From the Archives: June 1990 | Sojourners

From the Archives: June 1990

Women's Concerns

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 ... 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. ... 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.

This appears in the June 2012 issue of Sojourners