Bishops Reject Plan to Let Lay People Preside at Funerals : Catholicism: The prelates, at their fall meeting, also launch a plan to help parochial schools. They hear a report on a letter discussing women’s rights.

U.S. Catholic bishops this week surprisingly rejected a proposal to let lay people conduct funerals in dioceses where priests are scarce, one of the wide-ranging issues they discussed during their fall meeting.

They acted more predictably on matters ranging from sex education to aid for financially strapped Catholic schools.

Prelates at the National Conference of Catholic Bishops also endorsed a Nov. 7 letter from Los Angeles Archbishop Roger M. Mahony to Secretary of State James A. Baker III raising moral objections to the possible use of military force by the United States in the Persian Gulf.

Here are some of the issues that were discussed:

* The bishops voted 136 to 113 to defeat a plan that would have allowed lay people to preside at funerals but not celebrate Mass in parishes with few priests.

The Catholic Church faces an acute shortage of priests in the United States at a time when debate is intensifying over the role of priests and the traditional bans on women and married clergy.

“We bishops must affirm our priests and we must do what we can to help them form priestly identities,” said Bishop James P. Keleher, of Belleville, Ill., in opposing the plan. “My fear is that it will further erode their identity.”

But Archbishop Francis T. Hurley of Anchorage, Alaska, said the plan was needed because some dioceses must cope not only with a shortage of priests but also with extreme distances and weather conditions. It would be “narrow-minded and shortsighted if we’re not going to allow the bishops to have this freedom,” Hurley said.

* The bishops were told that their long, sidetracked struggle to delineate church rights of women still is “alive and well.”

After seven years, “the work continues,” said Bishop Joseph L. Imesch of Joliet, Ill., head of a committee striving to shape a pastoral letter on women.

Past drafts of the proposed teaching letter have been widely criticized as contradictory in asserting equal standing of women, yet reiterating that they remain ineligible for the most influential role, the priesthood.

Action on the letter initially had been scheduled at this week’s meeting, but was postponed in September by an administrative committee.

* The bishops approved principles for more sexually inclusive language in a new lectionary, the cycle of Bible readings for worship service.

Terms such as “brethren” would be rendered “brothers and sisters” and “man” as “people.” Also, blanket pejorative references to “the Jews” become “the Jewish authorities” or “leaders.”

* The bishops modified a planned pastoral letter on the 1992 observance of the coming of Columbus and Europeans to America, to recognize abuses inflicted on American Indians and blacks.

Archbishop Edward A. McCarthy of Miami, head of a committee that drafted the pastoral letter commemorating the coming of Europeans to America, said it has undergone major revisions.

It deals with concerns of “Native Americans, Hispanics, blacks, Asians,” he said, adding that putting it together has been a “learning experience.”

“We do not glorify every act of the church,” he said. “We do not excuse our mistakes.” But the document also brings out Christianity’s positive contributions in early America.

* The bishops launched a major program to help churches of Eastern Europe recover from their prolonged suppression under communism.

Presenting the plan, Archbishop John L. May of St. Louis said churches there have suffered a “man-made disaster” resulting from years of persecution. With the collapse of communism, he said, they are “like a man just emerging from the darkness of a cave, standing there, blinking in the bright light of freedom.”

Mahony said the “opportunities of the churches risen from Soviet domination are tremendous, but they have no means” to exercise their potential.

* The bishops adopted their first comprehensive guidelines on human sexuality, calling it a “wonderful gift” and emphasizing chaste disciplines to nurture it.

“We do not fear sexuality, we embrace it,” the bishops said in both lauding that human endowment and reaffirming traditional church restraints in expressing it.

While maintaining long-established church disapproval of premarital and extramarital sexual intercourse, the document does so in gentle, reasoned tones, and somewhat tempers past strictures against homosexuality.

“Such an orientation, because not freely chosen, is not sinful,” said an amendment added in a motion by Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago and several others.

A flurry erupted over the document’s reiteration of the church ban on contraception. Surveys indicate that a large proportion of Catholics reject the ban.

Bishop Kenneth E. Untener of Saginaw, Mich., noting that dissenters are asked to prayerfully reconsider, said they might respond: “We will if you will.”

He said the Holy Spirit acts through people, and the bishops had better listen to them to maintain the church’s credibility. “If we don’t it will cause great damage to the church at large,” he said.

* The bishops, marking the first anniversary of the murders of six Jesuit priests and two women in El Salvador, remembered them as “martyrs” and called on the United States to abandon the pursuit of military solutions to the Salvadoran conflict.

The six Jesuits, their housekeeper and her 15-year-old daughter were shot in the early hours of Nov. 16, 1989, apparently by members of the Salvadoran armed forces, eight of whom have been arrested in the killings.

Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee announced that he would lead an unofficial Catholic delegation to the country. He described the weeklong visit by four U.S. bishops, accompanied by priests, nuns and lay leaders as a “journey of solidarity” with the church and people of El Salvador. He said the delegation would meet with Salvadoran government and military leaders to discuss the status of the Jesuit case.

* The bishops launched a multimillion-dollar campaign to aid Catholic schools, including an increased lobbying effort to win approval for government funding of religious schools.

“This is the last civil rights struggle,” said Bishop Edward Eagan of Bridgeport, Conn., discussing the campaign to win tax support for parochial schools and parents who send their children to such schools. Eagan said he was “outraged” that “all tax money goes to (public) schools where religion is not taught.”

There are about 1,350 Catholic high schools with 630,000 students, and 7,500 elementary parochial schools with nearly 2 million students in the Catholic education system.

But church officials said costs have increased 500% in the last 20 years, more than twice the increase in the consumer price index, and the number of potential Catholic students has sharply declined, putting the schools--especially in inner-city urban parishes--under heavy financial pressure.

At the heart of the effort is a $2-million program for a national office that will direct parents and schools in a lobbying effort to win federal aid for parochial schools.