A Silence on Women at Bishops’ Gathering

Roman Catholic bishops from North and South America are wringing their hands over such problems as the impact of non-Catholic faiths on their continents, the role of poor nations’ international debt on their societies and lackluster parish life throughout the hemisphere.

But with only one week remaining in the four-week Synod on America, which will advise Pope John Paul II on the hemispheric issues, one of the most glaring omissions has been women’s aspirations inside the church and in society.

“I’m not sure what I’d attribute the silence to,” said Bishop Gerald Wiesner of Prince George, Canada, in British Columbia. “There are a number of people who have wanted to but haven’t publicly addressed the role of women. They seem reluctant to do so.”

Wiesner was among only a dozen of the more than 200 participants at the meeting to raise his voice about women’s issues in his “intervention,” an eight-minute statement made by bishops and other invited speakers to the synod.

He said he found the absence puzzling, particularly because John Paul encouraged discourse on the topic three years ago at a synod on religious life and in subsequent remarks.

In 1994, John Paul said of the church that “it is . . . urgently necessary to take certain concrete steps, beginning by providing room for women to participate in different fields and at all levels, including decision-making processes, above all in matters which concern women themselves.”

But what John Paul meant--and how it should be applied--remains something of a mystery. The 78-year-old pope, for example, has rejected any discussion of women’s ordination.

Likewise, he has not indicated whether the church will permit women to become deacons, or ministers, as they were permitted to do until the 6th century.

Many bishops privately favor the readmission of women to the male-only diaconate.

“I don’t want to stand apart and point the finger but I think we continue to take for granted and overlook the role of women,” said Sister Mary Waskowiak, president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and one of the few women invited to speak at the synod.

Waskowiak said as much to the pope over dinner in his private apartment.

“He asked me what I thought of the synod, and my personal response was I found hope in the fact that bishops and cardinals were talking to one another with the assumption we want greater solidarity,” she said.

“However, I expressed concern about missing voices at the synod, those of the poor and women. He nodded when I talked about the poor but didn’t react on the [theme] of women.”