Woman Priest

The Church of England got a walloping surprise last week. From China, by way of New Zealand's missionary magazine the Reaper, came news that Hong Kong's Bishop Ronald Owen Hall (currently stationed in Kunming) had ordained the first woman priest in the Church's history.

The new priest, reported the Reaper, is Lei Tim-oi, 30, a onetime deaconess.*

A graduate of Canton's Union Theological College, she had been attached to Kowloon's Anglican Church, whose congregation is composed mainly of educated, professional Chinese. After the Japanese captured Kowloon, no Anglican priest could visit the parish to administer the sacraments. Deaconess Lei reportedly escaped through the Japanese lines, reached Bishop Hall. Defying all canon and precedent, he ordained her, sent her back to Kowloon as its priest.

Despite the shock to many a High Churchman, London's Church Times took a relatively calm view. "The question," it observed, "whether women are capable of receiving holy orders presents a complicated theological problem to which no easy answer can be given. Without doubt the matter will be brought up for consideration at the next Lambeth Conference, and equally without doubt the Conference will declare that this act was eminently well-pleasing to God and must never be repeated."

* An Anglican (or Episcopalian) deaconess is not a female deacon. She may not read Morning or Evening Prayer, or preach, which a deacon can do. Like a lay sister, she wears a habit, assists the parish priest in educational and social-service work.

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