Sexism: The Church's Homemade Yoke

The U.S. Catholic bishops' rejection in November of a proposed pastoral letter on women concludes for now a decade-long effort that began in good faith and ended with grave doubts as to whether an all-male hierarchy should aspire to speak to the plight of women.

Pastoral letters are the most authoritative teaching statements of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Earlier letters on peace and the economy constituted defining moments for the U.S. church by bringing to bear Catholicism's understanding of the common good upon contemporary realities.

Sadly, the letter, "One in Christ Jesus," was not so destined. On the contrary, the document has come to symbolize the very sexism the U.S. bishops had hoped to speak of in a prophetic fashion. Under pressure from Rome, the U.S. bishops--minus a few good men--retreated from any real discussion in the letter of what progressives have defined as central to any discussion of justice: the church's prohibition against women priests. To make matters worse, the letter's treatment of sexism in general was greatly circumscribed over the course of four drafts. With Rome's signature all over the letter, few Catholics could believe that it genuinely reflected the views of the U.S. bishops, as had the peace and economic pastorals of the 1980s.

The controversy engendered by the letter is no surprise, given what was widely perceived as its significant potential. Consultations were held in 100 U.S. dioceses, involving an estimated 75,000 Catholic women who spoke of their concerns. The U.S. bishops ad hoc committee on women in society and the church convened national hearings. The bishops signaled a strong desire to root their understanding of church tradition and scripture in women's actual experiences.

Throughout the process, an intellectual tension was played out. Conservatives inveighed against "radical feminism" and urged the bishops to state in no uncertain terms that women are equal to but different from men--a "complementary" relationship whose most eloquent and sacred expression is motherhood. On the other end of the spectrum were those who said the whole process was absurd. They asked: How can a handful of celibate, mostly white males take it upon themselves to theorize about 50 percent of the Catholic population?

This tension turned out to be fatal to the pastoral. The U.S. bishops caved in to pressure from the Vatican, which urged a solid emphasis on the different but equal view of gender and a downplaying of sexism as a form of oppression. Women's voices were a major casualty of Vatican censoring--the Catholic women whose views had been liberally quoted in the first draft. By the end, few of the letter's prophetic moments had survived intact.

The third draft held that "sexism is so deeply rooted in the fabric of society that it tends to permeate human relationships and lead to other evils touched upon here." But by the final document, sexism was situated as one evil harming women alongside several others, including individualism, certain forms of feminism, and laws that treat men and women identically.

Sexism was still described as a "moral and social evil" in the final paper. But the bishops eliminated the sole reference that had remained in the third draft to the "sin of sexism."

IN REACTION to some bishops' complaints that the third draft seemed to engage in "priest bashing," the final letter eliminated most previous comments about some priests' failure to be sensitive to women. And there was a reduction in the number of places in which past or present failures or shortcomings of the church as an institution were acknowledged.

The document also backed away from an earlier emphasis on dialogue and searching for truth together as part of church life and instead focused more on authoritative teaching by the bishops. The previous draft stated the church's position on women priests but called for "continuing dialogue and reflection" on those issues: a deletion that confirmed the worst fears of the Catholic progressives who had hoped the letter would at least foreshadow further discussion of women's ordination.

When the letter came up for a vote in November, a core of progressive bishops persuaded prominent moderates that the letter could do serious damage among Catholic women. Early in the debate, Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland warned that approving the letter could create a reaction within the church as vast as that caused by Humanae Vitae, the 1968 papal encyclical prohibiting artificial contraception. Passage, he said, "would lose another generation, especially another generation of very wonderful women." Never before in the history of the bishops' 25-year-old conference has a pastoral letter been rejected.

Paradoxically, the failed pastoral is being viewed as a milestone in the fight for women's ordination. Only a week before the bishops met, the Church of England voted to ordain women, a sign not lost upon Catholic progressives. Whether the Catholic hierarchy can muster the courage to insist that women be welcomed into their ranks remains to be seen. What is certain is that most U.S. Catholics want to see women ordained--and until that day comes, the church will stumble under a yoke of its own making.

Demetria Martinez was a staff writer for the National Catholic Reporter in Kansas City, Missouri when this article appeared.