Pioneer Priest in Today's Texas

by Catherine Nichols

Dean Pittman McGehee called me to serve as first woman priest at Christ Church Cathedral in the summer of 1985. Not only was a female priest something new at the Cathedral, but also I was a Yankee from Boston! My accent, my lack of makeup, my background-all made me different.

A few months after I began working as Assistant to the Dean, I met Bishop Benitez in the slype (one slipped through the slype). He was showing his friend, the Bishop of Dallas, around the Cathedral. He introduced me to his colleague as "the first woman canon in Texas." What a fun surprise, to learn that I was to be made a canon! Bishop Benitez and Pittman had agreed I was to be the Cathedral's Canon Pastor. So I began wearing a purple cassock, and therein lies another tale.

In 1986, in my second summer at Christ Church Cathedral, I traveled to England to attend a conference on women in the priesthood. Dioceses from all around the world who were already ordaining women sent us as support to the Movement for the Ordination of Women (MOW), a valiant group of women and men throughout the Church of England who were pressing their cause. After the conference those of us who could stay on for a few days in England were invited to do "a preachment," that is, be guest preacher at those parishes which were interested in supporting the cause. I imagined a charming little English country parish, and very much looked forward to preaching there. I was astounded to be sent to Canterbury Cathedral. Anything but little!

I spent a delightful Saturday evening with the Assistant to the Assistant to the Dean of Canterbury Cathedral (they gave me to the lowest cleric on the totem pole, I'm sure, because women priests from America were suspected of being outrageous or noisy or, at the very least, odd.) On Sunday morning he delivered me to the Cathedral, showed me around, and then took me down into the crypt where the many clergy and the men and boys' choir vested for the main service. I was allowed to dress in a lounge. (There was, of course, no women's room.) After I had donned my purple cassock, surplice, and tippet (I was not to wear a stole, for that is a priestly garment, and women were not allowed such vestments), I joined the Dean and his canons and assistants and the choir in the crypt, where they were standing in silence, preparing spiritually for worship. As I entered the room, the feeling in the great space changed: the electricity became palpable. I glanced around, and the clergy were all looking most uncomfortable. Finally one of the assistants stepped forward, motioned to my purple cassock, and said, "In England only bishops wear purple!" "Oh," I responded, understanding at once. "In America lowly canons wear purple." The electricity abated and everyone relaxed.

Being a pioneer has been exciting. It is both a huge privilege and a heavy burden: I was well aware that for some people any mistake I made or inappropriate thing I did might result in that dreadful "See, I knew we shouldn't have ordained women." But I was part of the Second Wave of ordained women. When I began my position as Assistant to the Rector at the Church of the Holy Spirit, Houston, in 1983, Helen Havens, Betty Masquelette, and Susan Buehl were already in residence in the diocese as priests, Helen as the new rector of St. Stephen's. I was the fourth clergywoman in a diocese with some 277 clergymen. A clergy conference in those early years felt like a fraternity party to which no other women had been invited. It was daunting. It was also thrilling.

I grew up in the Episcopal Church in the 1950s. My dad was my parish priest. No girls served as acolytes. Daddy celebrated the Holy Communion with his back to the congregation. The ministry of all the Baptized was not understood widely, as it is now and as it is supported by our current Book of Common Prayer. So much has changed in but a few generations of Episcopalians! As a teenager I remember saying, "I'd like to be a minister, but girls can't." It still boggles my mind that it did not occur to me to challenge the system. I simply waited until other people with vision made changes, and then I responded to God's call to serve as priest. Now I enjoy challenging patriarchy!

The boys and girls who are presently growing up at Christ Church Cathedral and here at St. Stephen's, Middlebury, Vermont, where I have been Rector for nine years, seem to think that women have always been in leadership positions. (How quickly things can become "the way we've always done it"!) Our Vermont Episcopal children think it absolutely normal that our bishop is a woman (Mary Adelia Rosamond McLeod was consecrated on All Saints' Day, 1993, the first woman to be an American diocesan bishop), and have no idea that Vermont did a Very New Thing when we elected Bishop McLeod one June day seven years ago.

A lovely Houston-Middlebury connection story: Sandy Toensing sang in the Cathedral choir while I was Canon Pastor. She was the first woman to serve as cantor for the Psalm when Clyde Holloway was the Cathedral's choirmaster. Sandy became a close friend of our family, and stayed with our children Lowell and Cara while my husband, Bob McKelvey, and I were in England for a few weeks. Lowell and Cara were crazy about Sandy, and loved the adventures they had together while we were away. Sandy finished her master's degree in voice at the Shepherd School of Music and moved to New England. She ended up in Middlebury, Vermont as music teacher in the local school. When I was called to be Rector of St. Stephen's, Middlebury, Sandy was the only person I knew in the village! Two years later Sandy, who had married, "loaned" us her newborn son, Daane, to be the Baby Jesus in our Christmas pageant. Daane's parents, Mary and Joseph, were played by Lowell and Cara McKelvey. Cara crooned a lullaby to the child of her former Houston babysitter. It was my favorite Christmas pageant ever!

Under the name of Catherine Nichols McKelvey, Catherine served as Canon Pastor at Christ ChurcCathedral, Houston, from 1985 until August of 1991.