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Subject: Baltimore's Keeler to Head U.S. Bishops;Vote Set on Pastoral Letter On
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 04:53:56 EST
Message-ID: <57.1992Nov18.045356@AmeriCast.com>

Baltimore's Keeler to Head U.S. Bishops;Vote Set on Pastoral
Letter On Catholic Women's Role<By Gustav Niebuhr=Washington Post
Staff Writer

U.S.  Roman Catholic bishops voted overwhelmingly yesterday to
elect Baltimore Archbishop William H. Keeler, a church leader
widely regarded as a key figure in improving Catholic-Jewish re-
lations, president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops
(NCCB).

He succeeds Cincinnati Archbishop Daniel E.  Pilarczyk in the
three-year post. As president, he will chair the bishops' meet-
ings and serve as their chief spokesman.

Keeler, 61, who is considered a moderate on church matters, won
on the first ballot, receiving 176 votes from the 263 bishops
casting ballots at the conference's semiannual meeting. Of the
nine other candidates, none received more than 16 votes.

Ordained while a student in Rome in 1955, Keeler was installed as
Baltimore's 14th archbishop on May 23, 1989. He was elected to a
three-year term as the NCCB's vice president later that year. A
native of San Antonio, he had previously served as bishop of Har-
risburg, Pa.

In a statement praising Keeler's election, Rabbi Jack Bemporad,
director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding at Sa-
cred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn., said the archbishop
"has a unique gift for the reconciling of diverse opinions and
has shown skill in steering Catholic-Jewish dialogue through a
series of significant crises." Keeler is a member of the bishops'
Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs.

After the voting, the bishops turned to the most controversial
topic facing them at their meeting, the highly charged issue of
what roles women play in the church. In the discussion, a few
bishops even moved into territory the Vatican has declared off-
limits, debating whether it was permissible to discuss the ordi-
nation of women as priests.

The discussion was spurred by the bishops' pastoral letter on
women in the church. Although the document states that men and
women are equal and condemns sexism, church liberals argue that
it does not reflect the aspirations of Catholic women for church
leadership roles, including ordination as priests. A number of
activists, representing church reformist groups, have turned up
at the Omni Shoreham Hotel here to lobby the bishops to kill the
letter, which is now in its fourth draft.

Traditionalists, on the other hand, favor approval of the docu-
ment, saying it is consistent with church teaching, upholding the
all-male priesthood, reaffirming opposition to birth control and
criticizing homosexuality as an "objective disorder." The bishops
have scheduled a vote for today. If approved "A woman priest is
as impossible as for me to have a baby."<

-Bishop Austin B. Vaughan,>auxiliary bishop of New York>

by a two-thirds majority, the letter would become an official
teaching document of the bishops.

But Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, archbishop of Chicago and a lead-
ing figure among the bishops, recommended that the conference
refer the letter to its standing committees for "further study
and dialogue." Such a move, he indicated, would be a compromise
between those who want the letter approved and those who want to
see it voted down.

In the discussion that followed, two bishops questioned whether
Bernardin, through this action, might be leaving the issue of
women's ordination open to discussion at some future point. Ber-
nardin replied that he accepted the church's teaching that ordi-
nation of women was closed.

That did not deter others from pressing ahead. Bishop Michael H.
Kenny of Juneau, Alaska, warning of "the growing alienation" of
many Catholics who disagree with the church's stance, called "for
open and prayerful examination of the ordination question."

But Bishop Austin B. Vaughan, auxiliary bishop of New York, de-
clared not only was the question permanently closed but that, in
his opinion, a 1976 Vatican statement upholding the all-male pri-
esthood was "infallible."

"A woman priest is as impossible as for me to have a baby,"
Vaughan said. "When we say women can't be ordained we're not say-
ing anything about the worthiness of women. . . .  We're saying
this is the way God made it."

Afterward, Helen H. Hitchcock, director of Women for Faith & Fam-
ily, a traditionalist organization, praised Vaughan as a bishop
"willing to defend church teaching even when it's unpopular." She
said her group, which criticized previous drafts of the pastoral
letter as containing "radical feminist" ideas, believes the
current draft should be approved by the bishops.

But Sister Maureen Fiedler, coordinator of Catholics Speak Out, a
church reformist group, predicted the document would be tabled
today. "From the bishops I've talked to, (the letter's support-
ers) don't have the votes," she said.<02:43 11-18 NO CARRIER

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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