Sister Lavinia Byrne, 1998

(This is mostly a précis of Bryne's own account in From Inquisition to Freedom, with an article in the Irish Times, 24 February 2000, and my own comments.)

Born in 1947 in Birmingham, Lavinia was a cradle Catholic. She first met the sisters of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (IBVM) at boarding school in Shaftesbury in 1958, and joined them in 1964. She read French and Spanish at London University and then trained as a teacher in Cambridge.

“For the first fifteen years, of my religious life” she wrote, “I was perfectly happy teaching in a number of girls’ schools which were owned by the community.”[p176] Then came her ‘tertianship’, the third phase of her formation. This took her out of her smaller world to places and experiences she had not previously known, including “an all-night refuge, in a hostel, and with the Afro-Caribbean community in Bayswater, a very mixed-race part of London.”[ibid.] The experience changed her and she could not return to life as a teacher.

Byrne joined the Institute of Spirituality at the Jesuit-run Heythrop College in London University which gave her a global perspective and awareness of, and friendship with, women with a calling to the priesthood. In 1991, now with the Council of Churches for Great Britain and Ireland, she met women from Methodist and Congregational churches who were ordained. In 1992 she attended the debate in the General Synod of the Church of England when it voted in favour of ordaining women.

In 1988 Byrne published Women Before God. In 1991 she edited The Hidden Tradition of women’s spirituality, followed in 1993 by The Hidden Journey of women missionaries, Woman at the Altar in 1994 and The Hidden Voice in 1995. (All published by SPCK apart from the Hidden Journey, published by Continuum, New York.) 

Her theme was clear: women had been hidden. They should be seen and heard. They had standing in the church.

The timing of the publication of Woman at the Altar was not propitious. The book was at the printers when, in May 1994, Pope John Paul II issued Ordinatio Sacerdotalis restricting ordination to men. The statement was definitive; further discussion was otiose. Instead of discarding it, her book was published with Ordinatio Sacerdotalis as an appendix, giving the Pope the last word.

Then nothing happened. Byrne went about her life in her usual way. Until, thirteen months later, a letter was received from the secretary of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies, the Chilean Archbishop Francisco Javier Errazzuriz Ossa. He didn’t write to Sister Lavinia, but to the general-superior of her order. He asked whether the general-superior had given Byrne permission to publish and was assured, with documentary evidence, that she had.

There was, once again, a hiatus. Then in 1998 Archbishop Bertone, Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (Wiki), legatee of the inquisition, wrote to the head of the Byrne’s Order requiring her to withdraw the book from circulation.

In Britain the book had a secular publisher and the church had no jurisdiction or sway. In the US it was published by the Paulist Press and they pulped all unsold copies as Bertone demanded.  It was not enough; it never is. Bertone had also told the head of her Order,

“This Dicastry asks you to inform Sister Lavinia Byrne that it will be necessary for her to correct the errors disseminated by the book by making some form of public declaration of assent to the specific teachings of the magisterial documents Humanae Vitae and Ordinatio Sacerdotalis.” [p177]

and to provide the Dicastry with evidence that this has been done.

Byrne felt the irony of being instructed to withdraw a book while she had an audience of six million as a broadcaster on Thought for the Day on the BBC's radio 4 morning news programme.

Public statements of recantation have a long history. They can be used for propaganda and as a warning to others. But the immediate purpose is to leave their victim internalising their oppressor. Byrne said,

"I think that the CDF people who write these letters should know that they cause intense pain. These are not just a couple of ideas banging about in somebody’s head, but are about one’s root identity as a Roman Catholic.” [p. 181]

In my personal opinion, and as an outsider, it seems very probable that the CDF knew exactly what the impact of their letter would be: they have had centuries of practice.

Cardinal Hume told her, "Lavinia, this is not about obedience, it's about justice." (Irish Times). But, perhaps it was more about a radical incompatibility in the ways faith is articulated and made real. Religious experience, expression and embodiment can be grounded in rules and axioms of power - communal authority/obedience. Or grounded on the poetry of personal and communal faith - shared pilgrimage/autonomy. Both streams flow from the same spring but can taste incompatibly different. This was about power over people's minds as well as their bodies.

(And, while Christian tradition and history is inherently agonistic, I don't wish to suggest these are the only options, nor that they are necessarily mutually exclusive. Perpetual tension and conflict contribute significantly to Christianity's capacity to change and retain its claim to authenticity.)

Her decision made, Byrne declared her own exclusion order by going public in the Sunday Times and on Radio 4. The Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Basil Hume, was personally supportive and wrote to the CDF to request that they rescind their action. He had no reply.

On January 6 2000, Epiphany, Byrne asked to be dispensed from her vows. She felt she had been left with no alternative. She continues to write: Books by Lavinia Byrne (Amazon); wiki (stub only).