Conversion to Catholicism UNA KROLL
Power and perversity O
After a lifetime of spiritual searching, which included 10 years as an Anglican priest, one of the best-known campaigners for women’s ordination shocked family and friends by giving up her ministry to become a Catholic. For the first time she explains why she made that choice
n 11 January, 1997, I was ordained a priest in the Church in Wales by the Bishop of Monmouth. This event had followed more than 100
years of effort by generations of ordained and lay Anglicans who had petitioned the Anglican Communion to test the vocations of women who felt called to the historic ordained min- istries of the Anglican Communion. My own involvement in this petition had
started in 1944 at the age of 19 when I began to feel called to priesthood myself. That day in January 1997 was a day of great joy for me although I was already past the retirement age for paid ministry in the Church in Wales. Between 1944 and 1997 I had previously worked as an Anglican medical missionary, married family doctor and deaconess (a lay order) in England, a widowed mother of four children, and as a member of a small con- templative community. After discovering that I was not called to enclosure, in 1993 I made public vows of celibacy, simplicity of lifestyle, and obedience to a Rule, supervised by my Anglican bishop.
THE TABLET POEM Family Trees
“The leaves of a tree delight us more than the roots” –Tolstoy
Desire under the elms is the story, but the fens swallow the vast sky as sunsets swallow the horizon, crows wreak havoc with the harvest.
I am writing these letters to you, and imagine you reading them by a lamplight borrowed from Prufrock, in a chair from The Family Reunion.
Imagining is the only way I survive, writing letters for you to refuse. In truth, you will not read them. They are not words you could use.
I wish I had known you better: not to angle the lamp differently, or suggest another companion; but to catch the way the leaves fall. William Bedford
8 | THE TABLET | 24 September 2011
I worked as an assistant priest in parishes in Wales and England. Then, just before Advent 2008, I became a Roman Catholic, not on impulse, but after at least five years of trying to discern God’s will for the remaining years of my life.
Why would someone, with that long history, that long endeavour to serve God in her beloved Anglican Communion, have done such a thing? I wasn’t the only one who was questioning my action. Relatives, friends and colleagues also asked that question. My Anglican bishop, who held me to account for my public vows, tried to persuade me not to do such an odd thing. Some of my priest friends, especially those who were very supportive of Anglican women priests, were aghast at my apparent betrayal of all that I had previously affirmed through witness. My family of four children and 10 grandchildren thought I was eccentric – not mad, just eccen- tric. My parish priest, unable to contain his sur-
prise, exclaimed: “But why are you joining a Church whose Pope and Vatican leaders are resolutely opposed to women priests?” My reply was: “I’m sorry, but I have to.” I loved working as an Anglican priest. I was
a convinced and active ecumenist. True, I had disagreed with many in the Anglican Communion on some issues, including liter- alist interpretations of biblical texts, certain emphases on “substitution” theories about the atonement, the ordination of women priests, the goodness of stable homosexual partnerships and latterly the rights of Anglican clergy to enter into civil partnerships. Yet I had lived happily as an Anglican with a con- scientious right to disagreement in certain matters of theological opinion other than those in our declared Creeds and Anglican Instruments of Unity. This was a normative stance in Anglicanism at the time and I relied on our joint unity in Christ through baptism. My words to my vicar – “Sorry, but I have to” – were said when I had just celebrated my last Eucharist in the parish. I had already asked my Anglican diocesan bishop to remove me from the list of retired priests who had permission to officiate in his diocese. I did not believe that Anglican Orders were invalid. My reasons for saying “I have to” were, and are, complex. My work with Catholics throughout my adult life on behalf of disad- vantaged women in our world had brought
Una Kroll after celebrating her first Eucharist at St Mary’s Parish Church, Monmouth, on 12 January 1997. Photo: Church Times
me into contact with many members of that faith whom I had known since pre-Vatican II times. Like them, I was excited by some of the changes that had come about as a result of the perusal of Vatican II documents. I had studied these in depth. I had absorbed Catholic spirituality through living a life in which my beliefs about the Trinity, Christology and the sacraments were identical to those of the Catholic Church. For many years I had longed for reunion and I had been encouraged by some of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission documents that had been pub- lished. I welcomed the ecumenical and inter-faith theological discussions that fol- lowed Vatican II. I loved hearing Mass in my native language while the symbolic actions of the Mass kept me rooted in reality, even when it was celebrated in another language. I valued the attempts of many Catholic bishops and priests to include the laity in the- ological education. I welcomed the lay apostolate, because that was one of the strengths of the Anglican Communion that had not previously found expression in pre- Vatican II Catholicism, other than through the voicing of opinions by affluent and influ- ential chosen Catholic laymen. I believed, and still believe, that lay people from all parts of our society could, and should, participate in
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