Our Priest-in-Charge
WELCOME The Rt. Rev. Catherine Roskam. Bishop Suffragan of the Diocese of New York (Retired)!
The vestry of Christ Church is thrilled to announce that after what seems like only a short time, we have found, and have been found, by the Rt. Rev Catherine Roskam. The wonderful saying “That of what you seek, is also seeking you” has been made manifest. The current plan is for Rev Roskam to be with, and lead us, from December 3rd 2023 until May of 2024.
You want to know more about Catherine? Read on:
Unfolding Vocation
By The Rt. Rev. Catherine Roskam
Bishop Suffragan of the Diocese of New York (Retired)
When I was 14 my brother asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. Without missing a beat and to my own surprise I blurted out, “I want to be a priest.” But you can’t be, “ he responded puzzled, “You’re a girl.”
“I know that. But you asked me what I wanted to be and that’s it.”
“What about being a nun?”
“I don’t want to be a nun.”
“Why not?”
“Nun’s can’t say mass.”
For the sixteen years after college I worked in theatre, first as an actor and then also as a director, and producer. I had left the church of my birth a decade earlier for reasons that were both theological and ecclesiological, although I would not have used those words at the time. Theatre became my spiritual practice—the discipline of it, the surrender of it, and the spirituality of sublimating one’s ego to a larger artistic goal in a diverse and ever changing community of fellows. It was through theatre that I found the Episcopal church some ten years later.
Off-off Broadway experimental theaters were burgeoning all over New York in the early 70’s. Most of them were for writers or directors or else non-union actors just starting out. Eight years in I was a professional actor with a desire to work more on projects which offered meaty roles for experienced actors like me to perform before live audience but also to be seen by agents and casting directors in order to expand our careers.[1]
A friend and I decided to ask the priest at Church of the Transfiguration, nicknamed “The Little Church Around the Corner” , also known as The Actors’ Church, if we could use space at the church to do a play. Lucky for us, we happened to ask the new Rector the week after his arrival, and loving theatre as he did, he said yes. Although I acted in some of the plays we did over the next eight years, I started producing, and very occasionally directing –and regularly having conversations both with the Rector and the Curate.
I loved these sessions. I could ask either of them anything without being told I had to believe something or else. They were both highly educated, kind and prayerful men. I learned so much about church history, theology and Anglican spirituality from them. By this time I was a regular communicant, not only on Sunday, but during the week as well. I just couldn’t get enough. The Rector suggested I take a course at General Seminary, that lay people could do that without matriculating. My first course was Theology taught by Richard Norris. I was hooked. It was exactly what I hungered for. I matriculated in the Masters program. But then I was encouraged by my Rector to enter the process for the Diaconate. That seemed good to me because I was a trained volunteer working in a local hospice program and I was already drawn to the thought of becoming a hospice chaplain. I was approved by the Ministry Commission and was moving forward to that goal. But I had a lot of pushback from people on the Ministry Commission, from friends and fellow seminarians, and even my own husband for me to explore priesthood. So I decided at least to explore it. My second year of field placement I did at Church of the Holy Apostles, where a soup kitchen was being started. I worked in both the soup kitchen and also in the parish. The soup kitchen was in itself a diaconal ministry of service, but instead of one clergy person doing it, I realized the priest’s work was to empower the ministry of others, nourishing them in word and sacrament and pastoral care to do the work God had called them to do. A priest nourishes a community of ministers. I applied to the Commission on Ministry to change my track to priesthood.
Some sadness accompanied this change because, while my much beloved rector could support my being a deacon, he was opposed to women in the priesthood. I had to go to another parish that kindly welcomed me and supported me through the rest of the ordination process. But I will never forget the welcome and the kindness of my first rector. He is the reason I am an Anglican.
I was ordained to the priesthood in 1984, part of a so-called “second wave” of ordained women. The first wave was subjected to much opposition, sometimes quite vitriolic, to women’s ordination. We of the second wave did not encounter much opposition to ordination, but rather an often subconscious resistance to women’s authority. Fellow male seminarians became rectors on average of about two years of curacy. The second wave women continued as assistants much longer, went to mission churches that no one else wanted, or eventually went into chaplaincies when the hoped-for advancement to rector never materialized.
