The role of bishops in the Church and in the world
Jan 16, 2005
Two years after the gathering of representatives of the world’s Catholic bishops in Rome, the Pope used the twenty-fifth anniversary of his election last week to promulgate its conclusions – an exhortation on the role of the bishop, the “servant of the Gospel of Jesus Christ for the hope of the world”. The main interest of Pastores Gregis is how it deals with objections to Roman centralisation. It does so by declaring the concept of subsidiarity to be a dead letter when applied to the Church.
(The Tablet, 25 October 2003) The Pope’s signing of the post-synodal apostolic exhortation in a solemn ceremony before his assembled cardinals and bishops was the first act of the jubilee celebrations on 16 October, Austen Ivereigh reports from Rome. The 195-page document was a search for the “ideal model of a bishop”, Cardinal Jan Schotte, secretary general of the synod of bishops, explained at a press conference the following day. Secular society “tends to impose on the Church its own norms and models”, he said, picturing the bishop as a manager, an administrator, or executive. But “the only model applicable to the bishop is that of Jesus as the Good Shepherd”, he said.
Some 175 delegates of bishops’ conferences spent a month in 2001 deliberating over the results of a preceding consultation with the universal Church. The result was a summary report, or relatio, to which the Pope had now replied, said Cardinal Schotte, adding: “I can say that this is perhaps the best synod I have attended – without tensions, very open, with a deep discussion of all aspects.”
But journalists who covered the 2001 synod recall the countless appeals by bishops, many of them heartfelt, for greater understanding by the Vatican of local conditions and challenges and for respect of the bishop’s local authority. About a quarter of the delegates had raised the matter of Roman centralisation. They asked why the Catholic social principle of subsidiarity did not apply to the governance of the Church. Dismayed at finding these appeals ignored in the relatio, many of the bishops bypassed the official summaries by handing reporters the full texts of their speeches in an attempt to get the matter aired.
They are unlikely to be happy with section 56 of Pastores Gregis, which meets the complaint by dismissing the terms in which it is framed. It reads: “The synod fathers considered that, as far as the exercise of episcopal authority is concerned, the concept of subsidiarity has proved ambiguous and they called for a deeper theological investigation of the nature of episcopal authority in the light of the principle of communion.”
Asked to explain, Cardinal Schotte said subsidiarity was “an old cow we have met on many railway tracks”. The question of its application to church governance had been aired at the 1967 synod, repeated at that of 1974, and again in 1985 by bishops from Latin America, he recalled. But the conclusion of recent study by experts had reached a “very negative” conclusion: subsidiarity was a principle of Catholic social teaching relevant to civil society in which sovereignty rests ultimately with the people. “But this is to follow a model which is not that of the Church”, he said. “In the Church everything comes from Christ and not from popular sovereignty.” He added: “I think that the debate should be considered closed.”
The synod held from 27 September to 26 October 2001 had occurred six years after the previous one – ordinary synods are supposed to happen every three – because the jubilee of 2000 had intervened, Cardinal Schotte explained. It was the twentieth since 1965, when Pope Paul VI established the synods; they were a regular feature of the early Church. Paul VI’s vision was for one synod every two years, but after bishops complained that this was too many, Pope John Paul had reduced their frequency to one every three years. Since 1967, the first of the modern synods, there has overall been more than one every 2.5 years.
The role of bishops in the Church and in the world