A year ago the Standing Commission on Ministry Development took a vote to decide among direct ordination, sequential ordination, or local option, as part of the package of new Title III canons on ministry. Joyce Hardy, archdeacon of Arkansas, urged the fi rst, saying, “Let’s have the courage of our convictions.” So the commission adopted direct ordination as its proposal to go before General Convention. When Convention met in July, however, the legislative ministry committee decided to ask the bishops to indicate their choice before the whole canonical packet went to the fl oor in a tumble of discontent. (Ministry canons always go fi rst to the House of Bishops.) Faced with a resolution asking convention to approve direct ordination, the bishops chatted at their tables for a few minutes and had a brief, desultory debate in which Jim Kelsey of Northern Michigan stated the main case for direct ordination. The voice vote was overwhelming opposed.
The ministry committee then crafted a revised canon on ordination to the priesthood, requiring the transitional diaconate, and sent the whole bunch of canons to the bishops, who loaded on 12 amendments and passed the canons unanimously. A day later, the last day of Convention, the House of Deputies concurred, despite grumbles about not having had a chance to study the heavily revised text.
Proposals for direct ordination will continue to come before Convention, as they have for the last two decades. Recent scholarly studies have removed much of the historical and theological arguments in favor of sequential ordination. John St. H. Gibaut, in two recent books, says the church should adopt either a fi ve-year transitional diaconate or do away with it. (See his Sequential or Direct ordination” A return to the Sources, Joint Liturgical Studies 55, The Alcuin Club and The Group for Renewal of Worship, 2003.) What won’t go away so easily is the emotional attachment many priests and bishops have to their brief experience as deacons, and the consequent belief that the diaconate is the fundamental ministry of the church.