Mother May I (Call you Mother)?

[todaysdate]

By Kris Christensen

On my way across the parking lot I hear: “Excuse me! Excuse me, Your Reverendness!”

That must be for me.

Indeed it is. Ryan wants me to pray for him because he is going to the hospital to have a bionic spine installed. Ryan lives at Mallon Place — a home for the mentally ill a few blocks from West Central Episcopal Mission. He has schizophrenia. He neither knows nor cares how to properly address a priest. He only cares that I pray for him.

I suspect that the 19 clergy who have proposed Resolution #12 for consideration at the Annual Convention of The Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut don’t know many people like Ryan. The resolution, if passed, will mandate the elimination of “gendered titles” for priests —“Mother” and “Father”— in Connecticut’s Episcopal churches. It doesn’t propose alternative titles. Apparently that will work itself out once the old ones are forbidden. The proposers also intend to extend their proposal throughout our denomination by bringing a resolution to the triennial General Convention of the transnational Episcopal Church.

There are a lot of reasons I applaud doing away with “Father” and “Mother.” For one, my son is 25. I’ve done my time. But seriously, parental titles can set up some weird dynamics with clergy as Mom and Dad and the congregation as kids. My problem isn’t with changing the tradition; it’s with mandating this change.

I’ve been called a lot of things — most of them printable. Kris, Pastor, Father (by a priest struggling with English), Father Sister (by my brother), Mother, Rev., Reverend, Priestess, and God’s Sex Pot (by another Mallon Place resident) — it doesn’t matter. A title doesn’t change my call. Last winter, I found Jason and Sarah, a homeless couple, in the courtyard. As I let them in to warm up and get coffee, Jason said, “I knew my pastor would watch out for me.” They call me by my first name, and I’m still their priest.

When priests demand to be called by a certain honorific—or demand not to be—they are making themselves the most important person in the pastoral relationship. My least favorite form of address is “Mother Kris,” but when a frail elder called me Mother Kris, I let it be. By paying attention to the titles chosen for me (or lack thereof) I can often discover a hint toward what that person needs from a priest.

I shouldn’t be surprised that this issue has been cast as a resolution. I just arrived home from the Episcopal Diocese of Spokane’s Annual Convention where, among other things, we resolved to notice the resolutions passed at the 2012 General Convention of the transnational Episcopal Church. Those included such time vampires as: A079 American Civil Liberties (I don’t know. Should I vote yes?) and A127: Recommit to Being Anti-Racists for the Next Three Triennia (Whew! I was afraid I was going to have to commit to being a racist for the next nine years.) But the real problem isn’t wasted time or wasted paper. The real problem is that Resolution #12 moves the pastoral relationship to the crowded hall of a Convention, away from the quiet, personal moments in pews, courtyards, and coffee shops where it belongs. It allows us to avoid intimacy between clergy and laity and to avoid taking responsibility for our relationships. In other words, it allows us to avoid Christian community.