Bishops Reject Pastoral Letter on Female Role

Nine years of sharp debate and soul-searching over the ordination of women priests ended Wednesday as the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops rejected a controversial statement on the role of women in society and the church.

On a 137 to 110 vote--53 short of the two-thirds required for passage--the prelates sealed a tumultuous chapter in the history of the American church over the ordination of women.

But it did not close the book on the ongoing debate.

Though the pastoral letter, which was repeatedly revised, strongly reaffirmed the church’s ancient tradition of an all-male priesthood, many advocates of women’s ordination said the mere fact that the bishops were debating the issue was a victory.

Said Sister Maureen Fiedler of the church reform group, Catholics Speak Out: “If there’s a real breakthrough in the bishops conference, it’s the fact that their silence is broken.”

Agreeing, Bishop Pierre R. Dumaine of San Jose told reporters: “The genie is now out of the bottle. . . . The debate will continue.”

Some bishops were quick to stress that the vote against the letter was not a vote against banning women priests.

These bishops, including Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago, said the missive was rejected on grounds that it was either too insensitive in dealing with the controversial subject of women’s ordination or too weak in advancing a rationale for upholding a male priesthood.

Others said the letter had strayed from the bishops’ original intent to address pressing social concerns affecting women, such as sexism and domestic violence, and had become too politicized and divisive.

The vote climaxed two days of debate at the fall meeting of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. After the letter’s defeat, the bishops voted to downgrade it to a less authoritative committee statement, which will become the basis for further study and dialogue. But there was little enthusiasm for reopening the protracted debate on the priesthood, at least at the authoritative level of a pastoral letter.

It marked the first time that a proposed pastoral letter--an authoritative teaching of the bishops--had ever been defeated in the United States.

Ironically, the letter’s defeat came on the eve of the Episcopal Church’s plans tonight to consecrate the Rev. Jane Holmes Dixon as the second woman bishop in its history and the third in the 70-million-member worldwide Anglican Communion. The consecration will take place at Washington Cathedral, less than a mile from the hotel where the Catholic hierarchy was meeting.

Last week, the Church of England--the mother church of the Anglican Communion, which broke with Rome in the 16th Century--voted to admit women to its priesthood.

Theological fissures in the solidarity of the 285 bishops over the volatile issue were evident throughout the debate.

Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland of Milwaukee warned that passage of the letter would divide the church even more than Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae encyclical in 1968, which prohibited artificial birth control.

“We have not recovered from (that), and I think we will add another tremendous crisis to our church,” Weakland warned. “We’re going to lose another generation, especially another generation of wonderful women.”

Others, including Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles, declared that the church must reaffirm its case barring women priests.

“We have to remember that Jesus’ own teaching often met with scoffing and those who walked away from it,” Mahony said. “But Jesus did not alter or refabricate the teaching. He kept proclaiming it over and over.”

Austin B. Vaughan, auxiliary bishop of New York, declared: “As far as (Rome) is concerned, the issue is over. I believe the doctrine is unchangeable, which means if the world lasts to 2000 or 20,000 or 20 million there will still be a Catholic church and it will have an all-male clergy. A woman priest is as impossible as for me to have a baby.

“And the reason I can’t have a baby is not because of any intrinsic unworthiness or a lack of maternal feelings on my part,” Vaughan continued. “I have some maternal feelings. So when we say women can’t be ordained we are not saying anything about the worthiness of women or the lack of pastoral qualities that are desirable in men.”

A day earlier, Bishop Michael H. Kenny of Juneau, Alaska, an outspoken advocate of women’s ordination, pointedly told the conference there was “widespread, deep and thoughtful dissent” from the Vatican’s opposition to women priests, a position that was causing “pain, anger and growing alienation of some of the most thoughtful and loyal men and women in the church.”

Several times during the debate, bishops voiced alarm that the letter’s defeat would be seen as a defeat for Rome. Bernardin said most bishops were unflinching in their support of an all-male priesthood.

Indeed, many bishops agreed that the Roman Catholic church’s ancient tradition will remain inviolate during the pontificate of Pope John Paul II.

Despite Bernardin’s insistence, some bishops warned that defeat of the letter would be widely seen as a repudiation of the exclusion of women from Holy Orders as deacons, priests and bishops.

“If we do not pass the document, we will call into question the teaching of the church (against women priests) that is affirmed in this letter,” said Bishop Donald W. Montrose of Stockton.

Several, in fact, did interpret the vote as a setback for the Vatican, among them Sister Fiedler. “It’s a message to the Vatican saying we disagree with you,” Fiedler said. The Pope has repeatedly spoken against admitting women to the priesthood, and several bishops here complained of Vatican “interference” in the U.S. deliberations.

In the end, a raft of 11th-hour amendments and waves of debate could not repair the division between conservatives and liberals--a division foreseen three days earlier by the chairman of the bishops’ committee that wrote the letter, who all but conceded defeat.

Quoting from the Gospel of St. Matthew, Bishop Joseph L. Imesch of Joliet, Ill., told the assembled cardinals, archbishops and bishops: “ ‘We played wedding music for you, but you would not dance. We sang funeral songs for you, but you would not cry.’ ”

He added: “How history will judge our efforts during the past nine years may be disputed. What cannot be disputed is the fact that women have very deeply felt and legitimate concerns, concerns that range from abuse at home, less than equal standing in society and in many ways less than equal standing in the church. For nine years women spoke and we listened. We must not forget what we heard.”