Her chosen path

Michele Marr

When the Rev. Deacon Barbara Benjamin Sliney founded Holy Angels

Old Catholic Church in September 2002, it was a milestone for her in

a long spiritual journey and search.

Had anyone told her many years ago that she would one day be a

deacon, the pastor of a congregation and aspiring to be ordained as a

priest, she wouldn’t have believed them.

Sliney was raised in her mother’s faith, the United Methodist

Church, where her mother and others encouraged her to participate in

many of the church’s programs.

Over the years, she worked in the nursery, helped with vacation

Bible school and taught Sunday school. She was active in the United

Methodist Youth Fellowship, which is, she says, where her faith

journey started.

“In my senior year, we went to a church service at every different

faith there was, whether it be a synagogue or the Muslims or the

Baptists,” Sliney recalled. After each visit, the youths would

discuss their experience, their thoughts and impressions.

“It got me searching, for many years, you know, figuring out what

was best for me and what I believed most in, for myself,” she said.

As an 18-year-old, Sliney was drawn to the Lutheran church by its

traditional liturgical worship. Then in 1990, she found herself going

to a Roman Catholic Church.

“After my first husband died, I went with my best friend to St.

Francis Roman Catholic Church in Vista,” she said.

At some point, while still attending the church in Vista, Sliney

began to attend Old Catholic Church services at Old World in

Huntington Beach.

By 1993, she was a lector and cantor there, and Father Craig

Bettendorf, a priest at the church at the time, was encouraging her

to become a deacon.

For Sliney, who had grown up believing that women could be

ordained as deacons or priests, it wasn’t an easy step to take. But,

with a growing sense of personal calling in tandem with what she

describes as the “hounding” of Bettendorf and the support of a

bishop, Sliney put her reservations aside.

She was ordained as a deacon in July of 1997 and -- through an

off-campus program of study -- has received a master’s of divinity

from Sanctus Theological Institute in Mesa, Ariz.

“As soon as I did it, it was like, ahhh,” she said. “This is

absolutely right. Why didn’t I listen sooner?”

Sliney has since made a petition to be ordained as priest and is

the first woman in the Inter-American Old Catholic Church to do so.

She says her sense of calling to the priesthood “was like being hit

with a ton of bricks.”

Before the church will ordain her, Sliney must grow the

congregation of her fledgling mission church. And until it becomes

self-supporting, she must pay for its expenses herself.

The deacon, wife, tireless community volunteer and mother of a

20-year-old son, a 7-year-old son and a 2-year-old daughter depends,

for now, on what she earns as a mobile notary public -- combined with

any stipends she receives from presiding at weddings and baptisms --

to pay for Holy Angels’ rent, insurance, prayer books, altar

furnishings and her vestments.

Sliney describes the Saturday evening worship as “Catholic

ceremony with contemporary music. Relaxed. Laid-back. Jeans and

T-shirts.”

At the Friday children’s Mass, she reads stories to the children.

They sing, sometimes old gospels songs that they can clap their hands

and stomp their feet to. Infants are welcome.

“If they scream, it’s the children’s Mass,” she said. The

congregation is small. There is a handful of adults and another

handful of children. Sliney says the small size makes a sense of

belonging come easy. No one gets lost in the crowd.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She

can be reached at [email protected].