c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. His home page on the World Wide Web is at http://www.agreeley.com. Or contact him via e-mail at agreelaol.com.)

(UNDATED) Quietly and respectfully, John R. Quinn, archbishop emeritus of San Francisco, has made some remarkable proposals about what the Catholic Church of the future should be.

In a talk delivered June 29 at Campion Hall, the Jesuit college at Oxford, Quinn suggested an ecumenical council be held in the year 2000 and called for sweeping reform of the Vatican bureaucracy known as the Curia.

Specifically, Quinn called for the Curia to curtail its powers over the bishops of the church and suggested that the role of the papal ambassadors, known as nuncios, be reduced. He called for a return to the practice of selecting bishops on the local level and suggested that pope’s synod of bishops, which meets every three years in Rome, be transformed into a deliberative body that establishes its own agenda and functions in broad and serious consultation by the pope.

In an interview that was distributed with his talk, Quinn elaborated on the matters that might be discussed at the council in the year 2000:”The role of women in the church and in society, the celibacy of the clergy, the reception of the sacraments by persons who are divorced and have remarried outside the church, contraception, an effective collegiality of the bishops, the meaningful application of the principle of subsidiarity in the church, the inviolability of human life from conception to natural death, the responsible use of the resources of the earth and the just distribution of wealth, inculturation of the Gospel and inculturation of the liturgy of the church, the appropriate freedom of the theologians.” (“Subsidiarity,”is the Catholic principle that nothing should be done by a higher or larger organization that could just as well be done by a lower organization.”Inculturation”is the way Catholic customs are adapted to the cultures of the various peoples all over the Catholic world.)

The tone of the archbishop’s talk and interview was moderate and respectful. While he was indeed critical of many of the events that have occurred during the papacy of John Paul II, Quinn expressed his criticism in the context of responding to the pope’s request in his 1995 encyclical on church unity”to find a way of exercising the primacy which while in no way renouncing what is essential to its mission, is nonetheless open to a new situation.” As the archbishop noted, there is a paradox at work here. If one is calling for something new, one is criticizing what presently exists. Quinn’s references to the pope’s recent affirmations of the essential nature of collegiality in the church often seem at odds with the way church authority has been exercised in recent years. Nonetheless, although he was gentle in what he said, Quinn pulled no punches when he described the violations of collegiality.”I do not call for the ordination of women, or the abolition of celibacy, or a change in the teaching on contraception,”Quinn said.”I do urge that bishops have a greater opportunity to discuss these and other major issues confronting our people.” Quinn’s analysis, in my judgment, is as accurate an assessment of the problems and possibilities the Catholic Church faces in this end of the century as anyone has made in recent years. Moreover, I think these are ideas whose time has come. They certainly are in accord with the research findings Michael Hout and I discovered in our study of what Catholics in many different countries expect from the next pope.

Quinn has shown considerable courage in speaking out on these matters. However respectful and loyal he may be, he will be seen as criticizing the pope. Catholic conservatives will be all over him.

No one likes to be criticized: not the pope, not bishops, not priests _ not even novelists and journalists. When the late Cardinal Leo Suenens of Belgium spoke out very gently against what he thought to be violations of collegiality by Pope Paul VI, the outrage orchestrated against him in effect drove him out of the public life of the church.

I have no idea how the pope will react to Quinn’s suggestions, but I assume that many of the men around him will try to poison his mind against the archbishop _ as they do against anyone who speaks out on anything.

As a retired archbishop, John R. Quinn has no career to lose. Nonetheless, he is a very brave man. His words should be taken seriously by everyone who cares deeply about the future of the Catholic Church.

MJP END GREELEY