A Long, Winding Road : Catholics: After eight years, a committee hopes it is finished drafting pastoral letter on women. Will this version win approval? ‘God knows,’ sighs one bishop.

The bishops seemed momentarily puzzled.

Their first discussions with the six women--two nuns and four laywomen--had been going well. The atmosphere in the meeting room was a little polite, a little formal, a little awkward.

But after awhile, one woman finally asked, “What do we call you?”

In the not-too-distant past there would have been no question: Bishops were called “Your Excellency,” and Catholics genuflected and kissed their amethyst episcopal rings upon greeting them. But this was 1984, and by then the modern-day patriarchs were commonly addressed as “bishop.”

“I hear you calling us by our first names,” the woman continued.

The group settled on first names all around: consciousness-raising lesson No. 1 for the committee studying the role of women in the Roman Catholic Church and in society.

“But you know,” says committee chairman Bishop Joseph Imesch of Joliet, Ill., recounting that Washington meeting, “that woman still can’t bring herself to call me anything but ‘bishop.’ She’ll say ‘Bishop Joe,’ not just ‘Joe.’ I can’t believe it.”

Now, almost eight years later, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ ad hoc committee is putting what its members hope are the finishing touches on its pastoral letter, called “One in Christ Jesus.” (A pastoral letter is a high-level but non-binding guideline meant for teaching Catholics--in this case, American Catholics.)

In its current draft, the letter condemns sexism, encourages partnership in marriage and stresses the equality of women. It also calls for more church leadership roles for women, but does not advocate their ordination as priests.

Late last month, the Pope called a delegation of American bishops to Rome for a rare meeting to discuss the letter with Vatican officials and prelates from around the world.

The document did not get rave reviews. The Americans were sent home with the admonishment to tone it down, to try harder to bring the letter in line with official church teaching and tradition. It was also suggested that it might be downgraded from a pastoral letter to a less authoritative status.

It is uncertain whether a pastoral letter, or a document by any name, will be adopted as policy by American bishops. But some of those involved in the process see the final outcome as secondary to the process itself.

“This is a time (in the church) when more people specifically and consciously have approached an issue, and were invited to do so, than ever before in our country. It will never be without its own good fruit,” says Bishop Matthew Clark of Rochester, N.Y., a committee member.

In their work, the bishops have been aided by five consultants--Catholic women from diverse academic fields: Ronda Chervin (philosophy), Sister Sara Butler (theology), Pheme Perkins (Scripture), Mary Brabeck (psychology) and Toinette Eugene (sociology).

Two other women also have worked with the committee. Sister Mariella Frye, a bishops’ conference staff person, is the group’s official note-taker. And Susan Muto, a scholar and writer with a background in spirituality, joined after initial meetings and is drafting and editing the proposed document. (Frye and Muto accompanied the bishop’s delegation to the Vatican meetings in May--as silent observers.)

The bishops and women have labored through intense two- and three-day sessions (three and four times a year), two published drafts, countless revisions, and thousands of pages of testimony from 75,000 Catholic women and women’s organizations around the country.

And three resignations.

Perkins, Brabeck and Eugene have steadfastly refused to publicly discuss why they resigned. Their views, however, were generally considered liberal.

Imesch attributes their resignations to the length of the process, first targeted for completion in 1988. And, he says, “They saw it as an exercise in futility. They thought they weren’t being listened to.”

Some Catholic feminists have criticized, or dismissed, the letter as wrong from its inception. Although the letter thus far has condemned sexism as a sin, these critics say the letter itself should have been on sexism, not women; they say the problem in the church and society is sexism, not women.

In discussing the pastoral letter, the media and those outside the bishops’ conference have tended to focus on specific, controversial issues such as abortion, birth control and women’s ordination as priests.

The drafting committee is divided on such issues. Although the document deals with them, it cannot, and generally is not expected, to go beyond existing church law and dogma. At most it can urge further discussion.

The real debate--and the real division on the committee--Imesch and others have said, is over what it means to be male or female.

