Since the school is ecumenical, classes were filled with both women and men studying for the ministry in their respective churches. I felt quite at home. However, the denominational sessions were more emotionally exhausting. My first Canon Law class taught by the 35 year old chancellor of the diocese was demeaning. When I raised issues (as much of what we were learning did not seem to make sense in the 20th century) he treated me in an amused, semi-sarcastic way, inviting the assembled deacon and priest candidates to laugh with him. It took me one year and a showdown over my first term paper before he was able to regard me as a sincere truth-seeker and aspirant to priesthood. His excuse was that he was used to dealing with men and did not understand women. I'm afraid I understood him only too well.

At the end of my tenure, I had to find a placement in a parish to complete my supervised field practice. Luckily, I knew a parish priest who was willing to take on the infamous diocesan feminist. He gave me the Confirmation program for that year-not a great learning experience since I had already taught catechetics in my home parish for fifteen years. I never got to assist at the Sunday Eucharist, never got to preach, never got to sit in the priestly inner sanctum and learn first hand about the life of a parish priest. Each week as I came to Pastoral theology class and listened to classmates talk of their parish experience, I felt more and more cheated. There was nothing I could do about it; I was not a male and therefore not a real candidate for priesthood.

One of the good experiences during my student days was the formation of a Women's Caucus at AST to give emotional support to women ministerial candidates. I soon discovered that Roman Catholic women were not the only ones who felt like secondclass citizens. The sharing of stories and different church traditions is still one of my warmest memories. Another one is the founding of a national support group in 1981 called Canadian Catholics for Women's Ordination, in which I have played a key role. As for lasting ties with fellow seminarians, when I meet these former classmates, now ordained, I feel like a great chasm lies between us that will not be bridged in my lifetime.

I went into priestly studies with great optimism, buoyed by meeting Anglican women priests. I hoped for change in my church. Instead, the night bars have been lowered over the shutters of windows Pope John 23rd threw open on Vatican Council II almost three decades ago. But we women continue to know what is right. Recently, I received a letter from an Anglican friend who had been making inquiries of the Canadian Human Rights Commission about discriminatory church employment practices with respect to ordained women. She shared a thought with me: What if Canon 1024 contravenes the Charter of Rights? What if? I am busy processing that information and preparing an action plan. What do you think?

Dr. Joyce Deveau-Kennedy is Assistant Director of Continuing Education at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, N. S. She is a 1986 Master of Divinity graduate of the Atlantic School of Theology and declared candidate for ordained ministry in the Roman Catholic Church.

1. The Code of Canon Law in English Translation. Publications Service, Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1983.
   
   
2. Carrol Stuhlmueller, "Culture, Leadership and Symbolism in the Old Testament, " Women and Priesthood: Future Directions. Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1978. For a good commentary from women's perspective, see "The Proceedings of the Detroit Ordination Conference" Women and Catholic Priesthood, Anne Marie Gardiner S.S.N.D., ed. New York: Paulist Press, 1976. This latter has an excellent bibliography.
   
   
3. Alla Bozarth-Campbell, Womenpriest: A Personal Odyssey. New York: Paulist Press, 1978.
   
   
4. Quoted in Research Report: Women in Church and Society. Sara Butler, ed. The Catholic Theological Society of America, 1978, pp. 6-7.
   
   
5. Mulieris Dignatatem. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1988, p. 98.
   
   
6. Dorothy Sayers, Are Women Human? Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1971, p. 39.