Bishops All but Abandon Issue of Women Priests

Faced with insurmountable differences among themselves and doctrinal limits imposed by the Vatican, the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops have all but abandoned a nearly decade-long effort to address rising demands for the ordination of women priests.

Despite intensive efforts during the last six months to salvage a controversial draft statement on the role of women in society and the church, U.S. bishops appear nowhere nearer agreement than they were when they met to discuss it last June. Many bishops believe that the statement, known as a pastoral letter, will be tabled when the National Conference of Catholic Bishops meets in Washington next week.

If that happens, it will signal an end to a long and often fractious attempt to reconcile the competing claims of modern society with a tradition of the all-male priesthood that has served the Roman Catholic Church for two millennia.

“No one was calling for it,” Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles, said of the letter. “It has minimal amount of ownership and has created an enormous amount of controversy and conflict.”

For nine years, the nation’s 275 Catholic bishops have grappled with the issue of women’s ordination--many of them torn between a desire as shepherds and teachers to address the concerns and discontent of Catholic women in America while remaining faithful to sacred vows of obedience to Rome.

Their dilemma came against a backdrop of rising political power and influence for women in the United States, dramatically demonstrated again last Tuesday with the election of four more women to the U.S. Senate.

At the same time, there has been a widening chasm between Roman Catholics and the church’s bishops over issues as diverse as birth control and the ordination of women as deacons, priests and bishops.

A Gallup poll of U.S. Catholics last June found that 67% of those surveyed favored women priests, 58% supported women bishops and 80% supported women deacons.

But Pope John Paul II has repeatedly said that women cannot be ordained. In 1976, the Vatican affirmed “an unbroken tradition in the churches of the East and West of calling only men to ordained priesthood.”

Last June, when the bishops met at the University of Notre Dame, a third draft of the letter clearly lacked enough support to be approved in order to become an authoritative teaching of the bishops. The revisions made since then appear to have picked up few votes.

The latest version is not only viewed as more doctrinaire in barring women from the priesthood--in large part because of pressure from Rome--but far more muted than earlier drafts in voicing the concerns of women on the subject.

“The bishops who want to see a more open document are going to vote against it. And those who wanted a tighter document say even this is not tight enough,” said Bishop Joseph L. Imesch of Joliet, Ill., who chairs the committee that produced the latest draft.

Although there has never been any realistic expectation that U.S. bishops would depart from church doctrine and call for the ordination of women, there was hope among church reformers that the bishops would not foreclose dialogue, as the letter seems to do.

“I think they might have hoped that the questions might have remained open to some extent,” said Bishop John J. Snyder of St. Augustine, Fla., a member of the bishops’ committee on women in society and the church.

But its unbending reaffirmation of an all-male priesthood lies at the heart and soul of the controversy. “For many people, that is the issue,” Imesch said.

Many, including Imesch, say the effort was doomed from the beginning. “In my mind, I thought we could come up with some document to express the situation as it is. . . . Looking back now . . . it probably was not possible,” he said.

Not only were bishops divided among themselves, but the Vatican has repeatedly made its influence felt. In September, 1990, U.S. bishops postponed action on the letter indefinitely because Rome asked them to consult with bishops outside the United States.

Asked if Vatican consultation had continued during the last six months, Imesch replied: “More than we needed.”

Imesch is not alone in criticizing the Vatican’s involvement. Last month, Bishop Francis Murphy of Baltimore, an advocate of ordaining women, blamed lack of freedom of U.S. bishops for what he called the failure of the pastoral letter, entitled “One in Christ Jesus--A Pastoral Response to the Concerns of Women for Church and Society.”

Since the first draft was issued in April, 1988, the text has nudged closer to official church teaching. The first draft drew heavily on the testimony of women during a series of consultations. In later versions, the quotes were dropped.

“There are significant changes in the fourth draft, all for the worse,” said Sister Maureen Fiedler, co-director of a church reform group known as Catholics Speak Out.

The latest draft, quoting Popes Paul VI and John Paul II, states that there are limits to even the church’s authority to reinterpret God-given sacraments, one of which is the sacrament of ordination.

“The priest is a sacramental symbol of Christ,” the letter states. “The sacrament relies on the natural symbolism of gender to signify the relationship between the priest and Christ, the head and bridegroom of the church.”

“The clear meaning of that,” Fiedler complained, “is that women may not have a leadership role in the church. This smells to me like a contribution from the very, very conservative hierarchy in Rome.”

Others applaud the more restrictive language. Among them are the St. Louis-based Women for Faith & Family, a group that supports traditional Catholic teaching.

“The latest draft represents a pretty significant departure from earlier drafts,” Helen Hull Hitchcock, a leader in the group, said approvingly. She said that almost all changes bring the letter into conformity with church teaching.

Those who call for women’s ordination, she said, “do not represent a true picture of Catholic women in the church.”

Few believe that the letter’s demise will bring an end to the debate over admitting women to the priesthood. With women continuing to make strides in other aspects of national life--in the workplace, politics, and in laws that strike down social inequalities--pressure will continue to mount on the church’s hierarchy to respond.

“Because women have made substantive gains in society, they are expecting comparable gains in their church,” said Sister Jeannine Gramick, writing in the fall issue of the Critic, a Catholic quarterly. Gramick is co-founder of New Ways Ministry, which reaches out to gays and lesbians.

Some see a silver lining coming out of a nine-year consultation that included comments from 75,000 women in 100 dioceses and 25 national women’s organizations.

“It’s put women in the church on the front burner,” said Ruth Fitzpatrick, national coordinator of the Women’s Ordination Conference, based in Fairfax, Va. “It became the conversation piece in the halls of the Vatican.”

Indeed, the letter proposes that bishops “affirm as strongly as we can the equality and dignity of every woman and man created by God.” It denounces job discrimination, sexism, domestic violence, pornography and economic and social injustice toward women.

Were it not for the section on women’s ordination, Imesch said, the letter would probably be approved.

Since Vatican II, women have been given greater positions of authority within the church. They serve as spiritual directors, lectors at Mass, distributors of the Eucharist, and jail chaplains. They sit on parish councils, teach theology and lead retreats. In some dioceses, women serve as associate administrators, sit on marriage tribunals and, in one case, a woman is chancellor of a diocese.

Mahony, who opposes the ordination of women, nonetheless said their role in other capacities should be encouraged. “The issue for us is how to involve more women in the various ways that they can be involved now. We’re not doing enough,” he said.

Several bishops said that at next week’s conference they expected portions of the letter dealing with sexism and other topics to be referred to other committees for further study and refinement and to be the subject of symposiums.

In the meantime, bishops say they are keenly aware that they will continue to take the heat over women’s ordination.

“No matter what we do, we’re liable to get shot--and I’m not sure where,” said Bishop Snyder. “We have to be humble enough to say we tried to achieve something, but this is not the way we can achieve it.”