Back to the Beginning

by Elizabeth S. Masquelette

Put on your time travel helmet and flight goggles. We are going to take a trip back in time to the year 1925. We will land on East Bluff Street in Fort Worth, Texas. It is summer, mid-July, early in the morning. Later in the day, men would be coming home for lunch, and everyone who could, resting until about 5:00 p.m. The Daggett/Jennings family still maintained the large house on the corner, home to widows, spinsters, and a number of nieces and nephews.

Elizabeth Daggett Simmons had come home for advice from her elders. She had been married for almost seven years and had no child. She was getting desperate. A cousin suggested a solution she had heard from a neighbor: pray in different churches for nine days and God will grant your request. For nine days, Liz rode the streetcars all over Fort Worth, visiting all sorts of churches, always with the same prayer. "Dear God, give me a child, and I will give him back to you for the mission field." Today we might call this the Samuel ploy and shake our heads in amusement.

In due course, a baby girl was born, and Liz thought the whole promise was canceled. For forty-five years, she told no one what she had done, most especially her daughter, me! I remember the day she told me as one of those eureka! aha! experiences. My Presbyterian mother and I were attending a retreat at the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Houston, listening to a woman from Church of Our Savior in Washington, D.C., talk about its mission to people living in poverty and hopelessness in the center of that city. In one of the coffee breaks, when Mother and I were sitting on the stone steps of the church, she turned to me and said there was something she should tell me. It made perfect sense to me.

Fast forward to 1973. The General Convention of the Episcopal Church was meeting in Louisville where the hot topic was the ordination of women to the priesthood. My husband Philip was a Deputy from this diocese and I was there in my usual role as helper/camp follower. The resolution passed in the House of Bishops, but failed by a handful of votes in the House of Deputies. The Texas delegation was divided, so had voted "no." That evening Bishop Richardson invited all of us to cocktails in his rooms and, in a teasing way, suggested to Philip that I might like to be a priest. I remember very well saying that I didn't think that was a possibility!

By the spring of 1974, though, I was enrolled in the Theological Studies Degree program at the University of St. Thomas. After much encouragement from my long-time friend Helen Havens, I signed up for three courses. I loved it! (I discovered later that my enrollment as a Protestant female had made it possible for the university to receive federal funds for their science department.) The next semester, I took five courses and then seven each term thereafter. In December 1976, I graduated, and began my own nine days' search for a job as an Adult Christian Education Director. My search eventually took me to Christ Church and to the office of Bishop Richardson. My old friend the Rev. Jim Dannelley had suggested that since several priests had said what they really needed were young men, deacons, to help with services, maybe Bishop Richardson would help me with that idea.

I was ushered into the Episcopal presence and given a cup of coffee. After hearing my story, Bishop Richardson looked off into space for a long time and then said this: "Well now, I don't need any woman deacons, but I do need a respectable woman in a stable marriage to be a priest." He sent me home to ask Philip what he thought, and told me to come back with my answer the next week. My beloved laughed and said he had wondered how long it would take me to figure out what it was I was supposed to do.

It was arranged for me to meet with the vestry of St. Francis Church by my friend Helen Havens, who was serving on the staff there at that time (Helen had been ordained deacon in April 1976, and then priest on April 29, 1977, by Bishop Trelease of the Diocese of the Rio Grande), and on April Fool's Day 1977, I became a postulant of that parish. Bishop Richardson sent me to Austin to interview with the Dean and faculty of the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest for a place in the fall class. All my credits from St. Thomas transferred, and in June of 1978, 1 graduated with a Master of Divinity degree. My classmates all had assignments. I had not heard from the one church where I had interviewed for work. As we lined up to receive our diplomas, Bishop Richardson called me aside and said he had arranged for me to serve at Epiphany in Houston. My dear husband, two of our four children, and two grandchildren attended the graduation. It was a joyful day and a new beginning indeed.