Unfortunately the “second wave” often came in second in Rector searches, often losing out to men who were less qualified. I was definitely part of that group. I was called by a wonderful parish in Mill Valley to be Interim Rector, and appointed to a mission church after that by the Bishop, after which he called me to be Missioner of the Diocese, in which I had oversight of the mission churches, in church growth, clergy care, visioning, and multicultural training. I thought I would hold this position until the current bishop retired.
But in January of 1995 I received a plain brown envelope with a letter saying that my name had been submitted for Bishop Suffragan[2]) of the Diocese of New York and would I, after reading the enclosed profile, please inform the Committee if I would give permission for my name to go forward. This was totally unexpected. I didn’t even know there was a search. Someone else put my name in to be considered. After prayerfully reading the profile several times, and with the support of my family, I gave my permission and after a five month process I was elected Bishop Suffragan by the clergy and laity of the Diocese of New York on June 10, 1995.
I was consecrated on January 27, 1996 by the then Presiding Bishop, the Most Reverend Edmond L Browning, with 19 bishops assisting, including the first woman bishop in the Episcopal Church, The Right Reverend Barbara Harris at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City[3] . I was the fourth woman to be consecrated Bishop in the Episcopal Church and the fifth in the worldwide Anglican Communion. I was the first woman though to have no protest at my consecration.[4] And none that followed me had them either.
In all my 38 years as an ordained person, I never thought of myself as a woman priest or a woman bishop. After I was a priest for several years I finally remembered the conversation with my brother and realized that God had called me to something which was not possible at the time, but had blossomed into fruition, not according to any schedule of mine, but rather in God’s time. I am “a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek”[5], just like my male colleagues. I just happen to be a woman.
And it was the same for me with episcopacy. I was a Bishop for and with the Diocese of New York. I exercised the ministries entrusted to me as a bishop. And I happen to be a woman.
I think what gave the second wave our strength is that by the time of our ordination and then our consecration, the church had given it’s official support to us. There were dissenters of course, and dealing with dissenting bishops in the House of Bishops was stressful and often unpleasant. But women were now free to answer God’s call and the call of the people we were elected to serve.
I felt called to priesthood way before I new I could be a priest. But I had no thought of becoming a bishop until I was sent the profile. I felt called by the Diocese of New York. I didn’t feel the depth of the call until after I was consecrated and had spent several years in episcopal ministry. Then I recognized the call fully.
I never aspired to a “career” in the church. I just followed Jesus and went where he called me or led me. It turned out that by not being a rector I had the best training for being a bishop. I had worked in the three different sized parishes in both urban and suburban areas, I learned about changing church culture, multicultural ministry, ministering in transition, and congregational development and as Missioner of the Diocese of California, I had oversight of 24 congregations with a rota of visitation very like what a bishop does[6] and responsibility for clergy care. It’s very hard to know what episcopacy is like until you are actually doing it. And I loved it, difficult challenges and all.
But now that I am retired, I find my priesthood coming again to the fore. It’s hard to exercise episcopacy when you are not actively deployed, because of jurisdictional issues. And that’s fine with me. I still go on parish visitations from time to time when one of our active bishops has another commitment or falls ill. But mostly I function as a priest, with a quiet weekday service in one of the chapels at the Cathedral, and unofficial pastoral care in visiting the sick, guest preaching and the like. I find this life immensely fulfilling and I am deeply grateful.
[1] Work in Off-Off Broadway was generally unpaid.
[2] A Suffragan is an elected assistant who has tenure. In the House of Bishops Suffragans have equal voice and vote, except in the approval of the election of a bishop, when only Diocesan Bishops vote.
[3] Members of Chemin Neuf are now in residence on the cathedral close.
[4] Bishop Harris had three protests in the liturgy in 1988 and numerous death threats and hate mail.
[5] Psalm 110:4
[6] The office of Bishop in the Episcopal Church is a pastoral one. Active bishops are generally only at the Cathedral on Sundays for major feasts and special events. Otherwise Sunday by Sunday we are making the rounds of all our parishes. It deprives us of a “bully pulpit” which is not such a bad thing!