Church Door Opens for U.S. Women

It’s tough to be a woman in the Catholic Church today. With the recent publication of the first draft of the bishops’ pastoral letter, “Partners in the Mystery of Redemption,” women’s concerns are on an ecclesiastical teeter-totter.

On the up side of the document, the bishops commit themselves to hearing the concerns of women, both the affirmations and the alienations. Strange as that may seem to people outside the church, this is a breakthrough. Going from the “seen but not heard” category to the “speak and be listened to” stage is a promotion for women’s concerns in the Catholic tradition. Score one for the bishops.

Strengthening the bishops’ effort to recognize the dignity of women is their call for individual and collective rejection and confession of the sin of sexism within the church. This is a remarkable admission from one of history’s most misogynist institutions. Keep pushing, bishops.

One move from acknowledgment of the sin of sexism to action against it is in seminary training. The bishops’ pastoral states, “. . . attitudes tending toward (sexism) or an incapacity to deal with women as equals should be considered as negative indications for fitness for ordination.” Implementation of this line would be marvelous, not only to further the dignity of women in the church but also upgrade the caliber of men in theological schools.

Significant, and in line with recent Catholic social teaching, is the bishops’ stand for affirmative-action legislation for women and children in the social and political realms. The problems that abused and exploited women face, the need for maternity leave, and safe and affordable child care are addressed. The bishops pledge advocacy, aid and church resources to help remedy these social ills. This public commitment to women’s critical concerns is laudable.

Important, also, is the call for women to participate in all liturgical ministries that do not require ordination. Hopefully this will support those bishops who are progressive about church ritual and prod those who reserve the sacramental life of the church to a male-only club. The compromise may be the best that one can expect for an already messy, centuries-old situation.

Now for the down side. The document is the result of a 2 1/2-year process in which 75,000 Catholic women expressed their concerns in parish meetings. This number alone would make a sociologist green with envy. However, the process provided no criteria for weighing the thousands of competing voices. Do the shrill syllables of the Phyllis Schlaflys in the church hold equivalent status with the desperate voices of illiterate, deserted welfare mothers? Shouldn’t the latter carry more weight than the former? The statistics are staggering: 8.7 million women in the United States are living alone with children.

Church tradition and the bishops’ 1986 pastoral on the economy teach that poor people have more of a claim to church attention and resources than previously awarded. To be just and credible, the bishops need to change aspects of this document to reflect a priority and preference for the voice of impoverished, abused and exploited women.

A closer scrutiny of what is under this wobbling teeter-totter reveals that while the ordination of women may not be a discussable issue, neither is it a dead issue. Many church members believe that women have a valid call to the priesthood. For these women, ordination is a matter of following their Spirit-led vocation. Therefore, to suppress discussion is to suppress the Spirit. This is a spiritual crisis not only for women but also for the church itself.

Sources indicate that papal will accounts for the absence of substantive study and diversity of views around women’s ordination. It was an act of acquiescence, by some bishops, to the Pope’s command not to engage in dialogue with groups that advocate the ordination of women. Apparently, other, progressive bishops felt that they could move ahead with addressing women’s concerns by dropping ordination as a topic for serious consideration.

This suggests a split in thinking that may be the glimmer of hope for authentic dialogue in the future. While the Pope is pushing the bishops to ordination orthodoxy, women will continue pushing the bishops to conscience orthodoxy. How long will those bishops who see the necessity of women’s ordination for the future of the church be silent?

Suggestion: Bishops who support the ordination of women might issue an alternative response. This would demonstrate the diverse thinking within the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, its true nature and division, and thus bring more credibility to both the conference and the individual bishops. Women and the church deserve no less.

In short, the letter is good but needs to be much better, necessary but insufficient, a beginning with a long way to go. We still have time. The final document is scheduled to be approved in November, 1989. There is time for us all--women and bishops--to pull together and express the fullness and depth of the concerns of American Catholic women.