Bishops’ conferences must accept Francis’ gift

From the editor's desk > Bishops’ conferences must accept Francis’ gift

Bishops’ conferences must accept Francis’ gift 

11 October 2017 Of the reforms of the Catholic Church promoted by Pope Francis, most attention has been given to his shaking up of the Vatican, in its membership, structure and culture. But little by little he has also been making progress at a wider international level, which in the long term may prove to be the more radical part of his agenda. He has been passing power and influence from centre to periphery, from the Holy See to bishops in individual dioceses and, even more significantly, to national and regional bishops’ conferences.
There are obstacles, but he seems bent on dismantling them. Under previous papacies, centralisation was institutionalised, for instance by the requirement that all translations of the Latin Mass into local languages had not only to be sanctioned by the Vatican but initiated and supervised by it. Pope Francis has intervened to restore to diocesan bishops, acting through the conferences, their proper authority over liturgy. It is reported this week that the German bishops’ conference has taken advantage of his motu proprio, Magnum Principium, and has set aside a translation of the Mass into German based on the rules set out in the 2001 Vatican document Liturgiam Authenticam.

More fundamentally, bishops’ conferences found themselves reduced to the status of little more than agencies of the Vatican by the judgement of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Emeritus Benedict) that they lacked theological standing. This was expressed in canon law by the requirement that actions of a bishops’ conference were subject to Vatican approval if they were to have legitimacy. The only other way they would acquire legitimacy would be if they were the action of every bishop in that conference. That unanimity is rarely accomplished, though it was achieved by the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales in 1996, when the text of their statement, The Common Good, was approved by each bishop, so it became an official “teaching document”.
Cardinal Ratzinger insisted that “episcopal conferences have no theological basis, they do not belong to the structure of the Church as willed by Christ”. Even if theologically correct – and not all bishops and theologians agree about that – that is not the end of the matter. Pope Francis likes to pepper his official documents with references to statements from bishops’ conferences, which means he takes their doctrinal authority seriously. Furthermore, there seems to be no reason why the Pope cannot invest bishops’ conferences with the authority Cardinal Ratzinger said they lacked. A change to canon law, that he would have to approve, could have that effect.
Whether this would be a transfer of authority and jurisdiction from the Bishop of Rome to conferences, or a recognition that that authority already exists, would be a moot point. Alternatively, all the bishops of a conference could unanimously agree to exercise their individual authority jointly, through the agency of their bishops’ conference. So whether from below or from above (or both), the authority deficit Cardinal Ratzinger detected – if it really existed – could be overcome. Some such rebalancing of forces inside the Catholic Church is clearly necessary, and was one of the reasons Francis was elected Pope in 2013.