(s.m.) While the synod on synodality trudges toward a conclusion that is once again provisional and vague, apart from it two renowned cardinals in their nineties are saying and writing things that are incomparably more solid and vital. Both with the whole history of the Church in view.
The first is the Chinese Joseph Zen Zekiun, 92 years old, former bishop of Hong Kong, with a deft and pointed book released a few days ago in Italy from the presses of Ares: “One, holy, catholic, and apostolic. From the Church of the apostles to the synodal Church.” In which he identifies the history of the Church as a history of martyrs for the faith.
The second is the German Walter Brandmüller (in the photo), 95 years old, a lifelong scholar and professor of history, from 1998 to 2009 president of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences, with the text below, which he has written and offered to Settimo Cielo for publication.
His erudite and compelling reconstruction identifies the origin of the authentic collegial leadership of the Church, from the first centuries on, in the councils or synods that were headed by the respective metropolitan bishop. Nothing to do with the modern episcopal conferences, whose aspirations today include the attribution of “genuine doctrinal authority” (“Evangelii gaudium,” 32), while in reality they were born for reasons of politics and of “ad extra” relations with the surrounding society.
When instead the life of the Church “ad intra” has been, and should continue to be, the purview of the synods of the metropolitan sees, as a “sacred form of the exercise of the teaching and pastoral ministry founded on the ordination of the assembled bishops.”
The sprawling expansion of the role of the episcopal conferences is not, in Brandmüller’s judgment, a simple organizational dysfunction, because it has aggravated the “creeping process of secularization of the Church in our day.”
And in fact, the act of hope with which Brandmüller concludes is that the restoration of their original and full role to the councils of the metropolitan sees and the limitation of the episcopal conferences to their role “ad extra” may constitute “an important step toward the goal of the desecularization and therefore of a spiritual revival of the Church, especially in Europe.”
But here is the cardinal’s text, trimmed in places with his consent.
*
Episcopal Conferences and the Decline of Faith, How to Reverse Course
by Walter Brandmüller
In his Letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul admonishes Christians: “Be not conformed to this world….” Undoubtedly, the warning refers to the way of life of every good Christian, but it also concerns the life of the Church in general. And it applies not only to the apostle’s contemporaries, but to the whole Church in every age, and therefore also today. It is against this background that the question arises: is the episcopal conference — as is often affirmed — an organ of episcopal collegiality according to the teachings of Vatican Council II?
Before answering this question, it is necessary to refer to the authentic and original organ of collegiality: the provincial council. This latter was the assembly of the bishops of a given ecclesiastical province, for the purpose of the common exercise of the teaching and pastoral ministry.
The ecclesiastical province, in turn, was the result of a historical process: filiation. Through evangelization, which went forth from an episcopal church, new dioceses were created, whose bishops were ordained by the bishop of the mother church. This gave rise — and still does today — to the metropolitan structure, the ecclesiastical province. So this is not the fruit of a merely bureaucratic-administrative act, but rather of an organic sacramental-hierarchical process. The practice of filiation is “traditio in actu,” or tradition in action. The object of tradition is not only the teaching but the entire reality of the Church, fleshed out in the provincial synod. And it is precisely in this that its teaching and pastoral authority is rooted, as well as the binding character of synodal legislation.
Whereas the episcopal conference differs in a fundamental way from all this. It is rather the assembly of bishops whose dioceses — in general — are located in the territory of a secular state, of a nation.
The organizational principle of the episcopal conference, therefore, is not of an ecclesiological but rather of a political nature.
The original purpose of the episcopal conference was — and should continue to be — that of debating and deciding on questions concerning the life of the Church precisely in this political frame of reference. What emerges from its history and purposes is that the episcopal conference has to do mainly with the management of relations between the Church and the context of the state and society in which it lives.
Beginning from the 20th century, however, concrete developments have brought it about that the episcopal conference deals also — if not primarily — with issues internal to the Church.
In support of this practice, reference is made to number 23 of the conciliar constitution “Lumen Gentium,” where, however, it is only stated in the margin that the episcopal conference can “contribute in many and fruitful ways to the concrete realization of the collegial spirit.”
It is precisely from this text that the young theologian Joseph Ratzinger believed he could derive the thesis according to which the episcopal conference could be considered the present-day embodiment of the synodal structure of the early Church (in J. C. Hampe, Ende der Gegenreformation. Das Konzil: Dokumente und Deutung, Mainz 1964, 161 ff.; title: “Konkrete Formen bischöflicher Kollegialität”).
It was then the experience of the postconciliar developments that led him, now become prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to a disappointed and more critical view of the episcopal conference. In the meantime, in fact, episcopal conferences had been set up everywhere and, especially in Europe, had developed forms and procedures that gave them the appearance of an intermediate hierarchical body between the Holy See and the individual bishop.
The consequences of that way of seeing things were absolutely negative. The bureaucratic apparatus of the episcopal conferences increasingly took charge of questions that concerned the individual bishop. Thus, under the pretext of uniform regulations, the freedom and autonomy of the individual bishops were — and continue to be — damaged. In this context, Ratzinger also speaks of groupthink, conformism, and irenicism, of acquiescences for the sake of peace that can determine the action of the episcopal conferences. He criticizes with particular emphasis the episcopal conference’s claim to teaching authority. […]
Thus Ratzinger also observes that bishops have often opposed the establishment of an episcopal conference, maintaining that this would limit their rights.
