Thursday, March 10, 2011

R.I. Episcopal Bishop Geralyn Wolf to retire

The Right Rev. Geralyn Wolf, a convert from Judaism who stepped into the history books 15 years ago by becoming only the second woman in U.S. Episcopal Church history to be ordained a diocesan bishop, is planning to retire as Rhode Island’s Episcopal bishop late in 2012.

Wolf, who turns 64 next month, broke the news to some of her staff Thursday, her first day back after undergoing knee replacement surgery on Jan. 31. 

She made a more public disclosure on Saturday at the close of an evangelism convocation attended by priests and lay people at the Providence Marriott.

Although she limps a bit, and is using a cane, the bishop said the repairs to her knee, which have temporarily kept her from climbing the stairs to her second-floor bishop’s office, had nothing to do with her planned retirement. 

Rather, she said, it was a sense of time.

“To tell you the truth, I thought about it several times over the last few years, but I either felt it was a little too soon or I was too young.”

After her marriage four years ago to businessman Thomas Charles Bair Jr. in a colorful ceremony in April 2007 in Providence’s Cathedral of St. John, Bishop Wolf says she thought about it again but decided that wasn’t a good time either.

“But now I’ll be at the age that most people retire. It would be nice to see what other things could be in store on the other side of 65, though I don’t know what that may be.

“As long as I have the energy and vitality, I might as well say to the Lord, ‘What will you have me do now?”’

Even after 15 years on the job, the bishop admits she still doesn’t know the number of Episcopalians in Rhode Island.

“Some surveys say there are 35,000 Episcopalians. That’s not true. Another says there are 17,000. We know that’s not true.”

The real number, she said, could be as low as 7,000, with about half of them attending church on any given week.

The dwindling number of churchgoers, along with a decline in the number of congregations — from 64 parishes and missions in 1996 to 55 today — has also led to a financial shortfall that she wants to address before a new bishop takes over.

“Just like the City of Providence and State of Rhode Island, we are in very difficult times. We are merging churches, closing churches. We have lost income and anticipate losing more income. That means we have to right-size the budget for these times.”

As for electing a successor, that would be up to the delegates at a special convention. Elections can be an exciting time for a diocese, she said, and she doesn’t think there will be much trouble finding candidates.

“It’s not like we have a shortage of priests. There are many capable people who could be bishop of Rhode Island.”

Still, it typically takes at least 18 months for a diocese to install a new bishop, after taking into account search committee interviews with candidates, a diocesan election, and getting a majority of bishops and standing committees in the U.S. to concur. 

Bishop Wolf thinks the process may be even longer this time because some of the focus in 2012 will be on the U.S. Episcopal Church’s triennial General Convention being held in Indianapolis that summer.

She expects to still be on hand for convention, though she doesn’t know what role she’d play. “I think people see me as a moderate, and that’s why I’m often put on committees that have the potential of being very challenging.”

In 2007, at a time when the U.S. Episcopal Church was concerned about some parishes choosing to affiliate with more conservative Anglican bishops in Africa and elsewhere, she was one of eight “bridge building” Episcopal bishops who were asked to provide pastoral oversight to parishes around the country that were having trouble dealing with their own bishops.

Bishop Wolf’s own relationship with her clergy has not always been smooth sailing.

Even though she was part of the majority of bishops who gave the green light in 2003 for consecration of the openly gay V. Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire, she later rankled some gay-rights supporters when she barred her clergy from using Episcopal church property for blessing same-sex relationships.

When the General Convention, including all of the clergy and lay deputies from Rhode Island, voted to lift a three-year-old moratorium on ordaining gay men and women as bishops, Bishop Wolf was part of the minority calling for the moratorium to continue — on grounds that unilateral action by the U.S. Episcopal Church could undermine Anglican unity.

Also, an interim report issued in 2004 by a consultant hired to look at the morale of the clergy seemed to show that Bishop Wolf still had a way to go in winning the hearts of at least some of her priests, who described her as rude, capricious, repressive and insensitive. 

But Bishop Wolf has had her supporters too — from those who admire her preaching style, or her willingness to spend a four-week sabbatical living undercover among the homeless, to her sensitivity to the concerns of church conservatives. . 

Bishop Wolf says she’s particularly delighted that she’s been able to hold together “so many churches of diverse opinion and outlook.”

St. John’s, in Newport, a parish with a strong Anglican bent and which could have easily bolted, “is still an Episcopal church, and that,” she says, “is a big accomplishment.”

“We have churches here with all kinds of ideas and hopes and dreams, some of which I agree with, some I don’t. But we’ve been able to stay together as one diocese. We have not split over issues of doctrine or churchmanship at a time when that could have happened, and when it has happened in other places.”

While the closings and mergers that have reduced the parishes and missions to 55 has alarmed some in her flock, Bishop Wolf suggested there could be more on the way. This is something she does not want to leave for her successor to deal with. 

“It’s very difficult to merge parishes. As you well know, people are attached to the communities in which they worship, where their children were baptized and where they were married. So it’s important that I see through, as best as possible, whatever mergers and closings we need to do.

“It would be hard for a new person to understand the pastoral implications of particular parishes that I have visited and known for 15 years,” she says.

With that insight, she believes she is in a better position to work with a parish so “together we can try to find what options are available, given the circumstances that they are living under,” and to give support to whatever option they choose.

“This office has never told parishes, ‘you must merge.’ What the office has asked, rather, is ‘What are you going to do? What are the possibilities here? If you have to merge, who would you consider merging with.’

“It’s very difficult for a parish to undergo that kind of process. But to ask a new bishop to do that, I would rather not.”

Now back to the bishop’s knee.

Bishop Wolf says she doesn’t know if people have noticed, but they’ve never seen her kneel. 

It goes back to when she was 17 and caught her leg on a bed frame while trying to swing up into her dorm room bunk at West Chester University, outside Philadelphia.

The injury was enough to send her to the hospital. But her parents didn’t want her to have surgery, and so she chose rehabilitation instead.

The pain subsided but returned in a big way in her early 40s when she had “very serious” leg surgery. After the operation, doctors gave their instructions: no more dancing, no high heels, no playing basketball, no kneeling.

“I was never known for my dancing and I didn’t play basketball. So these weren’t great sacrifices.”

But to tell a priest she couldn’t kneel, that was a different story. 

Bishop Wolf said that when she was being interviewed as a candidate for bishop 15 years ago, she felt it necessary to point out that she wouldn’t be seen kneeling.

“I wanted them to know it wasn’t a political statement. It was physical.”

Lest one think that talk about ailing knees is far removed from the work of a bishop, consider this:

Soon after being installed, Bishop Wolf was to have her first ecumenical encounter with the state’s two Roman Catholic bishops, the Most Rev. Louis E. Gelineau and his coadjutor, the Most Rev. Robert E. Mulvee.

“I think everyone was anxious about how it would go. Then I started talking about my bad knee.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Bishop Mulvee told her. “You can have that fixed.”

Bishop Wolf learned that one of her Roman Catholic counterparts had had two knee replacements, and the other had one. 

That broke the ice.

“It was our first meeting. And the first 15 minutes all we talked about were knees.”