sitting back in the glow of Holy Orders. The priest is one who serves and shares his gifts.

Both of us working at St. Catharine's are also working in parishes as well. The Rev. Jane Hwang, Vicar of Holy Trinity, has been also very involved with a vast Primary School and Evangelistic Mission centre in one of the new Resettlement Estates. No longer Headmistress of that Primary School, she still carries considerable responsibility in the Kindly Light Church, as the Centre is now called. I have served at St. Barnabas' Church in Kwun Tong since it was first built in 1965 (as an assistant to the Vicar). Since I was priested I continue to preach once a month regularly, but now I also celebrate Holy Communion as occasion demands. Naturally much of the Parish work is not possible for me as I am so heavily involved in school work and my time is limited. However I have found that honorary priests, such as I, provide another form of outreach for the busy parish priest. Our students from school are participating more and more in the church life and others whom I know have turned to me for help as a priest of the Church.

I think particularly of one dear friend, who many years before had been asked by some friends of ours to go for a walk with me to discuss her committal to Christ in baptism. They asked me to do this as I had then recently been made Deacon. She already admired Jesus as a teacher, but hesitated to join the Church, believing herself to be unworthy of such a Master. About a year after my ordination as a priest, these same friends of mine telephoned me to tell me that our friend was dying of cancer and could I go and again broach the subject of baptism that they too had raised with her once before. I went across to the Queen Mary Hospital and found her in a side room reserved for those seriously ill and with little hope of recovery. She was alone, and happy to answer my query as regards baptism in the knowledge that Jesus alone could help her in that hour. Her husband belongs to the Church of Christ in China, so I suggested they called in his minister, or, if she preferred, one of the Anglican clergy she knew. But no, she replied that she would like me to baptise her. And so I did, in the presence of many of our friends and her family, some of whom were not Christian. Her room was specially prepared and decorated by the Irish sister in charge of the ward, who, though a Roman Catholic, was delighted to join us in the simple service. I shall never forget the light in the eyes of her husband, a devout Christian, when he came to thank me for what I had done to help his wife reach the point of decision. There is joy indeed in the kingdom of heaven when one wayward lamb is brought into the fold.

You will notice that I have twice mentioned the response of Roman Catholic laity to me as an ordained Anglican priest. Before our ordination there were one or two priests in our diocese who were hesitant to support the ordination of women to the priesthood for fear of the repercussions this action might have on the relations between our Church and the Roman Catholics. For this reason, they spoke at the Synod against the motion for the ordination of women to the priesthood. This view was particularly a matter of concern for the priest who is working in the Portuguese colony of Macao, where the Roman Catholic Church naturally predominates. However the attitudes of these two Anglican priests have changed since they found that our fellowship with our Roman Catholic brethren is as cordial as before. I have been grateful for the support and encouragement of the Roman priests and nuns in the neighbourhood of my school. Two groups of Roman Catholic sisters (from America and from Canada) invited me on separate occasions to join them for their evening meal, so that I could share my experience with them. And one asked me particularly to say how long I thought it would take for the Romans to come to the point of ordaining women as priests.

These friendly gestures might be thought to be too personal to signify the attitude of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong. However I have found real friendship and concern from their clergy, and at ecumenical services both the late Bishop Francis Hsu and the present Bishop have shown a warmth of Christian fellowship. The nearby Roman priest in Kwun Tong has had me preach at Mass in his church, and on the World Day of Prayer in 1973 I was the preacher in the Roman Catholic Church of St. Joseph's. It might be said a laywoman could equally well have preached at that service. True, but I would like to note that many of the participants and congregation—both Roman and non-Roman—were clearly delighted that they had been able to invite one of the Anglican women priests as their preacher.

At that service I had preached in both Chinese and English. Most of my church work has, however, been in the medium of Cantonese, so I should perhaps mention that there are only three English language parishes in the Diocese of Hong Kong and Macao and I was ordained for work in the Chinese speaking part of the diocese. I have however been invited to “preach the Word of God” at both St. Andrew's and Christ Church (the two nearest English-speaking Churches) and also in two of the English-language Churches which serve the forces. I have also celebrated Holy Communion at Christ Church when the Vicar was on holiday. On all these occasions the parishioners and worshippers have been most warm in their welcome and grateful to me.

In this context I am wondering what my status will be in England when I retire from my work in Hong Kong. When the Archbishop of Canterbury visited Hong Kong in the spring of 1973, he, too, was most cordial to the Rev. Jane Hwang and myself. Before he left the colony at the aerodrome I raised the question with him of how long it would be before there would be women priests in England. Naturally I did not expect a clear-cut answer, but I wished to raise the question of my position. I mentioned to him that in March 1972 I was unexpectedly in England as my mother had suffered a serious car accident, and on Good Friday after the three-hour service I was invited (by both the Vicar and his assistant, priest in charge of a daughter church) to celebrate in their churches on Easter Sunday. I declined as I knew that I had received no licence to celebrate in any place of public worship in England. But after my mother's discharge from hospital, having experienced a miraculous recovery, we all felt it to be right and proper to hold a private celebration at home to which we invited close relatives and a friend who was with one of them at the time. The service was full of meaning and a great delight and joy to all, a true celebration of thanksgiving to our Lord. Dr. Ramsey appreciated my motives in holding this service and assured me that my action had been quite proper. I am sure that pastorally that celebration was a blessing and inspiration to all who shared in it.

In conclusion I should like to reiterate what the Rev. Jane Hwang has so often said when the ordination of women has been under discussion. For the Church not to treat women equally with men provides a poor witness to the twentieth century non-Christian society, whether it is the Communist society of China or the secular society of the West. I am thankful that God called me to work in Hong Kong where there has been a positive response to the leading of the Holy Spirit and where the ordination of women priests took place in an atmosphere of joy and thanksgiving. I am sure that many outside the Church in Hong Kong were also pleased that Hong Kong led the world in honouring women as Christians have always claimed to do.

The twentieth-century observer is extremely critical of all hypocrisy and any tinge of Pharisaism to be found in the Church. He is ever ready to attack the Church for any inconsistency between the teaching of Jesus and the deeds of those who claim to be His followers. To be an Anglican woman priest means that you can face these critics with a cheerful demeanour and surprise them out of their pre-conceived ideas.

Perhaps another reason for the easier acceptance of the women priests by the Hong Kong Chinese Christians is that so many of these Christians come from a non-Christian environment, entering the Church as mature adults. Jane Hwang would also add with a smile that we have been so readily accepted by our brother clergy, because they are so generous and so open-hearted. Surely, there is Christian love and charity!

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