Democracy in the Christian Church

An Historical, Theological and Political Case

Luca Badini Confalonieri

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780567483683
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Théologie et éthique systématiques

Are church structures divinely-willed, and consequently both permanent and irreversible? Can Christians modify the polity of their church like they do with that of civil society? What would be the role of the office of oversight in a Christian church democratically organized? What would its relationship with specialized authorities within the community be?
Building on a remarkable number of specialist studies in exegesis, church history, political philosophy, canon law, and ecclesiology, this book convincingly fulfils three goals. First, it encourages Christians to determine the political outlook of their faith community. Secondly, it provides some fundamental criteria for judging the ethical value of church structures, on the basis of Bernard Lonergan's cognitional theory and with the help of recent insights from contemporary political philosophy. Thirdly, it outlines a largely novel and groundbreaking understanding of a democratic church. In the process, it engages with some of the most difficult ecclesiological issues faced by most Christian churches.

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 The Problem of Chruch Democratization

One of the most intriguing and well-known characteristics of the contemporary Roman Catholic Church is the non-democratic character of its polity. Times and again some of the highest officials of that church have maintained that the church cannot be a democracy, and have forcefully operated to maintain the institutional status quo against proposals for its democratization.¹

The issue of the democratization of the church is, of course, quite momentous, and this for evident reasons. One, and arguably the most pragmatic, concerns the correlation which exists between the public perception of any organization, and the willingness of the wider society to accept it first and then to cooperate with it. The way authority and cooperation are exercised within any institution is quite an important element of its public image. It is well known that the unambiguously negative answer the RC establishment gave to the possibility of democratizing the RC Church has been a cause of strong criticisms against Roman Catholicism. ‘Popery’ has long been a derogatory term to indicate what was perceived as Catholics’ de-humanizing subjection to the absolute authority of the pope.² Nor have similar sentiments been completely overcome today.³ Again, the view that the Catholic polity cannot be democratic is far from being uncontroversial even within Catholicism itself: rather, it leaves perplexed at best, and openly contrary at worst, a great number of Catholics. The perceived scandal to a variety of people caused by the anti-democratic character of the Roman Catholic Church has been a notable factor in (1) the ongoing silent schism of Roman Catholics themselves from their church; (2) the standstill of the ecumenical dialogue between that church and all other Christian churches; (3) the ongoing alienation of many non-Christians, agnostics, and atheists whose indifference, antipathy or even repulsion for Catholicism has long been fuelled, among other things, by their perception of the Catholic Church as an illiberal society contrary to, and dangerous for, freedom and self-development at all levels: the individual, social, political and cultural.

Related to this is the link between the quality of a community’s political organization and its efficiency in fulfilling its mission. By determining the way cooperation is be structured and, more specifically, the process for reaching decisions concerning collective courses of action, a community’s political layout influences its greater or lesser effectiveness in achieving the goal towards which such a common action is oriented. As it will be argued, among the distinguishing characteristics of a democratic polity is the maximization of the knowledge brought to bear on the issues and decisions facing a community.

Conversely, an authoritarian political structure does not sufficiently exploit the common fund of experiences, insights, judgements of fact and of value of the community.⁴ Hence many RC theologians have stressed, in a way or another, that a thorough information-gathering and assessing must precede ecclesial decision making. They did so, for example, by emphasizing the need for freedoms of expression and debate (which includes the freedoms to criticize and dissent), or by insisting on the episcopal hierarchy’s duty to consult both the relevant experts and the wisdom of the sensus fidelium.⁵ The much-decried poor implementation of those freedoms and of consultation in the RC Church, coupled with the slow haemorrhage of educated people (especially since the eighteenth century, and on a much greater scale since Vatican II), has stunted the capacity of Roman Catholicism for answering the fresh questions and challenges. In contrast, the democratization of the church has a considerable potential for a greater capacity of the Christian community in creatively addressing the many problems it constantly faces in carrying out its mission: namely, to spread the Good News, and to concretely (co)operate for the advancement of God’s kingdom at the individual, social and cultural levels.⁶

