A Mission Impossible

With the publication of the second draft of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops' pastoral on women's concerns, One in Christ Jesus, the inherent problematic of the process continues. Simply stated, that problematic is that a committee of men, albeit men of good will, circumscribed by a patriarchal institution, are attempting to respond to the current women's movement, whose goal is to dismantle patriarchy in all its personal and structural manifestations.

Despite the bishops' extraordinary effort to listen to women in more than 100 diocesan hearings throughout the country, as well as receiving 75,000 responses to the first draft of the pastoral, the historic problem remains intact: The men of the Roman Church continue to assume the right and the responsibility to define women and to interpret women's experience.

Identifying this central problematic does not deny that the bishops on the pastoral committee have tried to respond to the issues women named in the hearings and in the responses to the first draft. They have listened, and they have been able to name many of the critical issues and unjust circumstances that shape women's lives. They have clearly identified sexism as a sin and have recognized the church's implication in the perpetuation of that sin. That is a significant admission.

They have named both the overt and the subtle violence against women, which occurs to individuals and to women as a group. They have condemned rape, pornography, incest, and domestic abuse as well as the structures of exclusion, exploitation, and diminishment women are forced to endure.

They have called upon men in families to assume greater responsibility for parenting and the quality of family life. They have called upon all men both in the church and in society to examine their consciences and move beyond sexist attitudes and behaviors. They have identified the growing poverty of many women and called for more just wages and salaries in the church as well as in society.

The bishops on the committee have used their position as leaders of the Roman Church to name and condemn the problems women endure as a result of the sin of sexism. It is this power to name and condemn evil that has convinced the committee to continue the process despite opposition from some women and men in the church. However, they have not been as successful in charting a direction that will lead the church and the society beyond sexism, because they have not addressed the central problematic -- the patriarchy that structures the Roman Church.

IN THE FIRST CHAPTER OF the draft, the bishops define the radical equality between women and men which has its roots in creation and redemption. However, the bishops are not able to endorse the implications of this radical equality throughout the rest of the document because of the current structures of the church.

For example, in discussing the question of women and the ministerial priesthood, the bishops repeat and do not refute a central structural critique of the all-male priesthood: "Exclusion from the ministerial priesthood, they [the women] observe, results in the exclusion of women as a class from formal participation in governance and authoritative teaching in the Catholic church. "

The bishops do not respond to this statement. They choose instead to address the issue with a defense of the tradition based on a Christology and theology of symbolic representation that confuses the historic Jesus with the risen Christ and again begs the question whether, according to the church, women are as fully represented in the Christ as men. The bishops are caught on the horns of their own dilemma and their plea for unity in the face of this contradiction is less than compelling.

For the majority of Catholic women, the question of ordination is not the most important question, but it remains the key structural issue because ordination is linked to jurisdiction in the current model of church. In the second draft, the bishops do not face the structural implications of the all-male priesthood, which is at the heart of the patriarchal structure of the church. Hence the inherent problematic of the pastoral and of the church remains untouched.

The bishops' failure to address the structure of patriarchy in the church weakens the recommendations for change that the pastoral advocates. The action recommendations at the end of the draft focus more on changing attitudes by teaching, preaching, announcing, and denouncing than on the kind of structural transformation that would lead to the radical equality and mutuality that the opening section of the document enunciates.

The pastoral process is not over, nor does the committee believe that this document is or can be the final word on the issues and questions raised. The document itself is open to amendments by bishops before it will be presented to the National Conference of Catholic Bishops for final approval at the annual meeting in November 1990.

But the search for transformation will not be over even then. The bishops recognize that "Transformation is a slow and at times a painful process, but in the end, it is a more fruitful and a more Christian exercise to research, to debate, to invite, and to persuade than it is to declare and stand by a position that has not been exposed to this kind of scrutiny. "

I hope this message is addressed to the institutional hierarchy as well as to the faithful women and men of the church. The content of this draft does not always make that clear.

Maria Riley, O.P., was specialist in women's issues for the Center of Concern, an international justice and peace center in Washington, D.C., when this article appeared.