Editorials

...Meese's problems are both legal and administrative...

...These details point to the letter's real strength...

...That is not the conclusion of partisan opponents or a hostile media...

...Something of these second-order problems also characterizes the discussion on contraception...

...But what women have said to the bishops and what is written in the letter is certainly not all that women are saying...

...McKay has indicated that he will forward the investigations to the Office of Government Ethics and the Justice Department's own Office of Professional Responsibility for further review...

...With Meese unable to remember and refusing to depart, we can expect further erosion of confidence within the department: more infighting, gridlock in appointments, and further diminishment of the attorney general's own power...

...Yet in most respects, the women's testimony is neither formally representative nor expert...

...The failure of his touted drug war can be read in the streets...

...The language of victims and the image of victims eclipse the language of moral agency and the image of women as actors and authors of their own lives...

...In some cases, predictable restatements of church teaching, for example the prohibition against women's ordination, are couched with explicit and courteous recognition of widespread questioning by theologians and others...

...This framework lets women describe their experiences with men, with society, with the church...

...As head of the Justice Department, Mr...

...It has consulted the experience of many whose talents and aspirations are unjustly overlooked, especially in the church...

...Through the letter the bishops have used their office as a medium for urging reconciliation and reform, in particular, calling men to an examination of patterns and attitudes that regard women as inferior...

...Differences among women based on race, class, education, and their divergent choices about work and family are implicitly recognized and responded to...

...The drafting committee admits that...

...The letter will have its critics, both those who think the bishops have no real moral credibility in speaking about women, and those who think that they squander their moral authority in giving voice to feminist criticisms...

...One paradoxical outcome of this strategy is that women end up being catalogued primarily in terms of their relationship to men...

...Is this any way to head a department that should be synonymous with propriety...

...Special Prosecutor James McKay this month announced that as of now there is insufficient evidence to bring specific indictments against Meese in either case...

...We agree...

...This overall framework, a great strength in airing criticisms and grievances, becomes a barrier to another level of understanding- one that considers the concerns of women because of their accomplishments...

...If Meese would not step down, Weld must...

...The majority report of the congressional Iran-contra committee last November questioned the attorney general's ' 'competence and professionalism.'' It concluded that the president had been "poorly served" by his attorney general...

...Meese has a record of ill-conceived, politically motivated nominations (Bork, Gins-burg, and Siegan), not to mention the appeal to partisan theories ("jurisprudence of original intent...

...They are mothers, wives, parents, halves of engaged couples...

...That does not trouble the attorney general...

...Meese to step aside voluntarily until all pending federal investigations into his conduct have been completed...

...it creates room for words of sorrow, pain, outrage, and disagreement as well as of appreciation and praise-words and experiences that the six-member drafting committee could not appropriately speak itself...

...The attorney general has been inept at reading the signs of the times (the Cuban detainees' riot) and of coming to grips with internal, departmental racism (the FBI...

...The testimony of tens of thousands of women before diocesan commissions and national organizations, and in hearings organized by the drafting committee, has been heard and the bishops have taken it to heart...

...The pastoral is not a work of critical analysis...

...they are single, separated, divorced...

...they send off that one and summon another...

...So is the no-win situation of many women subject to demeaning remarks and attitudes no matter what path they choose or have forced upon them, be it full-time parenting, parenting and full-time career, single parenthood, or remaining single...

...In other cases more direct changes are proposed by the bishops- opening the diaconate and minor orders to women is virtually endorsed...

...The emphasis on experiences and feelings overshadows fact and analysis...

...Rather, the pastoral sums up and consolidates the personal, familial, and existential realities that the women's movement raised to consciousness in its first decade-and-a-half...

...With Meese's approval, the administration has made misrepresentations to Congress...

...The pastoral is not at the cutting edge of the social, cultural, psychological, and economic issues still being raised by the changing status of women, nor is that cutting edge an appropriate or credible place for the bishops...

...His confirmation was delayed nearly a year as a special prosecutor investigated Meese's financial dealings and political appointments while chief counselor to the president...

...The pastoral looks at those issues from the point of view of "our Catholic heritage," a heritage that at times is affirming-for example, about equal pay for equal work, affirmative action programs, and day care-while at other times it is counter-cultural-for example, about divorce where it provides a critical gloss to routinely accepted secular attitudes...

...they choose one interpretation over another...

...Since his confirmation in 1985, two other special prosecutors have been assigned to investigate Meese's association with the Wedtech scandal and possible involvement in the $1 billion Iraqi pipeline deal...

...But finally this letter is a cause for hope and a starting point for a new conversation first of all, among the whole body of U.S...

...While acknowledging that there are men who "shun any oppression of women," the bishops also say that "we [men] must courageously examine our attitudes for prejudices and stereotypes acquired in society which imply the inferiority of women or which have led to the perhaps unconscious assimilation of a concept of masculinity marked by domination and violence, sexual aggression, and indulgence...