We reach here what is perhaps the most serious ethical reason for considering of critical import the question concerning the possibility of organizing the Christian communities democratically. It is the classic problem of reconciling individual autonomy and (political) authority by making real as much as possible the ultimate goal of collective responsibility. Such a goal is to render individuals truly responsible not only of the lives they lead and the personal decisions they take, but also of the (environmental, technological, economic, social, political, cultural and religious) results of their cooperation in the common action of the society of which they are members.⁷

More recently, Amartya Sen developed his basic thesis that ‘the freedom of agency that we individually have is inescapably qualified and constrained by the social, political, and economic opportunities that are available to us’.⁸ For this reason, he proposed that ‘Societal arrangements [. . .] (the state, the market, the legal system, political parties, the media, public interest groups, and public discussion forums, among others)’ be evaluated ‘in terms of their contribution to enhancing and guaranteeing the substantive freedoms of individuals, seen as active agents of change, rather than passive recipients of dispensed benefits’.⁹ The guiding assumption of this work is that to the extent that the political structure of a community – whether the latter be political or religious is irrelevant – hinders rather than fosters the individual’s exercise of his/her responsibility, particularly in determining and cooperating in common courses of action, such a polity is dysfunctional and ultimately unethical.

Now, Sen has been interpreted as maintaining that ‘Public deliberation and democratic decision making are arguably defensible ways in which citizens and their representatives both exercise their agency and forge good policy’.¹⁰ One of the goals of this work, then, is to contribute to illustrate ‘how democracy, including public discussion, provides procedures for collective agency’ and collective responsibility.¹¹ As it will be argued, a democratic system allows each decisional level, from the individual upwards, to determine both what it can decide by itself, and what instead needs the cooperation in knowledge and/or action of the higher level. For this reason, democracy is today widely seen as that political arrangement which best preserves the possibility of a free and responsible cooperation while, by contrast, non-democratic, authoritarian systems of government are ordinarily deemed to a greater or lesser degree immoral – that is robbing lower decisional levels, from the individual upwards, of their responsibility and freedom of self-determination. Such, at least, was the point Pope Pius XI made in his definition of the principle of subsidiarity.¹²

This ethical aspect of democracy is also highlighted, from a different angle, by two traditional insights. First, that a paternalist authority is incompatible with autonomous (i.e. self-legislating or self-determining) human beings endowed with both free will as well as reason. By paternalist authority, it was understood one micro-managing what lies within the decisional and operational range of individuals and lower decisional levels. Second, and as a consequence, such an authority can stunt the intellectual, moral and spiritual growth of those subject to it. One of the best descriptions of the last point remains that of John Stuart Mill, according to whom – as he has been paraphrased – the decisive argument against despotism

is not that most despots are tyrannical, or that absolute power corrupts even wise and benevolent despots, or, again, that despotism inherently violates individual rights. Rather, [. . .] Mill argues that even the most wise and benevolent despotism, one where the virtue of his subjects is the despot’s chief concern, stultifies the moral and intellectual development of the people by depriving subjects of the discipline of mind and refinement of the powers that come from the practice of self-government.¹³

The general problem had already been perceived much earlier, and indeed with specific reference to the case of the church: thus, already Calvin had condemned – although without much elaboration – the ‘kind of Christianity there is under the Papacy, when the pastors labor to the utmost of their power to keep the people in absolute infancy’.¹⁴ A patriarchal and theocratic caste system where all decision-making authority resides only and exclusively on a percentually negligible as well as largely unelected, unaccountable and self-perpetuating sacerdotal class, condemns the vast majority of its members to a position of relative irresponsibility, powerlessness and tutorage analogous to that of a minor child.¹⁵ ‘Infantilization’ of the laity is in effect one way in which the current ecclesiological literature describes the moral aspect of the dysfunctional exclusion of the laity from exercising their responsibility in determining the common courses of action to be implemented as a church.¹⁶

The above are the main reasons for regarding the issue of whether the Christian community can be structured democratically as an urgent one. Its solution will positively influence Christianity’s capacity of attaining its essential goal of informing with the gospel both human beings individually and their economic, social and cultural constructs. For, as we will see, the same can be said of democracy that has been said of one of its constitutive principles, subsidiarity: namely, that it influences ‘the possibilities for the development of personal, social, and cultural life as a whole’.¹⁷

There are, however, several arguments advanced against a democratic reform of the church, which need to be addressed. One is that the essential political structures of the church are of divine right and, as such, both irreversible and necessary for its existence.¹⁸ Several ecclesial institutions have been officially and explicitly affirmed by Roman Catholicism as having been either directly established by Christ, or indirectly willed/ordained by God: the twofold division between ordained priesthood and non-ordained laity (see e.g. LG§18; cf. §10); the threefold division of the priestly order, and/or its descending hierarchy from bishops to priests and deacons (e.g. CD§15); the sacra potestas of diocesan bishops (e.g. LG§§ 20–21; CD§§ 2, 6); the primatial authority of the pope (e.g. Pastor aeternus, ch. 1; also CD§2).

