BOOK OF THE DAY: MAVIS ARNOLDreviews Embracing Women: Making History in the Church of Irelandby Ginnie Kennerley
GINNIE KENNERLEY was one of the first women to be ordained in the Church of Ireland. She was supported by dedicated campaigners Daphne Wormell, Bishop John Neill and the select committee on women's ordination which came into being in 1988.
It is 30 years since the matter was first debated at the Church of Ireland General Synod in 1976, where Kennerley heard Catherine McGuinness speak on the motion "That this House finds no theological objection to the ordination of women to priesthood."
And it is now nearly 20 years since the first women priests were ordained in 1990, and a resolution was passed by Archbishop Buchanan's decision to promote women's ordination at the General Synod eight years later.
Her arrival at her first church in Bray, Co Wicklow, was not reassuring: a charming aristocratic lady of a certain age was waiting for her in the church's ample porch.
"'I wanted to be the first to welcome you to the parish','" she said. "'And I also wanted to explain that while I am delighted at your arrival here as a deacon, I shan't be able to accept your ministry as a priest, if that comes about . . . but don't worry and please don't take it personally'."
Kennerley writes: "A couple of elderly professional gentlemen had been sure they couldn't relate to a woman in holy orders; but they changed their minds after my first service, when the rector was away. 'Well, said a former colleague of my husband's, 'you've converted Charles and Albert'."
They turned out to be Ginnie Kennerley's strongest supporters.
She missed the warm, womb-like setting of her first church home at Kill o' the Grange. Her job was to encourage people to come to worship in a setting she would not have chosen for herself. One entrenched opponent changed her will to direct that no woman was to minister at her funeral.
Next she started the Monday Club, responding to spontaneous demands from three different women about their spiritual difficulties: difficulty of faith, when love and hope seem absent; difficulty of prayer without group support; and difficulty in making their own decisions in the face of family pressures.
In this book, Kennerley looks back on that group as the most stimulating she had ever experienced.
At the General Synod of 1989, Canon Jim Hartin, principal of the Theological College, had been in favour of the ordination of women for many years. He had supervised the three-year training period of the first woman ordin and, Katherine Poulton.
John Neill concluded the proceedings: "Could it be that God who sent forth his Son born of a woman might once more use womankind to present his Son to a sadly broken world?"
The Rev Donald Caird suggested that a precipitate vote in favour of such a momentous departure from tradition would liken the assembly to a herd of lemmings, hurling themselves from a cliff top in a leap of suicidal proportions.
Kennerley writes: "'Don't be too triumphant', Archdeacon Gordon Linney hissed at me as I passed him. 'Tell them, it's just part of a process.'"
An early crisis in her life came with the death of her husband from cancer in both lungs.
Peter, whose support from the beginning had been vital to her, was brave to the end.
The episode is movingly told, including her comment to Billy Gibbons, a fellow minister in the church, who helped her so much when Peter was admitted to hospital.
"As soon as I get through all this, I just want to do what you do for other people."
She added: "In that sentence, lay the core of my vocation."
• Embracing Women: Making History in the Church of Irelandby Ginnie Kennerley The Columba Press Pp 180. €12.99
• Mavis Arnold is a practising psychotherapist and the joint author, with Heather Lasky, of Children of the Poor Clares, an account of the fire in St Joseph's orphanage in Cavan town in 1943