Some members emphasize equality and downplay the notion of complementary differences, other than reproductive, between the sexes, saying the superiority of one sex is implicit in that approach. Others celebrate the differences, and say the sexes don’t have to be identical to be equal.

Chervin, a 54-year-old philosophy professor at St. John’s Seminary of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in Camarillo, says there also is a tension between those who think church problems can be resolved within the present basic framework, and those who want radical change.

Committee members like herself, who favor the former, believe women can assume more leadership roles in the Church without being ordained, Chervin says. Others call for ordination and say the current structure--which they call hierarchal, patriarchal, medieval--must go.

When Sister Sara Butler was named a consultant to the bishops’ committee on women’s roles in the church, Catholic publications reported that she advocated women priests.

Not anymore.

“I’ve changed my mind,” says the 52-year-old theologian and member of the Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity.

Butler, who has taught systematic theology at the seminary of the Archdiocese of Chicago for the last two years, doesn’t attribute the change only to her work on the committee. Rather, she says, it’s been a process of scholarship and thinking that began in the mid-’70s:

“I’ve gone from finding no serious theological objections to some theological reasons in favor of the church’s teaching. I haven’t reached a final, final conclusion.”

She knows the change distresses some people, but says “I haven’t received any letters saying, ‘You rat fink.’ ”

Butler describes the committee’s almost eight years of work in conflicting terms: enriching, challenging, consuming, exhausting, often frustrating. “We get something to respond to at least once a week. There are great paroxysms of rewriting,” she says. The revision of the third draft is “sitting on my chair right now.”

As the group’s work has proceeded, the ad hoc committee has moved from its awkward beginnings in a sterile hotel meeting room to more informal sessions in retreat houses. The setting, group members say, is more conducive to work, prayer and friendship; they pray, eat, write, work and relax together.

“No doubt what has kept us energized in terms of the process is what has occurred at a very human level,” says Muto, who teaches at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and directs the Epiphany Assn., a center for Catholics seeking practical ways to develop a deeper spiritual life.

“In the first years, we were all testing each other’s waters. Here we were writing about partnership and redemption, mutuality, and we found ourselves living what we were writing about. We’d sit together in that room, and then find ourselves going out for beer and pizza and talking about our lives and experiences.”

The work itself, Clark says, has been conducted in a far more casual manner than outlined by Roberts Rules of Order--seriously, but informally.

“I wouldn’t say that we’ve fought,” he says, “but we have had some tense moments, moments of high emotion. We’ve been respectful of experiences, but you can’t work together for eight years without bumping into each other.”

Muto says the experience generally has been one of growing relaxation and trust: “Maybe, we’ve even come to do what Jesus told us to do: Love one another.”

Clark calls the process, and the years of listening to testimony from women throughout the country, “a real eye-opener. The heart of it would be an awareness of the real experience of women. It has not always been terribly easy to sit and listen. You discover a good deal of pain and anger and some of that anger comes at you.”

Frye says she’s now comfortable calling herself a Christian feminist. In the beginning, she says, “I knew very little about feminist theology. I knew there was something wrong with the church and society, that women were oppressed, but I hadn’t gone underneath. My consciousness was really raised. . . . I’m aware of the inconsistencies.”

She has also watched the raising of bishops’ consciousness. At first, Frye says, the bishops simply didn’t understand when women criticized the patriarchal structure of the church. Now, she says, some bishops call their brethren to task, admonishing them to “pay a little more attention to the patriarchal structure that perpetuates the oppression of women.”

Chairman Imesch--just back from Rome and on his way to a bishops’ meeting where current revisions to the letter were to be discussed--sounded battle-weary as he talked from his office in Joliet about the future of the committee’s document.

The third draft may be presented to the annual meeting of the 350 American bishops in November. After that, he says dryly, “God knows. God knows.”

He has enjoyed working with the women consultants, “seeing them participate with this thing, and appreciating their expertise and ability to see several sides,” Imesch says. “It’s been a delight.”

But the pastoral letter itself, he says, has “been like having a dentist redrill the same tooth for eight years.”