The disagreement concerning which ecclesial institutions, if any, are necessary for the existence of a Christian church is a trans-denominational issue, dividing Christians belonging to different confessions just as those belonging to the same church. Some theologians – among whom many, but by no means all, are Roman Catholic and Orthodox – believe that at least some of the above ecclesial institutions have been established by Christ or indirectly ordained by God, and are accordingly essential for church existence.¹⁹ Others – especially some Anglicans – suggest a distinction between different degrees of necessity: an ecclesial institution might be necessary for the church’s very esse (being), plene esse (full being) or mere bene esse (well-being).²⁰ Still others – many of whom are trained in the Lutheran theological tradition – further point to the need to distinguish between the external embodiment of ecclesial offices and institutions, which are historically relative, and the functions they fulfil – for example preaching the Good News, and ἐπ ισ κο πή (oversight) – whose relative necessity is assessed against their greater or lesser role in carrying out the church’s mission.²¹ Finally, there are Christians – among whom a majority of the vast and varied universe of Baptist, Charismatic and Pentecostal Churches – who maintain that no detailed church polity or particular ecclesial structure, and certainly none of the traditional ones mentioned above, is mandated as necessary either in the NT or in the ecclesial tradition. Put positively, the basic theological insight underlying the latter ecclesiologies affirms that

the presence of Christ, which constitutes the church, is mediated not simply through the ordained ministers but through the whole congregation, that the whole congregation functions as mater ecclesia to the children engendered by the Holy Spirit, and that the whole congregation is called to engage in ministry and make decisions about leadership roles.²²

A second objection to the democratization of the church maintains that, as a mystery, the ecclesial polity is radically discontinuous from the human one, so that what is valid for the latter is not necessarily valid for the former. This too is still a point of disagreement, with much of the recent ecclesiological literature taking exception to what has been dubbed the ‘theological reductionism’ or even ‘mystification’ of the church, and insisting instead that relevant sociological and political insights be integrated in ecclesiology.²³

Finally, a third set of reasons is based simply on a negative judgement concerning some central features of democracy itself. Majority rule, in particular, is perceived as intrinsically relativistic and thus, because only truth should inform one’s beliefs and guide one’s actions, not to be adopted as a decisional procedure.²⁴ This objection is the only one strictly philosophical in nature and should, accordingly, be most appropriately debated through engagement with the literature on democratic political philosophy.²⁵

In contrast, both the objection stressing the existence of irreversible divinely willed structures, and that emphasizing the uniqueness of the church as a mystery and the creature of God’s inscrutable will, are primarily theological. They have been developed by those ecclesiologists who regarded some anti-democratic, absolutist ecclesial structures as divinely willed and so irreversible. Their dilemma was to justify the apparent ‘unnatural’ character of those institutions, namely their ostensible contradiction with the insights of natural law commonly recognized as valid and normative for the other human societies (see 3.1–3.2). The crucial flaw of such justifications, however, is that they assume, whether or not the fact is explicitly acknowledged, the existence of a real discontinuity (as distinct from a non-contradictory difference) between the chu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• CHAPTER 1  INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER 2  ECCLESIOLOGY AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY: HISTORICAL SURVEY
• CHAPTER 3  DIVINELY WILLED STRUCTURES?
• CHAPTER 4  THEOLOGICAL REDUCTIONISM AND THE MYSTIFICATION OF THE CHURCH
• CHAPTER 5  CENTRAL INSIGHTS AND CATEGORIES OF DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
• CHAPTER 6  A DEMOCRATIC ECCLESIOLOGY
• CHAPTER 7  CONCLUSION
• Bibliography
• Index