[Magdalen] RIP Betty Bone Schiess+

[Lynn Ronkainen]

From today’s Washington Post -Betty Bone Schiess
Betty Bone Schiess was one of the first women ordained as an Episcopal priest. Her 1974 ordination was, in the legal language of the church at the time, “irregular.” The House of Bishops, in an emergency meeting at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, declared the ordination invalid.

The church changed its position on women’s ordination two years later. Schiess was reordained and her sex discrimination lawsuit was dropped. During her service, she was a chaplain at Syracuse University and Cornell University and as rector of a church in northeast New York.

By 1985, more than 600 women were Episcopal priests. Today, more than 40 percent of Episcopal priests are women. Schiess was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1994. She died in Syracuse, N.Y., at 94.



I had just married and moved to Syracuse when the first group of women were “irregularly” ordained. Betty was the wife of a prominent surgeon (IIRC) in Syracuse. After their vows were recognized she often filled in at St Luke’s, our parish. 

Lynn