NEWS STORY: Pope tightens control over national bishops’ conferences

c. 1998 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Pope John Paul II is attempting to exert greater control over national bishops’ conferences in a new apostolic letter some church observers say has the potential to create ecclesiastical gridlock in Rome. The papal declaration requires action on major statements of faith and practice from the world’s 108 […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Pope John Paul II is attempting to exert greater control over national bishops’ conferences in a new apostolic letter some church observers say has the potential to create ecclesiastical gridlock in Rome.

The papal declaration requires action on major statements of faith and practice from the world’s 108 national bodies of bishops to be either unanimous _ a near impossibility in the United States with some 300 voting bishops _ or submitted to Rome for approval.


Bishop Anthony M. Pilla of Cleveland, president of the Washington-based National Conference of Catholic Bishops, welcomed the statement’s affirmation that bishops’ conferences can exercise appropriate teaching authority on important issues.

But he said Friday (July 24) unanswered questions raised concerns about the conference’s “ability to act in a timely manner.”

Major policy statements could be delayed for years if hundreds of documents from around the world started being dropped on administrative desks in Rome, where quick action is not the norm, said the Rev. Thomas Reese, editor of the Jesuit magazine America.

“It could paralyze the ability of the bishops’ conference to do any kind of creative work,” Reese added. “The practical effect … is that it’s going to be very difficult for them to do anything.”

U.S. church leaders have been meeting together since 1810, and by the time the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s encouraged the development of national episcopal conferences the American experience was a model for the church throughout the world.

However, that history also has been marked by tension, from Pope Leo XIIIs scolding papal encyclical on the errors of “Americanism” in 1899 to the recent discussions on the use of gender-neutral language in the liturgy and the toning down of a pastoral letter offering support to the parents of gay and lesbian children.

The Rev. Andrew Greeley, a University of Chicago sociologist and RNS columnist, said the latest apostolic letter, coming on the heels of a recent papal declaration limiting dissent by theologians, is troubling.


“It certainly does seem to impose ever more centralized control,” Greeley said. “They took care of the theologians a couple of weeks ago, and now they’re taking care of the bishops.”

Until now, the bishops’ conference required a two-thirds majority before issuing policy statements such as their influential pastoral letters on nuclear arms and the economy.

The apostolic letter says doctrinal declarations published in the name of the conference must be unanimously approved by the bishops who are members or receive approval from the Apostolic See.

While the U.S. church often issues statements by committees or smaller representative groups such as its 50-member Administrative Board, the apostolic letter also says smaller bodies “do not have the authority to carry out acts of authentic magisterium (binding teaching) either in their own name or in the name of the conference.”

Pilla said there are several questions the U.S. conference needs to clarify with the Vatican, including what documents fall under the purview of doctrinal declarations and how conferences are to understand the requirement for unanimous approval.

For example, he said, when the documents on war and peace and the economy each were overwhelmingly approved with less than 10 negative votes, “to me, that’s unanimous.”


Reese, the author of books on both the Vatican and the U.S. bishops conference, said such distinctions are critical.

If they allow flexibility in interpreting the requirement for unanimity and consider most of the U.S. bishops’ work pastoral rather than doctrinal, then the apostolic letter has little effect.

However, if church officials apply a strict literal interpretation, and Reese said he has never seen a pastoral statement that didn’t have some doctrine in it, actions by bishops’ conferences could languish for years on Vatican desks.

“It’s gridlock,” he said.

DEA END BRIGGS

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