[Catholic Caucus] Synod proposal of ‘doctrinal authority’ for local bishops receives major backlash from participants

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Posted on 10/17/2024 9:17:51 PM PDT by ebb tide

While there is no official acknowledgement of a controversy, reports indicate that there is widespread resistance to proposals that call for fragmentation of Church governance.

Debate has swept through the Synod floor as members have pushed back against the suggestion that bishops’ conferences might be given “doctrinal authority.”

Though the Synod on Synodality is closed to the outside world and information is carefully managed via the secretariat for information, nevertheless rumblings of considerable debate have made their way through the concrete walls of the Paul VI Hall where the proceedings are being held.

On Tuesday, the Synod participants began the fourth module of the month’s meetings, looking at the theme of “places” from the Instrumentum Laboris. Though an innocuous sounding title, this section involves the question of giving episcopal conferences “doctrinal authority,” which if followed through could risk seeing the Catholic Church break up into numerous, different, and often contradictory bodies.

READ: Synod proposal could give ‘doctrinal authority’ to local bishops’ conferences

The Instrumentum Laboris reads in section 97:

From all that has been gathered so far, during this synodal process, the following proposals emerge: (a) recognition of Episcopal Conferences as ecclesial subjects endowed with doctrinal authority, assuming socio-cultural diversity within the framework of a multifaceted Church, and favoring the appreciation of liturgical, disciplinary, theological, and spiritual expressions appropriate to different socio-cultural contexts; {emphasis added}

According to widespread sources from within the Synod, this proposal is being met with considerable pushback. Just as notable is the manner in which this heated debate is being whitewashed by the official communications office.

The KNA news outlet of the German Catholic bishops reported the existence of such a debate, writing that one Synod member warned how “a fragmented faith also means a fragmented church!”

KNA suggested that the issue would likely be among the “most controversial” points of the forthcoming final document.

Three sources also confirmed to the National Catholic Register’s Jonathan Liedl that there was “significant pushback” against the proposal and that this resistance was widespread across language and national divides. “A majority is clearly opposed. Overwhelmingly,” a synod source told Liedl.

READ: FULL coverage of the Synod straight from Rome

Both Liedl and KNA affirmed that in a surprise intervention the Synod leadership had to draft Canadian theologian Fr. Gilles Routhier to deliver a speech in order to try and calm the fears and growing mistrust of the Synod.

The resistance, described to Liedl as the strongest yet in the 2024 meetings, comes as the Synod members are now over halfway through the monthlong event, with the more controversial issues – such as female ordination and LGBT issues – given to the parallel oversight of the Synod study groups.

But though the Synod is not officially focusing on such issues, its official focus of how the Church should live, act and understand Herself is just as fraught with areas for concern. Should bishops’ conferences begin autonomously deciding what is in accord with the Catholic Church’s doctrine or not. The results – as have already been witnessed historically with the breakup and proliferation of the Protestant churches – would herald the death of the Catholic Church as “One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic.”

Likely with this in mind, Cardinal Gerhard Müller published a statement on Tuesday warning that “we do not give the Church a future through an organizational reform of its structure.”

Müller, a participant at the Synod by invitation of Francis, said that “(t)he sacramental constitution of the Church is based on its unity with Christ and must in no way be confused or mixed with the constitutions of political communities.”

Despite a number of sources attesting to the existence of the debate, the information released by the Synod secretariat gave the impression of no such discussions.

Providing the brief summary to journalists on October 17, Dr. Paolo Ruffini (prefect of the Dicastery for Communications) downplayed any concern about Instrumentum Laboris passage 97. The section didn’t mean giving power to bishops’ conferences to define the faith but teaching the faith in an inculturated way, he argued.

Cardinal Gerald Lacroix, part of the Synod ordinary general council, told the Vatican press that “tension makes us alive … we must decide to listen together to what God is telling us.”

