Deaconesses in the Anglican Heritage

At Tonus Peregrinus, Vincent Uher recalls another distinctive of Anglican life from the past two centuries, the deaconess. Unlike some offices of the Anglican Church, such as the Parish Clerk and the Archdeacon, which were a heritage received and retained from its Catholic past, the office of deaconess was a restoration of an office that had passed out of church life in the early Medieval period.

Mr. Uher writes:

Many Episcopalians and Anglicans, present and former, still recall with great affection the Deaconesses in their lives. We recall some of them in their distinctive cap or distinctive cross. Some of us recall a Deaconess dressed like a nun in a voluminous black or grey habit. Today some will know them in a distinctive blue cassock with blue cincture. When the Episcopalian Church in the USA decided to ordain women to the diaconate, the Deaconesses all but disappeared. Since 2002 the Order of Deaconesses has been established canonically among the Reformed Episcopalians where the Deaconesses provide many forms of help including performing baptisms when no deacon or priest is available. Deaconesses continue to serve in other parts of the Anglican Communion. The duties of the Deaconess in the various Anglican Churches did indeed vary, but behind all interpretations was a desire for the Deaconess to be in the local church as St. Phoebe was in Sacred Scripture, an idea at the heart of the setting apart of Deaconess Elizabeth Catherine Ferard in the Church of England as the first Deaconess of that Church. Deaconess Isabella Gilmore in the Diocese of Rochester, England explored a different model for the life of the Deaconess that was very influential. And among the many Deaconesses, the first African-American Deaconess in the state of Georgia in the USA is venerated as one of sainted memory: Deaconess Anna E.B. Alexander...

Please visit his site and enjoy not only the history by the photos of notable women who dedicated their lives to the service of Christ and his followers.

Fr. Hunwicke and the parish of St. Thomas Martyr...

have apparently declared their intention to enter the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham. In Fr. Hunwicke's typically erudite and expansive prose, he writes:

Today we join in spirit the Christian people of sixth century Rome on a corporate visit to the Basilica of S Peter in Vaticano; to the church where, in the 1960s, the bones of a big and strong old man were found buried beneath a simple second century aedicula covered with Christian graffiti - some invoking S Peter. It is a church built over the Kephas, over the Petra, over the Rock.

Only a generation or so after S Peter's own martyrdom, an Eastern bishop came journeying to Rome; his name was Ignatius. He came as a pilgrim, but as a pilgrim in chains. He was being sent under guard to Rome to be made a martyr. On his way to Rome, he sent letters to the ccongregations he was passing; letters in which, time after time, he emphasised Unity. He urged them, always, to be united around their bishop. He reminded them that, in their local church, the bishop was always and essentially the centre of unity. Frankly, he says this so often that his letters can even become a trifle repetitively boring.

But, as S Ignatius approached Rome, he writes, to the Roman Church, quite a different sort of letter. It was brilliantly analysed back in the 1940s by one of our greatest Anglican Catholic theologians, Dom Gregory Dix. Dix pointed out something odd about it. In his letter to the Roman Church, S Ignatius uses a lot of the same words that he had used in his other letters to the other churches. But now he applies those words differently. If, in the earlier letters, he had used a particular word to refer to the Bishop as the centre of Unity for the Local Church, in his letter to the Roman Christians Ignatius now uses that same word to refer to ... the Roman Church. So that, if he had, earlier, called a local bishop prokathemenos in relation to his Local Church, he now calls the Roman Church prokathemene in relation to the Universal Church. And so on. In other words, in the Local Church, the Bishop is the centre and focus of Unity; in the Universal Church, Rome is the centre and focus of Unity. Dix writes: "Rome stands for ecumenical Unity ... Rome fulfills by its leadership precisely that function towards the Universal Church which the Bishop fulfills towards the Local Church".

in his post "A Final Sermon Extract: Quinquagesima.

In a second posting ("Viva! Viva Gesu!", he describes the procession to the shrine of St. Thomas and the Church Wardens laying down their staves of office (and highlights another aspect of the Anglican patrimony worth conserving in the ordinariates, to which I would add the office of parish clerk).