NEWS STORY: Former Archbishop Urges Changes at Vatican

c. 2000 Religion News Service NEW ORLEANS _ As examples of Roman Catholic church life that freeze Protestant interest in Christian unity, former San Francisco Archbishop John Quinn offers a fistful of Catholic horror stories. One involves himself. A few years ago, his own archdiocese’s Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley decided to award him […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

NEW ORLEANS _ As examples of Roman Catholic church life that freeze Protestant interest in Christian unity, former San Francisco Archbishop John Quinn offers a fistful of Catholic horror stories.

One involves himself. A few years ago, his own archdiocese’s Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley decided to award him an honorary degree. But such is Rome’s appetite for local micro-management, Quinn said, that his suitability for the award had to be confirmed by no fewer than three Vatican departments.


“What does it mean that a Catholic bishop cannot even receive an honorary degree without assurance from three Vatican offices that he is a man of sound faith?” Quinn asked in an appearance at Tulane University here.

And another Quinn story: When the Catholic bishops of England and Wales recently retooled the language in their marriage ceremony they were required to send the new translation to be approved by Rome, which studied it for four years and then returned it marked up with 400 objections.

If the papacy “is one of the major obstacles to unity among Christians,” this is partly why, Quinn said.

Such tales represent the kind of “centralization and micro-management” that are a real obstacle to other Christian churches’ full communion with Rome, the former archbishop said in a lecture sponsored by Tulane’s chair of Judeo-Christian Studies.

That means a Catholic ecclesiastical culture that centralizes all authority in Rome will have to go, said Quinn. In fact, the church will have to find a new way for the pope to act as pope if the Catholic church is to do its part in reuniting Christianity, he said.

Quinn has been thinking about Vatican reforms since retiring as archbishop of San Francisco in 1995.

He has had a star’s career in the church: rector of a Catholic seminary, bishop at the relatively young age of 38, archbishop of Oklahoma City and San Francisco and president for three years of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.


In his retirement he has produced a book, “The Reform of the Papacy: The Costly Call to Christian Unity” (Crossroad) setting forth several suggestions for making the papacy less objectionable to Protestants, without damaging the basic nature of the post as the Catholic church historically understands it.

Quinn described his book as his personal response to an invitation to all Christians from Pope John Paul II in a 1995 encyclical on Christian unity, “That They May be One.”

There, Quinn said, John Paul asked the church to suggest ways to change the way the papacy wields its power in a more democratic world.

But that would have to be done without damage to traditional Catholic belief that the pope is the chief shepherd of the church _ no mere ceremonial figurehead, but one given authority to use in the interest of the unity of the whole Christian church, Quinn said.

One change, Quinn suggests, is that Rome learn to treat with more respect the judgment of episcopal conferences, the groups of local bishops giving local Catholics guidance on modern concerns like homosexuality, economic justice and new cultural issues.

In practice, the Vatican has sought to curtail their influence.

In 1998 John Paul himself issued a worldwide instruction telling local bishops they can publish statements on doctrinal or moral issues only if they pass with a unanimous vote or are approved by the Vatican.


In the encyclical, Quinn noted, John Paul recalled the church’s first millennium, when the church lived without benefit of centralized Roman authority, when local churches appealed to Rome only on major issues, like helping to settle questions of heresy.

In those early days, he said, the church came to believe the guidance of the Holy Spirit was found not solely in the person of the pope, but in the pope’s concurrence with the common opinion of all the church’s bishops when gathered to consider a question in regional councils.

Today Catholic critics of John Paul see him as an authoritarian pope intent on gathering power to the Vatican at the expense of far-flung churches in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The 1998 order limiting local bishops’ teaching authority is but one of many similar examples, they say.

But Quinn made a very different argument at Tulane.

Instead, Quinn drew a sharp distinction between what John Paul wants for the church and what the Vatican bureaucracy wants: He praised John Paul as a visionary willing to rethink a new role for the papacy over the objections of an entrenched Vatican bureaucracy determined to hold centralized control.

In fact, he said, when John Paul circulated a draft of his encyclical to various Vatican departments, they thoroughly reworked it, to John Paul’s consternation, Quinn said. He rejected their changes.

But in his pointed recollection of the workings of the early church, “it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the pope is saying that the kind of Roman government we have today is not a necessity for the church,” Quinn said.


“He is implicitly holding up the modern episcopal conference as an example of a structure which could contribute to and be a vehicle for Christian unity.

“This is why the continuing Roman effort to diminish and abridge episcopal conferences is so very harmful to the search for Christian unity.”

DEA END NOLAN

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!