Some years ago in the heyday of Christian feminism in Australia, the Australian Council of Churches Commission on the Status of Women published a calendar honouring women of faith here and elsewhere. 10 January was set aside for Patricia Brennan, 'prophet in our time'.
And such she was — by any definition of prophet, biblical or colloquial. She was utterly dedicated to challenging the sincerity of the religious establishment about its commitment to women, without fear or favour. She was both a prophetic voice herself, and the inspirer of other prophetic women and men.
More than any other single individual she put the ordination of women on the agenda of the Anglican Church and kept it there, in full public view. She brought together several isolated groups and created the Movement for the Ordination of Women, whose voice and influence far exceeded its membership.
Patricia's name became synonymous with the struggle. She brought MOW into a much wider arena. She led a delegation of Australian women to challenge their bishops at the Lambeth conference in 1988.
A year later, she was in Washington, reporting widely through the media on the consecration of Barbara Harris as the first woman bishop in the Anglican communion — ironically on the same day
as the Diocese of Sydney ordained its first women deacons.
Her friendship with Alison Cheek, one of the Philadelphia 11, persisted until her death.
She pushed MOW into the wider Christian context. It was Patricia who brought Catholic feminists, Uniting Church feminists and WomenChurch together for a conference in 1989.
Like Germaine Greer, Patricia was tall, with an unmissable presence and an unforgettable rich voice. She was challenging, provocative, talented and slightly eccentric. She had a way with words and debate, and a great gift for one-liners, which the media loved. But Patricia's one-liners were never empty spin, they were informed, insightful and devastatingly incisive.
Like Germaine, she was often called strident. Criticisms like that stung her deeply. But it was typical of Patricia that she immediately broke the word 'strident' into two words, 'stir' and 'tend'. And those two words symbolised her life. She did stir up and disturb the comfortably churched. She did stir up and irritate the armchair ecclesiastical liberals.
She dared to challenge the sincerity of their commitment to women, in the same way as she challenged the overt opponents of women's ordination. And she tended to those who were distressed and harmed by the Church and its leaden, sometimes cruel ways.
I cannot speak of her as a forensic and medical sexual assault clinician, but I am sure her approach was exactly the same: a bold, courageous, uncompromising quest for true justice.
It would be remiss not to include her voice here. In 1989, she wrote:
To have gone to the press and onto the streets and declared publicly in front of our cathedrals that a great wrong was being done to women in the Church, put our hearts into our mouths. But, in the prophetic tradition, it isn't a bad place for the heart to be kept.
Now she is in the great company of prophets, not only the biblical ones but those who were her friends on earth: Angela of Stroud, Margaret Anne Franklin, Monica Furlong, Marie Louise Uhr, Camille
Paul, Alison Gent, John Gaden, Alder Hall among them.
Let us all mark 10 January in our perpetual calendars and remember the life of Patricia Brennan as a courageous prophet and dear friend.
Janet Scarfe was national president of the Movement for the Ordination of Women 1989–95. This tribute was read at Patricia Brennan's funeral at St Stephen's Church, Newtown, in Sydney, on 11 March 2011, by Janet Nelson, former convenor of MOW Melbourne.