For seven months I served as the lay Director of Religious Education at the Church of the Epiphany. All my classmates from both seminaries moved on as deacons and then, by December, as priests. Somehow, my papers never got to the Standing Committee for their approval, and so, I waited. Bishop Richardson's health declined, and talk around the diocese was that he would not live to ordain me. I waited. The first week of December, I was notified that all the paper work had been done and Bishop Richardson wanted to ordain me deacon the evening of December 5, 1978. My rector, Joseph DiRaddo, organized a beautiful service with friends from St. Francis in attendance. My dear Philip, a vestryman at St. Francis, was the litanist.

The first months of 1979 flew by. Bishop Richardson's health continued to fail. The last week of May, he announced that he would ordain me priest on June 8th, God willing. He began to receive complaints from Anglo-Catholics in the diocese, with threats of a protest. We proceeded with the plans for the service. The day of my ordination, Epiphany received a bomb threat, and as a result, the ECW ladies went home, leaving the reception only partly prepared. My dear friends the Daughters of the King stepped forward, finished up the food and flowers, and continued to pray for all of us. Someone, I still don't know who, called our friends in the clergy, and twenty-three showed up to lay on hands and rejoice with me. The Rev. Bill Day arrived with a group of protesters and tried to dissuade Bishop Richardson from going on with the service. Fr. Day read from St. Paul to the Bishop and inquired if he was really going forward with this action. The Bishop, pale and thin, replied: "That's what I came out here to do!" and the congregation broke into applause. It was a high moment.

I remember little of the remainder of the evening. At the time when all the clergy put their hands on my head, I did wonder if they were going to break my neck. It seemed a good time to pray, so I began the Hail Mary and kept my eyes closed until many hands were helping me to stand.

The time has flown. True to my mother's pledge, I did indeed serve as a missionary-to the far edges of Harris County, building, with a wonderful congregation, the Church of Christ the King-and that's another story. The Rt. Rev. Maurice M. Benitez became Bishop of Texas after the death of Bishop Richardson. I continued to serve as Associate Rector at Church of the Epiphany. Late in August 1980, I received a call from Bishop Benitez's office that he wanted to see me. I wondered why. Was there something wrong? When I was seated in his office, Bishop Benitez came around from behind his desk, sat down beside me, and ordered coffee for both of us. I was very anxious, wondering if I had broken some unwritten rule, offended important parishioners, or failed to be whatever it was that I was supposed to be. We sipped our coffees and reported on the health of our spouses and children. Bishop Benitez finally said why he had called me. "Betty, I want you to go out to the Alief area and found a church there. A new subdivision is going in, to be called Mission Bend, and the Episcopal Church needs to be there." At this point, I threw my cup of coffee all over myself! The bishop called for his secretary and the two of them mopped the coffee off of me.

When I wobbled downstairs and into my car, I took out the map of Houston and discovered that the area the bishop had indicated wasn't even visible. It was under the Exxon label. My immediate thought was that I had been thrown away! I drove out Bellaire Blvd. until it became a two-lane hard-top farm road, and sat there awhile. Then I began, finally, to pray. "Listen, Lord, if you want me to build a church out here, you will have to do the work, because I haven't got a clue!" And yet, Christ the King, founded October 4, 1981, did become a truly great church, near the spot where I had parked my car that fateful afternoon.

I spent seven years as Dean of West Harris Convocation for Bishop Benitez, who had made it possible for me to have the experience of being a pastor in a church of my own. Thoughts of retirement and my own age encouraged me to think of moving to a less demanding position. With the consent and encouragement of Bishop Claude Payne, I became Associate Rector for Pastoral Care at St. Francis Church in June of 1996. The Rev. Richard Petranek, who had come from the Diocese of Dallas, was attempting to make the necessary changes for growth. I joined him in his dream and served happily under his direction until my seventy-first birthday in December 1998. On January 1, 1999, I retired from the active ministry, agreeing to serve as needed at St. Francis and neighboring churches. I continue to make talks on healing and on the spiritual life, and to share my experiences as I am invited to do so.

My story . . . Alpha and Omega . . . Beginning and End.

Betty Masquelette was the first woman ordained priest by the Bishop of Texas.