The Rev. Henry Winter Syle
Impediments and Grace
August 27
The Feast of
Thomas Gaulladet and Henry Winter Syle
The Anglican Communion, including the Episcopal Church, has a calendar of the Saints, just like Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. We tend to see them more as models and examples to us rather than as intercessors for us, though we do not have big theological problems with hoping that the righteous departed may pray for us. As the hymn "For all the Saints" says, "O Blest Communion, Fellowship Divine, We feebly struggle, they in glory shine; For all are one in Thee, for all are Thine."
Today is the lesser feast commemorating the work of Thomas Gaulladet and Henry Winter Syle, both priests in the Episcopal Church. Gaulladet University in Northwestern Washinton, DC, is a college for the deaf and hearing impaired. It is named after Thomas Gaulladet. Gaulladet's mother was deaf, and his father the founder of one of the first schools for the deaf in the U.S. Syle had been born to missionary parents here in China, but lost his hearing to scarlet fever at age three. Both Thomas Gaulladet and Henry Syle worked with the deaf in the mid-1800s. Syle was the first deaf person ordained priest in the traditions claiming apostolic succession in ordinations. Gallaudet, his teacher and friend, encouraged Syle to seek ordination to the priesthood. He was ordained in 1876.
There were then, as now, many conditions that under Church law legally barred ordination. The technical term for these are "canonical impediments" to entering orders. "Canon" is the Greek rule for a ruler, a standard. "Impedimentum" is the Latin word for a weight attached to the foot that prevents you from running or walking properly.
Such rules came from a desire by the Church to conform to a passage in the Holiness Code in the Book of Leviticus that describes rules for priests in the Temple of Yahweh:
16 The LORD said to Moses, 17 "Say to Aaron: 'For the generations to come none of your descendants who has a defect may come near to offer the food of his God. 18 No man who has any defect may come near: no man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed; 19 no man with a crippled foot or hand, 20 or who is hunchbacked or dwarfed, or who has any eye defect, or who has festering or running sores or damaged testicles. 21 No descendant of Aaron the priest who has any defect is to come near to present the offerings made to the LORD by fire. He has a defect; he must not come near to offer the food of his God. 22 He may eat the most holy food of his God, as well as the holy food; 23 yet because of his defect, he must not go near the curtain or approach the altar, and so desecrate my sanctuary. I am the LORD, who makes them holy. (Lev. 20:16-22)
Following such Levitical rules, canon law had forbidden the ordination of people with missing limbs, injured genitalia, and disabilities such as blindness or deafness. Deafness was still a canonical impediment to ordination in the mid-1800s. Putting forward Heny Syle for ordination sparked an intense controversy.
William Houghton writes, “Deafness was an illness, a disability, a handicap. The church had taken over from the ancient ritual laws of Judaism the idea that a priest was a sort of sacrifice to God and thus had to be perfect, in the same way that a sacrificial animal was perfect. So a Christian priest couldn’t have any physical condition that would make him an object of horror or derision. Then, too, there were the practical questions of whether or not a candidate could actually do what a priest needed to do. On these two bases, the idea grew up in church law that some physical conditions prevented a person from being a priest. ... For instance, if you were missing an index finger or a thumb, you couldn’t be a priest, because you wouldn’t be able to handle the bread and the chalice properly. You had an impediment. And if you walked with a severe limp, or had leprosy, or just looked odd enough to attract attention--in any of these cases you had an impediment, and you couldn’t be ordained a priest. Henry Syle broke that barrier. He was the first deaf person to be ordained in any of the Protestant churches in this country, not because someone had given him a special exemption, but on the grounds that the ancient law of impediments didn’t apply.”
Just three years ago or so, the Vatican put out a press release saying that there were only 13 deaf Roman Catholic priests in the world, and the Church needed to do more to recruit priests to serve the deaf community "from inside." To this day, Roman Catholic Canon Law states that any physical condition that prevents a person from "doing what a priest does" is an impediment to ordering as a priest. This includes missing a hand with which to hold the chalice in offering, or having ciliac disease (severe wheat gluten intolerance) that would prevent the priest from consuming the wheaten host. The current Roman Catholic ban on ordaining women priests stems from a like theological basis: since one of the priest's roles is to physically represent Christ at the altar, a priest must have the same gender as Christ, just as he must have both hands and the ability to eat wheat.
The people in the Anglican communion most upset about the Episcopal Church's and parts of the Anglican Church of Canada's welcoming of gay priests and/or bishops stems from a similar applying of the Holiness Code to modern day Christian life. Those of us who are less inclined to pick and choose which parts of the clean and unclean rules of the Holiness Code (and the whole Law of Moses) apply today tend to see the matter differently. The desire to ban ordinations of mutually faithful and monogamous gay priests (or even celibate ones) looks to us very much like another impediment that limits and places human bounds on God's grace. To be sure, there is a huge discussion going on about the question of an appropriate "manner of life" for all clergy, whether deacons, priest, or bishops. But in this one mustn't fall into the error of the Judaizers in Paul's letters and the Book of Acts, who could not see the clear action of the Holy Spirit in the lives of gentile converts becasue they were marked as "unclean" by the tradition of scriptural interpretation that then held sway.
The point I would like to make on this (Episcopal Church) Feast Day of Gaulladet and Syle is this: Jesus always reached out to the marginalized and ritually unclean. God's grace is for all. Thank God for people like Gaulladet and Syle who embody this. Thank God for all who have help expand the scope of welcome and grace in the Church, including Gene Robinson.
In the name of God, Amen,
