Synod canon law proposals could make Catholic Church ‘Protestant community’

VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Leading canonists have warned proposals to reform Canon Law promoted by the Synod on Synodality would undermine Catholic doctrine and the Second Vatican Council.

On October 12, leading canon lawyers warned in a report published by the National Catholic Register that proposed reforms to the Code of Canon Law, emerging from the Synod on Synodality, could undermine the Church’s divine constitution. The proposals would introduce a separation of governing authority from Holy Orders by transferring powers traditionally reserved to the hierarchy to laypeople while expanding the scope of ecclesial infallibility beyond its traditional limits.

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Commenting on proposals to allow laypeople – including women – to serve as sole judges in ecclesiastical trials that could impose excommunication or clerical laicization, the Dominican canonist Father Pius Pietrzyk stated: “The notion of a judicial college made up entirely of those without the power of orders is revolutionary, and the theological view that undergirds that approach would fundamentally undermine the nature of the Church.”

Pietrzyk added that the synod commission’s underlying ideology is “an attempt to separate the power of governance from the power of orders in a way that would desacralize the Church and essentially make the Church a Protestant community but with a pope.”

Another canonist scholar, Father Gerald Murray, stressed that extending ecclesiastical jurisdiction to non-ordained Catholics “is not a minor adjustment of the discipline of the Catholic Church, but a rejection of the Church’s teaching that the threefold office of priest, prophet and king is bestowed only upon those ordained to the priesthood and the episcopate.”

He warned that under these changes, Church governance “would now become a delegated power given to those who are not shepherds,” which he classified as “a radical departure from Catholic doctrine.”

David Long, professor of canon law at the Catholic University of America, focused on the controversial proposal to extend the domain of infallibility to the sensus fidelium, traditionally understood as the universal consent of the faithful. According to the newly proposed formula of Canon 749, all Church members, “having received the anointing from the Spirit” in their baptism, “cannot err in matters of faith.” In such a way, the whole Church “manifests this characteristic through the supernatural sense of faith of the whole people when, from the bishops down to the last of the lay faithful, its universal consent in matters of faith and morals is demonstrated.”

Rejecting the claim that the proposal merely codifies the teaching of Lumen Gentium, Long argues that “the [Second Vatican] Council never treated [the sensus fidelium] as independent of the magisterium…. The legislation needs to address how the bishop fulfills his responsibilities when agreement cannot be reached.”

Indeed, Lumen Gentium no. 12 teaches that the consensus of the faithful cannot err only insofar as it is exercised “under the guidance of the sacred Magisterium,” to which it faithfully adheres, rather than acting independently from it.

Among other changes, the synod proposals would allow a single layperson, male or female, to adjudicate cases involving excommunication or the dismissal of a priest from the clerical state (Canon 1425 §4); give lay members an absolute majority in diocesan synods (Canon 463 §1); permit non-Catholics to serve on diocesan pastoral councils (Canon 512 §4); and remove the requirement for prior Holy See authorization before bishops delegate laypersons to assist at marriages or lead certain liturgical celebrations (Canons 230 §3 and 1112 §1).

Despite the radical nature of these proposals, canonists emphasize that the report remains an advisory, non-binding text, and would require Pope Leo XIV’s approval to become law. As Pietrzyk concluded, lacking theological and moral authority, the document “ought to remain what it is: an odd footnote in the history of the Church.”

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The commission’s proposal to rewrite Canon 749 §1, by attaching a reference to the “supernatural sense of faith of the whole people” as a prerequisite for infallibility, effectively leads to a democratization and, ultimately, relativization of Catholic dogma.

Behind these proposals lies a particular ideology. Many progressive theologians close to Pope Francis, including Cardinals Marc Ouellet and Francesco Coccopalmerio, advance a “charismatic” vision of governance in the Church. According to this new model, the power of governance would derive from baptism rather than from Holy Orders, creating a kind of “ecclesiological Nestorianism” that severs the sacramental from the governing hierarchy.

According to traditional Catholic doctrine, infallibility is the charism of divine assistance that preserves the Church from error in defining and safeguarding revealed truths concerning faith and morals. The primary subject of infallibility is the Roman Pontiff, under specific conditions: (1) when he speaks as Pope rather than as a private theologian; (2) when he teaches on matters of faith or morals; (3) when he explicitly intends to bind the entire Church in a definitive way to a particular teaching. When all these conditions are met, the Roman Pontiff’s definitions are irreformable in themselves (ex sese) and “not by virtue of the consent of the Church,” as the First Vatican Council teaches. The College of Bishops is likewise a subject of infallibility, but only in a manner subordinate to the pope.

This could not be otherwise, since traditional Catholic doctrine holds that the teaching office (munus docendi) is part of the governing office (munus regendi), but distinguished by the sanctifying office (munus sanctificandi). Holy Orders renders a person especially qualified to receive the power of governance (and teaching), but such authority does not flow automatically from ordination itself. Rather, it must be conferred through a juridical mission ultimately derived from and mediated by the Roman Pontiff.

The Synod on Synodality’s proposed reform of canon law, then, appears to revive an error condemned by Pope Pius VI in the bull Auctorem Fidei (1794). At the end of that document, the Pope censured a series of propositions deemed erroneous or even heretical.

Among them was the claim that the Church’s power of governance and teaching was given by God to the Church in such a way that it derives from the community of the faithful and is merely transmitted to her pastors as ministers for the salvation of souls. Auctorem Fidei explicitly condemns such an interpretation as “heretical.” Likewise, the document rejects any reduction of the pope to a merely “ministerial head” of the Church rather than the divinely constituted source of supreme jurisdiction.

In recent years, members of the Church hierarchy have repeatedly promoted gestures, including in the liturgy, that appear to convey the erroneous notion that ecclesiastical authority is conferred upon pastors by the faithful through their baptismal charism. One notable example occurred during the episcopal consecration of Josef Grünwidl, the archbishop of Vienna appointed by Pope Leo XIV, when the crosier was passed through several participants, including laypeople, as a symbolic expression of this new understanding of authority.