Sunday Forum: How do we provide moral support to our bishops? Paul Collins... (Sunday Forum)

by Brian Coyne , LINDEN, NSW, Sunday, March 22, 2009, 12:46 (1522 days ago)

The process of selecting our ecclesial leaders —
some thoughts from Paul Collins

An interesting, invigorating discussion has emerged on the forum in the last day or so on the meaning of priesthood and ministry. Late last night, after a day in bed feeling as sick as a dog for a long period, I emerged fired up having been reading some of Paul Collins' thoughts on the same subject. I posted some of them in that discussion string. They were from the second last chapter of his book. I had already decided that a good Sunday Forum series, leading on from the discussion last week, might be to look at the questions Paul raises in the last chapter of his book "Does Australian Catholiciam have a future?" They are questions that very much intersect with the discussions we've been having. To kick this discussion off — or a little further along — I reproduce here a small section from the last Chapter where Paul is querying the manner in which our ecclesial and spiritual leaders are appointed...

... the process of appointing bishops has to be changed. In place of the complex Roman system, which is geared to eliminating creative leadership and to the appointment of papal 'yes men', we need to recover the traditional system of selecting bishops. Certainly this evolved over the centuries, but the emphasis was always on the local church. The first method was by direct election of the whole community. Over the centuries the franchise became increasingly constricted, mainly because of the politics involved, and it gradually became limited to the senior priests of a diocese. This practise still survives in a couple of dioceses in Austria and Switzerland where the canons of the cathedral draw up the terna, the list of three names to be sent to Rome. Also for the first 900 years of church history, bishops could not transfer from diocese to diocese. Once elected they were there for life, 'married' to their diocese. The purpose was to preclude ambitious clerics from using smaller dioceses as stepping stones to more prestigious appointments. But this prohibition began to break down in the 9th century and bishops became mobile, although much less so than in the last 100 years. However, as a general rule all appointments before the 19th century originated in the local area.' The process was that 'bishops were elected locally, approved by their metropolitan [the senior regional archbishop], and acted largely independently of Rome. In other words the church was decentralised and the principle of subsidiarity was respected." Certainly, after the late-Middle Ages, bishops of important dioceses were usually chosen by the local king or ruler in consultation with the papacy and other interested parties, although in many places the canons of the cathedral still played an important role in episcopal appointments. The practise of Rome appointing all bishops is very recent and goes back to the mid-19th century.

Today we need to recover the process whereby local priests, ministers and laity can play a real role in episcopal appointments. In pluralist, democratic societies like Australia, people are used to voting responsibly and peacefully, in sharp contrast to people in the past who had no experience of democracy; this often led to violence on the part of those who lost an episcopal election. Perhaps the best system would be for an elected representative diocesan synod of clergy, laity and members of religious orders to suggest three names in order of preference, with the ACBC usually approving the first nomination. The Vatican would not participate in the process unless there were disputes. This is not a revolution, but a return to the more traditional process used by Catholicism to elect its leadership for a millennium or more. The Australian Anglican church manages to elect its diocesan bishops at synods at least semi-democratically without too much ado. Certainly there will be politics involved, but given our democratic background and experience Australian Catholics should be able to weather this process.

But this also requires that the pool of people who could be nominated as bishops needs to be expanded from the ordained and incardinated priests of a particular diocese. The great 4th-century bishop, Saint Ambrose, was a Roman secular administrator and lawyer and, although a believer, he was not even a baptised Catholic when he was elected bishop of Milan in 374. He had to do a crash course in theology to get up to speed! He became one of the greatest preachers of the age and was influential in the conversion of Saint Augustine. The election of laymen as bishops was relatively common in the first seven centuries of church history. Clearly the election of a layperson as bishop would be closely linked with the acceptance of married men into the priesthood. These are actually not big changes; it's just hard to imagine them, because we have become so cowed by the present system, forgetting that there have always been other options. In all of this the role and leadership of women must be carefully considered, because they carry out 75 per cent of the pastoral work of the Australian church.

None of this will be achieved from the top down, but can only be brought about from the bottom upwards. Those at the top of the hierarchy in the Vatican, even if they are saints, have too much invested in the maintenance of the structure to perceive the need for the kind of renewal required. This is why the fidelity of a group of serious and committed Catholics at the core of the church is so important. It is their passionate adherence to a renewed vision of Catholicism, no matter what the obstacles, that will be the essential element in realising a whole new way of envisaging and living the faith. This connects closely with a second element in what has happened to Catholics, especially in the long papacy of John Paul II. This pope turned the church into a one man band and did great harm by focusing attention on himself and on what the Vatican allowed or didn't, thus completely undermining the principle of subsidiarity (that decisions be taken at the lowest level possible rather the top) and rendering other ministries secondary and irrelevant. Everything came back to the pope; he was Catholicism incorporated, take it or leave it. This is a complete distortion of traditional church government. As a result the church's active ministry lost many people, including large numbers of priests and laypeople, who could have shown real leadership in dioceses and parishes. Essentially what happened was that they lost hope. They are the people who in the words of novelist Morris West have experienced 'the deep hurt and division ... within the post-Vatican II generation, who ... see the fading of the hopes they had invested in the updating and renewal of the church'.

Catholicism needs be re-energised with the passion of hope. Our world is characterised by anxiety and a search for security, not only personal and financial, but also immunity against the external threats posed by fundamentalist fanaticism. Yet, ironically, one of the focal sources of modern angst is the attempt to live without any sense of God or the transcendent, without faith in anything.

Paul Collins, Believers: Does Australian Catholicism Have a Future?, UNSWPress. 2008 pp153-155

What are your thoughts on Paul Collins' suggestions? How can we "pewsitters" provide moral support to our bishops to become more assertive in their dealings with their colleagues and with Rome — and in better responding to the needs of their local communities?

Brian Coyne
[Editor & Publisher]