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Introduction    ELLEN LEONARD, CSJ KATE MERRIMAN JOANNE ELIZABETH MCWILLIAM was born in Toronto on 10 December 1928. She died on Canada Day, 1 July 2008. This Festschrift, planned before her death, was a source of happiness for her. She knew that her friends and colleagues would continue their conversations in the areas that were important to her. Christology was one of those areas. Joanne was a teacher, a scholar, a priest, a theologian, a wife, a mother, a grandmother, a mentor, and a friend. She managed to integrate all of these vocations. She was a leader who blazed a trail for other women scholars and priests, serving as a mentor for many of us. Joanne was an ecumenical Christian. Her mother came from a Presbyterian background; her father was a Roman Catholic from New Brunswick. She was raised and educated as a Roman Catholic. She attended Loretto Abbey for secondary school, and then the University of Toronto, where she received an honours B.A. in Philosophy and History in 1951, earning the Cardinal Mercier Medal in Philosophy. In 1953 she completed an M.A. in Philosophy ; in 1966 she received an M.A. in Theology from the University of St. Michael’s College; in 1968 she became the first woman to graduate from St. Michael’s with a Ph.D. in Theology. Joanne believed strongly in gender equality. She saw that the official Catholic Church ignored lay experience generally and that it both ignored and rejected women’s experience. In her article “The Misuse of Tradition” (1985), she pointed out that “in Western society the only social entity which xi does not recognize the equal status of women is the Roman Catholic church.”1 In 1975, while still a Roman Catholic theologian, she addressed the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada while they were pondering the question of the ordination of women. In 1976 the Anglican Church of Canada ordained its first women priests. In 1985 Joanne joined the Anglican Church of Canada and quietly requested a transfer from St. Michael’s College to Trinity College. In one of her last articles, written for the Anglican Church of Canada Task Force on Human Life, she stated: “I use ‘church’ throughout to refer to the entire Christian community, not only the Anglican Church of Canada.”2 This was always her vision—a wide vision of church rooted in the Scriptures and the Early Church. In 1987, believing that it was important for women students in Divinity to have a model of an ordained woman faculty member, she offered herself for ordination as a deacon in the Anglican Church. In 1988 she was ordained a priest, becoming the first ordained woman to be tenured on the Faculty of Divinity at Trinity College. In 1987 she married Professor Peter Slater, then Dean of the Faculty of Divinity. In 1998 Joanne and Peter were appointed as Honorary Assistant Priests at Christ Church Deer Park, a position Joanne maintained until her death. Joanne lectured in philosophy at the University of Detroit from 1954 to 1955, but she spent most of her academic career at the University of Toronto (1969–94), where she carried out many demanding duties as a member of both the Toronto School of Theology and the Graduate Centre for the Study of Religion. She served as Chair of the Department of Religious Studies (1990–92, 1993–94), as Director of Advanced Degree Studies at the Toronto School of Theology (1981–84), and as Associate Director of the Graduate Centre for the Study of Religion (1987–90) and later as Director (1993–94). The Toronto School of Theology and the Centre for the Study of Religion owe Joanne a debt of gratitude. These were formative years for both institutions , as Theology and Religious Studies programs were then being developed . Joanne laid an extraordinary foundation for these programs. She guided their growth with wisdom, foresight, and rigour. Her administrative skills during these years made it possible for hundreds of students to find their way through the various stages of their programs. The careful work she did in guiding the growth of both institutions continues to shape Religious Studies and Theology in Toronto. When Joanne became an emerita professor, she accepted another challenge: from 1994 to 1999 she was the Mary Crooke Hoffman Professor of Dogmatic Theology at the General Seminary of the Episcopal Church in New York—the first woman to hold this position. She enjoyed those five years in Manhattan. xii...

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