The fact is that the usurpation of the individual bishop by means of a suffocating bureaucratic apparatus is a cause for great concern, something that John Paul II warned against with the motu proprio “Apostolos suos” of May 1, 1998. This concern is all the greater in that the pastoral power of the bishop is directly of divine right. […]
What deserves more criticism, however, is the concept of a national episcopal conference, in a Church that is “of all tribes, tongues, and nations.” […] It ought to come as no surprise that the popes did not recognize the national councils in France under Napoleon I, or that they forestalled one in Germany in the revolutionary year of 1848. In particular, however, it was because of the danger that — following the example of the “ecclesia gallicana” of the ancien régime — there could be true national Churches that, in a loose union at most with the see of Peter, would live a life of their own regulated by the state.
In fact, the creation of a national body forces the loosening, if not the dissolution, of the “communio” of the universal Church, which then finds expression in special national regulations. This is experienced in the most evident manner in the liturgy; one need only think of the introduction of the national languages. […]
In the same way, as has happened recently, a grave attack on the unity of faith within the Church is constituted by the contradictory interpretations that various episcopal conferences have given to the apostolic exhortation of Pope Francis “Amoris laetitia” of March 19, 2016. […]
Against the backdrop of these more recent developments, it appears urgent to conduct new reflection on the nature and function of the episcopal conference. First, it is absolutely necessary to examine the context in which the institution of the episcopal conference was born, as well as its beginnings. At that stage, for the Church it was a matter of getting its bearings in a radically changed sociopolitical context following the revolution of 1789. Afterward, in complete contrast with the revolutionary ideal of freedom, the ideologically liberal and at the same time oppressive authoritarian state of the Restoration was established, which saw the Church at most as an organ of the “religion gendarme” for maintaining peace and order among the people. It was difficult to speak of “libertas ecclesiae,” or the free development of the Church. In order to somehow be able to create spaces for action and make ecclesiastical life possible in that situation, what were needed, in fact, were common projects and actions on the part of the bishops, and more precisely the actions of the Church “ad extra,” or in the political-social context. For the sake of creating this communion in the efforts for the Church’s freedom, the episcopal conference proved to be a necessity.
This remains unchanged and has even increased, considering the conditions of increasingly totalitarian secularization of modern states and societies.
But what seems appropriate in these circumstances is to focus the responsibilities of the episcopal conference, that is, to limit them to those questions which concern the “ad extra” relations of the Church. These largely coincide with the matters that are regulated through concordats. Such purposes should also be matched by the way in which the episcopal conference acts, which can certainly be that of secular organizations or businesses: therefore, episcopal conferences as “business meetings.”
Fundamentally different from the “ad extra” directed nature of the episcopal conference was and is, instead, the provincial synod, whose consultative and decisional responsibilities concern the life of the Church “ad intra.” The doctrine of the faith, sacraments, liturgy, and pastoral action: these are the authentic object of the collegial exercise of the teaching and pastoral ministry by the bishops of an association of particular Churches, that is, an ecclesiastical province under the presidency of the metropolitan. Their joint teaching and leadership authority flows directly from their episcopal ordination. It therefore rests on sacramental foundations.
This is precisely what makes the provincial synod not a clerical “business meeting,” but rather a sacred event: “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Mt 18:20). That applies even more to the synodal assembly of the successors of the apostles. The intuition of this quite soon led to the development of liturgical forms for such synodal assemblies. The “Ordo de celebrando concilio” was born, of which some early forms from the seventh century have been handed down, probably going back to St. Isidore of Seville. […] It was also hoped that members of the laity would be present. […] The results were signed by all the bishops and presented to the people for approval. […]
Albeit with some variations, this procedure has been followed for six hundred years. The latest edition as well, published in 1984 with the title “De conciliis plenariis vel provincialibus et de synodo diocesano,” contains corresponding provisions that incorporate fundamental elements of the tradition. In fact, if it were implemented, the theological-liturgical character of the synod would emerge effectively.
This synod or provincial council is, in fact, already in itself a liturgy, being a sacred form of the exercise of the teaching and pastoral ministry founded on the ordination of the assembled bishops. But evidently in our day the awareness of this has largely died out, so that for quite some time the synod, the provincial council, has largely given way to the episcopal conference. This fact is both an expression and a cause of a creeping process of secularization of the Church in our day.
In order to be able to put a stop to it at last — and this is a question of survival — what would be needed, among other things, is a clear separation of the functions and areas of responsibility of the episcopal conference and the synod, as well as the restoration of the synod as a sacred form of the exercise of the episcopal “sacra potestas” founded on the sacraments. To this end, the current “Caeremoniale episcoporum” would also be of great help.
If, in fact — “sperando contra spem” — this authentic form of collegial episcopal action could be revived, it would be an important step toward the goal of the desecularization and therefore of a spiritual revival of the Church, especially in Europe.
(Translated by Matthew Sherry: traduttore@hotmail.com)
————
Sandro Magister is past “vaticanista” of the Italian weekly L’Espresso.
The latest articles in English of his blog Settimo Cielo are on this page.
But the full archive of Settimo Cielo in English, from 2017 to today, is accessible.
As is the complete index of the blog www.chiesa, which preceded it.
