"Baltimore's Keeler to Head U.S. Bishops." The Washington Post, 18 November 1992.

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

November 18, 1992

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 relations, 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' meetings 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 Harrisburg, Pa.

In a statement praising Keeler's election, Rabbi Jack Bemporad, director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding at Sacred 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 ordination 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 document, 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 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 leading 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. Bernardin replied that he accepted the church's teaching that ordination 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, declared not only was the question permanently closed but that, in his opinion, a 1976 Vatican statement upholding the all-male priesthood 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 saying 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 & Family, 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 supporters] don't have the votes," she said.