Religion: Replying to A Call to Action

Women priests. Married priests. A more tolerant attitude toward birth control and homosexuality. Those were among the 182 proposals issued in Detroit last October by 1,350 Roman Catholic delegates at a conference known as A Call to Action. While liberal Catholics happily mailed out copies of the Detroit proposals, which were based on the work of seven regional hearings and hundreds of discussion groups around the country, traditionalists urged the hierarchy to ignore them. One of the latter called the event "demonic."

Cincinnati's Archbishop Joseph Bernardin, president of the bishops' conference, acknowledges that the Detroit meeting "tended to increase polarization and factionalism" in some quarters. Nonetheless, last fall he named a task force of bishops to figure out what response should be made. The behind-the-scenes struggle centered on preparation of a statement giving the hierarchy's formal views on the issues. The statement of response went through seven drafts. One version, completed in March, had a "Neanderthal" view of the church, in the opinion of Bishop James Rausch of Phoenix, the former general secretary of the bishops' national staff.

Last week, however, when 246 U.S. bishops gathered in Chicago's Palmer House to discuss the matter at their semi-annual meeting, the 5,000-word final draft of the statement expressed appreciation for the Detroit meeting and a willingness to at least think about its long list of recommendations. Moreover, a group of 20 Call to Action enthusiasts, led by Newark's Archbishop Peter Gerety, put through an amendment that sets up a special committee to monitor the handling of the Detroit proposals over the next five years.

All 182 of the recommendations will be turned over to committees of bishops, but the four most disputed topics from Detroit have already been ruled out by the Vatican and therefore dismissed in advance by the U.S. bishops:

CELIBACY. The bishops' statement endorses the "longstanding view of the church" that requires celibacy for all Western priests, and notes that this was "overwhelmingly" supported by the 1971 international Synod of Bishops.

WOMEN PRIESTS. The bishops "affirm" the Vatican's recent statement barring women's ordination and defeated a proposal favoring women deacons. They pledge a generalized commitment to wider roles for women and "further study" of the priesthood issue, but rejected an amendment admitting that "many persons find difficulty" with the Vatican's reasoning.

BIRTH CONTROL. Though the Call to Action conference asked the bishops to endorse a married couple's right to decide what forms of contraception are moral, the new statement skirts the question of freedom of conscience and supports Pope Paul's statements against all artificial methods.

HOMOSEXUALITY. The bishops sidestep the Detroit appeal for an end to discrimination against homosexuals and repeat the church teaching that homosexual activity is morally wrong.