DUARTE o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-07-03 published
McWILLIAM, Rev. Dr. Joanne E., M.A., PH.D., D.D.
Professor Emerita, the University of Toronto and Trinity College,
Toronto, born December 10, 1928, died of cancer, nine years after
the first diagnosis, on July 1, 2008. Cherished wife of C. Peter
SLATER and beloved mother of Leslie
GIRODAY
(Philip,)
Elizabeth
DEWART (George
McLAUCHLAN), Sean
DEWART (Lori
NEWTON), Gonzalo
DUARTE, and grandmother of Gabrielle, Genevieve, James, Christopher,
Alison, Karen, Geoffrey, Nora, George, Anne Marie, Joanna and
Marc Francis. Fondly remembered stepmother of Lynne
SLATER (Robert
ARPIN), Ruth
SLATER (Jim
VIVIAN) and Claire
SLATER (Ken
RIDLEY).
Joanne was the first woman to earn a doctorate in theology from
Saint Michael's College, the first ordained woman to be tenured
on the Faculty of Divinity at Trinity College, and the first
woman holder of the chair in dogmatic theology at the General
Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church, U.S.A., in New
York. She served terms as Chair of the Department for the Study
of Religion in the University of Toronto and as president of
the American Theological Society, the Canadian Theological Society
and the Canadian Society for Patristic Studies. A longtime director
of Advanced Degree Studies for the Toronto School of Theology,
she was an internationally acknowledged expert on the theology
of Saint Augustine, and always very highly rated as a teacher
by generations of students in both arts and theology and by her
family. Ordained in 1988, she was, with her husband, an honorary
assistant at Christ Church Deer Park. She loved her books, her
dogs, and her garden. The family wishes to thank Doctor Amrit
OZA
and staff at the Princess Margaret Hospital and those from the
Mount Sinai Temmy Latner Centre for Palliative Care and related
services, who made it possible for her to die at home. Visitation
will be at the Morley Bedford Funeral Home, 159 Eglinton Avenue
West (2 lights west of Yonge Street) on Sunday, July 6 from 3-5 and
7-9 p.m. The funeral service will take place at Christ Church
Deer Park, 1570 Yonge Street (at Heath Street) on Monday, July 7
at 11 a.m. with reception to follow in the Parish Hall. Donations
in her memory may be made to Médecins Sans Frontières or Street
Haven.
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DUARTE o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-07-16 published
Academic became a religious triple threat
Denied the voice she sought in Catholicism, she converted, then
mentored hundreds of other women
By Ron CSILLAG,
Special to The Globe and Mail, Page S8
Joanne McWILLIAM felt she was outside her beloved church, looking
in. Faced with the lifelong prospect of being denied the voice
and role she sought in Roman Catholicism, she found an alternate
route. She became an Anglican and a priest.
A religious pioneer and predictor of change who mentored and
encouraged hundreds of women in academia and the priesthood,
Dr. McWILLIAM tallied several milestones: She was the first woman
to earn a doctorate in theology from the University of Toronto's
Saint Michael's College; the first ordained woman to receive tenure
on the divinity faculty at U of T's Trinity College; and the
first Canadian woman elected president of the American Theological
Society.
She was recalled as a warm, self-effacing woman, but serious
about many things: teaching, her church and advancing the cause
of women, both in her field and beyond. Her son, Gonzalo
DUARTE,
recalled a T-shirt his mother bought him in 1977 bearing the
words: "Men of quality are not threatened by women for equality."
It was a message she carried and heeded throughout her life.
Dr. McWILLIAM was a kind of religious triple threat. As a trained
philosopher, theologian and priest, she had a wide knowledge
of secular thought, of Christianity (especially its early development)
and of what it takes to shepherd a congregation - all within
a liberal framework. "She understood deep traditions very thoroughly,
yet could advance new developments without fear," said Canon
Alyson BARNETT-
COWAN, a friend and colleague.
A tolerant woman, she had a healthy respect for those of other
denominations and faiths. "She didn't have a proselytizing bone
in her body," said her son, Sean
DEWART. "
She was not remotely
judgmental."
An internationally acknowledged expert on the theology of St. Augustine,
Dr. McWILLIAM's specialty was patristic studies, which focuses
on the early church fathers. She wrote or co-wrote dozens of
books, articles and book chapters on Augustine, feminist theology
and Christology, the study of Jesus's divine nature.
For 15 years, she was a single mother and pursued her academic
credentials while raising four children, who recognize today
that she was a tireless advocate for women's rights who established
herself as a major figure in a largely male domain, yet devoted
years to studying the harsh patriarchy of the early Christian
church.
