Episcopal "Outrage"

The liveliest skirmishes for women's rights these days seem to be taking place within the Episcopal Church, which limits its priesthood to men. In the latest confrontation, an Ohio church court found Oberlin's Rev. L. Peter Beebe guilty of breaking canon law by letting women with disputed ordinations celebrate Communion. As in the similar case of Washington, D.C.'s William Wendt (TIME, June 16), the court recommended that the bishop merely admonish Beebe, but it also proposed that he be suspended if he did it again. In effect the five judges backed Beebe by calling the Episcopal ban on women priests "outrageously inequitable and humiliating," and with a bizarre flourish they said that restraints on Beebe's conduct should be lifted if next year's Episcopal convention continues the ban.

Just two days after the ruling, Beebe again invited two women, Alison Cheek and Carter Heyward, to celebrate Communion, and told TIME he will continue to do so no matter what church officials decide. In Washington, Wendt's church announced that Cheek will join its staff and preside at Communion on July 27, even though the bishop there does not recognize her ordination.

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