Voting corporate councils or traditional Church

Further evidence of the Synod debate was witnessed at the theological-pastoral forum held October 16 – a novelty for this session of the Synod, during which theologians and members discussed the theme of the “local and universal church” from the current module. This topic bears directly on the question of how “decentralization” is to be effected in the Synodal Church, and who will emerge with the most authority.

Delivering a forceful speech, Synod “expert” and canonist Myriam Wijlens argued for a striking alteration in the Church’s normative practice. “The people of God voted” to say that they “want obligatory” diocesan, parish and plenary councils, she said.

Wijlens referred to Australia’s recent and highly controversial plenary council as a leading example of the Church’s future. The style of governance of the Church would be effected through a system of such councils, she argued.

Members of the various levels of diocesan and parish councils would be appointed by peer voting, not from above, ie. by the local priest or bishop. It would involve ecumenical delegates who could advise and Catholics who “live in complex, loving relationships” – an allusion to an oft-used description of homosexual couples.

Such councils would almost have a veto on actions of the local bishop, forcing him to wait for their approval before he took certain actions.

There would be no need to wait for approval to implement this change, Wijlens noted, as it was already present in Canon Law but just not regularly employed.

A similar style of governance for plenary councils of bishops, in which voting over several rounds would be the norm. Such a council would have “legislative and teaching authority.”

An episcopal plenary council working in this manner has to submit its decision to the Holy See – the recognitio – in order for approval and implementation. But Wijlens suggested that bishops could just implement the decision after an arbitrary period of time if the Holy See hadn’t yet responded, thus echoing a call made by the Instrumentum Laboris (99) for a speedier process.

In contrast, Cardinal Robert Prevost presented a toned down, more stable assessment of the Church’s ecclesiology. (Since January 2023, Prevost has led the Dicastery for Bishops.)

Speaking directly after Wijlens, Prevost noted that “throughout the history of the Church, the formation of local communities has been a reality in different places but always with reference to the one Church of Christ.”

Positing his talk firmly around the pillar of ecclesial “unity in Christ,” Prevost’s much more measured style appeared as a rebuff to Wijlens’ more revolutionary tones.

While Wijlens proposed a more corporate style of Church governance, Prevost noted that the relationship between the local and universal “isn’t that of a part and a whole.”

“Local churches,” typically meaning at the diocesan level, “aren’t mere administrative units of a whole, nor the sum of those parts as in a federation,” he warned.

The cardinal cited Acts 2:42 noting how the Scriptural passage identified the four key elements of Church unity: in doctrine, in Christian solidarity, in liturgy, and in prayer.

Indeed, in Pope John Paul II’s Apostolos Suos, he noted that bishops of a territory can, “when in communion with the Roman Pontiff, they jointly proclaim the catholic truth in matters of faith and morals, can reach their people more effectively and can make it easier for their faithful to adhere to the magisterium with a sense of religious respect.”

The Polish Pope warned that any such activity was to be in line with the Church’s teaching:

Since the doctrine of the faith is a common good of the whole Church and a bond of her communion, the Bishops, assembled in Episcopal Conference, must take special care to follow the magisterium of the universal Church and to communicate it opportunely to the people entrusted to them.

Further sign of the Synod’s debate was evidenced outside Paul VI Hall on Tuesday when Sydney Archbishop Anthony Fisher told EWTN’s Bénédicte Cedergren that the Church could not be regionally divided in doctrine.

Fisher stated he was “very concerned” that the Catholic Church “hold on to the deposit of faith, the apostolic tradition, that we don’t imagine, in the vanity of our age, that we are going to reinvent the Catholic faith or the Catholic Church.”

It now remains to be seen what is produced in the Synod’s final document.

Full coverage of the Synod on Synodality can be found at this link here on LifeSiteNews, and on the X account of LifeSite’s Vatican correspondent.

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1 posted on 10/17/2024 9:17:51 PM PDT by ebb tide

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2 posted on 10/17/2024 9:18:54 PM PDT by ebb tide ("The Spirit of Vatican II" is nothing more than a wicked "ideology" of the modernists.)

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