...The straight-talking voices of many women, quoted in the text, constitute the expert testimony analogous to that of economists and arms controllers consulted by the bishops in writing the pastorals on the economy and on war and peace...

...As the letter says, women's voices need to be heard in the church's teaching on sexuality and marriage, and parents need support and reinforcement in forming their children's attitudes and behaviors...

...Is it sexist to suggest that they could, and should...

...They earn and they spend...

...Shades of the Gins-burg nomination...

...The bishops "regret and confess our individual and collective failures to respond to women as they deserve...

...Last year the same office noted that the attorney general had misrepresented his personal financial reports while attorney general...

...The bishops still have a long way to go...

...The committee did not conduct a public inquiry or write a draft at the same • level of theoretical sophistication as the pastorals on the economy and on war and peace...

...Increasingly, women are achieving power...

...Maybe the bishops should struggle with that puzzle as they continue to consult and begin work on the next draft of their pastoral...

...The church has listened to the great diversity of women who are members of its body...

...The church cannot merely restate norms and ideals, it must think, teach, discuss, and act within a fundamentally altered moral universe where the fear of pregnancy can no longer be counted on as a sanction to enforce church teaching about sex and marriage...

...That can hardly be said of the current head of the Department of Justice.head of the Department of Justice...

...As the Wall Street Journal reported (April 4), internal cost estimates have been doctored and lawmakers supplied with misleading documents related to drug enforcement programs...

...But we all have a long way to go...

...As attorney general, Mr...

...Meese's concerns have focused not on the business of the country, but on the business of his own self-defense...

...These include cases involving the Teamsters, the Stock Market's insider trading scandal, and any matter related to independent counsels...

...The bishops enumerate these evils of sexism in both blatant and subtle forms: rape, pornography, exploitation, abuse, job and wage discrimination, contempt, and condescending words and behavior...

...In Hopkins's wise phrase, "the just man justices...

...bishops at their meeting in June and between women and men in the church...

...The Office of Government Ethics found in 1985 that in certain financial transactions, Meese "had created the appearance of impropriety...

...The appeal against sexism produces its own sexist outcome...

...A decade ago this pastoral could not have have been written...

...And the second is: "You still have a long way to go...

...Ultimately, however, the bishops must press these issues with Rome if their conviction and credibility is to be taken seriously...

...His all-or-nothing view is: no indictment, no resignation...

...For preaching and teaching purposes, there is a clear-cut declaration that sexism is a moral and social evil...

...Too often the remedies proposed for sexist behaviors seem to depend on male initiative...

...The "expert testimony" is mainly that of victims who tell a story of oppression...

...The letter notes, for example, that Hispanic women must often live with social pressures that extol the role of mother, economic pressures that require them to work, and cultural pressures that keep them from acquiring the education that would allow them to hold good jobs...

...Meese's staying on raised the ' 'question of moral authority and the tarnishing of the department...

...And then there is avoidance: The carefully crafted words on women's ordination struck us and will be read by many, perhaps even some bishops, as an equivocation and evasion of the church's own sin of sexism...

...In the bishops' own responses are echoes of the painful examination of conscience that they clearly have had to undertake on hearing these critical words directed at men, but especially at themselves...

...As a result of his legal problems, he is now barred from participating in an unprecedented number of cases before the Justice Department...

...Finally, the letter insists that men "take seriously their responsibility in the realms of sexuality, procreation, and parenting...

...For example, the letter cites the report of women that' 'priest counselors told them to 'offer up to God' the abuse of their husbands...

...It is the verdict of six of the attorney general's own deputies who voted last month with their feet...

...Its constant reiteration in the letter gives the effect of seeming to be the only story...

...One of them, William Weld, head of the department's Criminal Division, put it succinctly: For him, Mr...

...His haste to paper over the disorder caused by the six resignations led him to announce two top appointments before they received full White House approval...

...LE MEESERABLE The longer Attorney General Edwin Meese remains head of the Department of Justice, the longer justice will wait to be served...

...Elliot Richardson has gone even further and asked Kim to step down...

...When they have more of it, will they handle it any better than men have...

...Meese has shown a curious unwillingness to investigate possible illegalities, to anticipate conflicts of interest, and to remember important details of administration policy-making (340 such lapses of memory before the congressional Iran- contra committee alone...

...Women are other than, more than, sex objects and sex subjects...

...The legal problems antedate his tenure as attorney general...

...The Justice Department under Mr...

...Attitudes tending toward [sexism] or an incapacity to deal with women as equals," the bishops judge to be "negative indications for fitness for ordination...

...They are politicians, policy makers, union leaders, teachers, pastoral workers, assembly line supervisors, journalists, employers, consumers, citizens...

...But in holding to the ban on artificial contraception, the bishops cripple the church's ability to come to grips with the sexual revolution that has come in the wake of the contraceptive one...

...Eleven members of the House Judiciary Committee have asked Mr...