Marion Macfarlane

Marion Macfarlane (19 July 1840 – 29 April 1898) was the first woman to be ordained in the Anglican Church in Australia. She was ordained to the "Female Diaconate" in 1884 in the Diocese of Melbourne,^[1] then in 1886 converted to Catholicism, took the name Sister Mary Euphrasia, and joined the Sisters of the Good Shepherd.

Marion Macfarlane
Macfarlane in 1883
Personal
Born	(1840-07-19)19 July 1840 Colney Hatch, Middlesex, England
Died	29 April 1898(1898-04-29) (aged 57) Oakleigh, Victoria, Australia
Religion	Anglicanism Catholicism
Parent(s)	Charles Macfarlane and Charlotte Emily Ormsden
Monastic name	Sister Mary Euphrasia

Early life

Marion Macfarlane was born 19 July 1840 in Colney Hatch, Middlesex, England, daughter of the Scottish writer Charles Macfarlane (1799–1858).^[2] By 1861, she was a governess to an Anglican vicar and his family in Essex. In 1867 she joined the Society of St Margaret at East Grinstead, Sussex, one of the earliest religious orders for women in the post-Reformation Church of England. She was clothed as a novice in 1868 and professed in 1870 and worked primarily in nursing before leaving the order for unknown reasons in 1878.^[2] She emigrated from England on the Cuzco arriving in Melbourne on 15 November 1878.^[3]

Anglican ministry

 

Marion Macfarlane is portrayed in the top left corner.

From 1879 to 1884 Macfarlane was Matron of the Servants Training Institute, a new Church of England initiative in East Melbourne designed to prepare girls for domestic service.^[2] This brought her into close contact with Mary Moorhouse, wife of the Bishop of Melbourne, and other leading women in Melbourne Anglicanism. On 8 February 1884 Macfarlane was ordained to the "Female Diaconate" by James Moorhouse, the Anglican Bishop of Melbourne, at Christ Church, South Yarra.^[4][5] Bishop Moorhouse intended her to be the founding member of a Melbourne Deaconesses Home, an idea he had first advocated to the Melbourne Church Assembly in 1882, citing the revival of the Order of Deaconesses in the English Church in 1861.^[6] Little is known of her ministry. She initially worked with H. F. Tucker, the Vicar of Christ Church South Yarra, and appears later to have lived at Bishopscourt, East Melbourne, with Bishop and Mrs Moorhouse.^[2]

Later years and death

In early 1886 the Moorhouses left Melbourne. Within a few months Macfarlane converted to Roman Catholicism and joined the Sisters of the Good Shepherd at Oakleigh with the name in religion of Sister Mary Euphrasia.^[7] She became a novice in 1887 and was professed in 1891. She died on 29 April 1898 at the Oakleigh convent and was buried at Booroondara Cemetery, Kew.^[7]

Historical significance

Until recently, the first Anglican deaconess in Australia was thought to be Mary Schleicher, who became a deaconess in the Diocese of Sydney in 1886.^[8][9] Macfarlane's appointment was two years earlier. It has been suggested that Macfarlane's ordination was overlooked because of her conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism in the sectarian atmosphere of the 1880s.^[2]

The establishment of an order of deaconess within the Anglican communion in the mid-1800s was controversial,^[10] a controversy which extended to Melbourne in the 1880s.^[11] The diaconate was one of three established orders of Anglican ministry, reserved at that time to men only. Deacons were considered to be clergy, although they could not administer some sacraments.^[12] With widespread opposition to women joining the clergy, there was significant confusion about the role of deaconesses: some saw them as female equivalents to male clergy, others as a form of women's religious order.^[12][13] In the Anglican Church in Australia debates over the role of the deaconess were never resolved, and from the 1960s became part of the wider debate about the ordination of women as deacons, priests and bishops.^[5][14]

Macfarlane's ordination was unusual in that it took place in the high church Anglican context of Melbourne rather than the Evangelical Sydney, and explicitly used the language of ordination.^[2] Peter Sherlock argues that since Macfarlane was ordained with the episcopal laying on of hands, with Bishop Moorhouse intending to create a "Female Diaconate", she should be considered to be the first woman to be a member of the clergy in the Anglican Church in Australia.^[2]

References

1. "NOTES OF THE MONTH". Church of England Messenger and Ecclesiastical Gazette for the Diocese of Melbourne and Ballarat (Vic. : 1876 - 1889). 5 March 1884. p. 3. Retrieved 13 March 2021.
2. Sherlock, Peter (2012). "Australian Beginnings: The First Anglican Deaconess". Preachers, prophets & heretics : Anglican women's ministry. Elaine Lindsay, Janet Scarfe. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. pp. 55–75. ISBN 978-1-74224-605-5. OCLC 811406174.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
3. "Arrival of the S.S. Cuzco". Argus. 14 November 1878. p. 6. Retrieved 13 March 2021.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
4. "Notes of the Month". Church of England Messenger. 9 March 1884. p. 3. Retrieved 13 March 2021.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
5. Melbourne, The University of. "Christian Church Workers – Theme – The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia". www.womenaustralia.info. Retrieved 18 March 2021.
6. "Church of England Assembly". Church of England Messenger. 4 October 1882. p. 8. Retrieved 13 March 2021.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
7. "Catholic Intelligence". Advocate. 7 May 1898. p. 5. Retrieved 13 March 2021.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
8. "Our Story". Anglican Deaconess Ministries. Retrieved 13 March 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
9. Tress, Nora (1993). Caught for life : a story of the Anglican deaconess order in Australia. Araluen, N.S.W.: N. Tress. ISBN 0-646-12805-1. OCLC 38324312.
10. "Deaconesses in the Church of England (1880)". anglicanhistory.org. Retrieved 19 March 2021.
11. "Correspondence". Church of England Messenger. 8 December 1886. p. 11. Retrieved 20 March 2021.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
12. Valentine, Gilbert (2013). "Flying Bishops, Women Clergy and the Processes of Change in the Anglican Communion". Andrews University Press. 51 (2): 219–265.
13. The beginning of women's ministry : the revival of the deaconess in the nineteenth-century Church of England. Henrietta Blackmore. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press. 2007. ISBN 978-1-84383-308-6. OCLC 85830056.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
14. Porter, Muriel (1989). Women in the church : the great ordination debate in Australia. Ringwood, Vic., Australia: Penguin. ISBN 0-14-013041-1. OCLC 24703277.