Dr. McWILLIAM was raised in an ecumenical environment. She was
the only child born to an electrical engineer who'd been a sapper
during the First World War - a Catholic who had known discrimination
in Toronto - and a stay-at-home mother who converted to Catholicism
from the Presbyterian church. It was an arrangement that was
deemed controversial in its day.
Their daughter graduated in philosophy and history from the University
of Toronto in 1951, earning the Cardinal Mercier Medal in Philosophy,
and completed a master's degree in the subject in 1953.
The next year, she married Leslie
DEWART, who was born in Spain
and raised in Cuba. His medical studies were interrupted by a
strike, so in the early 1940s, at 19, he came to Canada to join
the Royal Canadian Air Force. He flew reconnaissance missions
over the North Atlantic and went on to teach philosophy at Saint Michael's
College. The couple divorced in 1972.
During the mid-1950s, Doctor
McWILLIAM held a variety of jobs. She
taught high school and lectured in philosophy at the University
of Detroit. For a brief time, she was a reporter at the Toronto
Star, covering "magistrate's court," but grew disenchanted. "She
felt she was too much the observer and not enough of a participant,"
said daughter Elizabeth
DEWART.
She returned to school and earned a second master's degree, this
one in theology, from Saint Michael's College in 1966, followed
two years later with a doctorate in theology, also from Saint Michael's.
"She was an unbelievably hard worker," said Ms.
DEWART.
Over the ensuing years, she held several teaching positions at
Saint Michael's College, the Toronto School of Theology and the
University of Toronto's religious studies department, which she
chaired for two terms.
But something was gnawing at her. She never voiced an outright
disappointment in the Catholic Church, but "she felt things needed
to change… that she didn't have a voice," said one of her former
doctoral students, Ellen
LEONARD of the Sisters of Saint_Joseph.
She found that voice in the Anglican Church of Canada, whose
synod on whether to ordain women she addressed in 1975 as a Catholic
theologian. The following year, in November, the church ordained
its first female priest.
"I remember her telling me that she was leaving the [Catholic]
church," Ms.
DEWART recalled. "It was so solemn. She didn't see
the opportunity to become a priest. That was a huge decision
for her."
Dr. McWILLIAM became a deacon in the Anglican Church in 1987,
the year she married Peter
SLATER, an Anglican priest and fellow
theologian, and was ordained a priest the next year, at the age
of 60. For one thing, she felt it was important for female students
to have a female priest on the faculty.
While continuing to teach, transferring from the Catholic Saint Michael's
College to the divinity faculty at Trinity College, Canada's
oldest Anglican theological school, she served as honorary assistant
at Toronto's Christ Church Deer Park. In 1997, she was appointed
by Michael Peers, then leader of the Anglican Church of Canada,
to a high-level review of central religious issues. The first
Primate's Theological Commission, which lasted until 2003, produced
three workbooks to assist the church on "fundamental theological
questions."
She addressed such matters as the nature of God. The Christian
tradition of labelling the members of the Trinity - the Father,
the son and the Holy Spirit - as "persons," was "on the whole
a bad decision," she wrote (noting that Augustine and many others
have said so) "because when we use it, we cannot but think of
human persons, and attribute the characteristics of human personhood
to God."
The Trinity "is a mystery and cannot be explained in any rational
way."
An optimist, she felt the global Anglican communion will weather
its spasm over homosexuality and avoid schism. She cited examples
of other threats to unity - slavery and the place of women -
that failed to split the church.
Dr. McWILLIAM taught for five years at the Episcopal Church's
General Theology Seminary in New York, the first woman to hold
a chair in dogmatic theology. Back in Canada, she contributed
to the decision in 2001 to provide joint recognition to Anglican-Lutheran
ordinations in this country.
Health conscious before it was fashionable, she ingested plain
yogurt and chicken livers for breakfast. But a regular tipple
of sherry was never turned aside. Minutes after doctors informed
her that her cancer was untreatable, she asked her daughter Leslie
to drop by for a glass, reasoning that "there's no point allowing
life to go completely to the dogs."
Still with sherry, just a few weeks before her death, she insisted
that her son Sean pour from an older bottle. When he asked why
he shouldn't open the fine new one he had just bought, she replied,
"I'm saving it!"
She died a week before the worldwide Anglican church voted to
allow women to serve as bishops.
Joanne Elizabeth
McWILLIAM was born in Toronto on December 10,
1928, and died there of cancer, nine years after the first diagnosis,
on July 1, 2008. She was 79. She leaves husband C. Peter
SLATER,
children Leslie
GIRODAY,
Elizabeth
DEWART, Sean
DEWART and Gonzalo
DUARTE, and 12 grandchildren.
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