Authority in the Roman Catholic Church

Theory and Practice

Bernard Hoose, Bernard Hoose

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351956536
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Religion

How did the present authority structures within the Church come into existence? How, if at all, can we justify their existence? What form of authority should exist in the Church? These and other related questions exercise the minds of many Christians in these days when the very notion of authority is questioned, but debate about them is perhaps nowhere more lively than within the ranks of Roman Catholicism. This book offers an important contribution to such debate within that church. Leading Catholic theologians from both sides of the Atlantic take up the key issues: analysing the concept of authority and governance; examining the history of authority within the Roman Catholic church; discussing who should have a say in future developments; exploring ecumenical dimensions, with particular reference to Anglicanism and the Orthodox churches; and suggesting the kind of reforms that might be prudent, as well as ways in which such reforms might be brought about. The book will prove of interest to many Roman Catholics, but given the ecumenical impact of many of the issues explored, it is likely to exert a wide appeal far beyond the confines of that church.

Chapter 1

Introducing the Main Issues

Bernard Hoose

Discussions about authority in the Roman Catholic Church revolve, for the most part, around two meanings of the word.¹ The first involves ruling, governing, giving the orders and having power over others – albeit delegated power. The second meaning concerns the ability to teach. Thus we may talk about a certain person being an authority on a particular subject. We also encounter two rather different kinds of power in the two different kinds of authority to which we have referred. In the first case, as already noted, we have power over, or governing power. The second kind is quite different: it is the power (or ability) to teach. In what follows I shall endeavour to deal separately with these two different types of power. Within the Roman Catholic church, however, they are often intertwined – perhaps even rather confused at times. Some discussion of them together is therefore almost inevitable if a clear picture of some of the difficulties associated with the use of power within that Church is to be attained.

Power over Others

The first kind of power is not, in all its manifestations, something that will necessarily give us sleepless nights. Some theologians I know get together occasionally to discuss a paper written by one of their number. Before the meeting begins, a member of the group is picked to chair the proceedings. This chairperson, as one might expect, decides who may speak and when. In doing so, he or she exerts power over the other members of the group – power that has been freely delegated by those same members. On a much grander scale, something similar happens in a democratic state. The citizens delegate some of their power to those elected to govern. This can, of course, give rise to greater concern than any likely to arise among the aforementioned group of theologians. Both the voters and the elected need to bear in mind that the power is on loan, not handed over once and for all. Should the chosen ones show themselves to be dangerously incompetent (or simply dangerous), the electors may be justified in withdrawing their delegated power. All of this is clear and straightforward. In the case of the members of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, however, complications arise when the claim is made that their authority does not result from power handed over to them by other human beings, but comes directly from God.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, some Catholic scholars have expressed misgivings in recent times about the very existence of ruling or governing power in the Church (even if it is conceived as delegated by God or Christ) if ruling is taken to mean ‘ruling over’. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke all record an incident in which an argument broke out among the disciples of Jesus as to which of them should be thought of as the greatest. Jesus said to them: ‘You know that among the gentiles those they call their rulers lord it over them, and their great men make their authority felt. Among you this is not to happen. No, anyone who wants to become great among you must be your servant, and anyone who wants to be first among you must be slave to all. For the Son of Man himself came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many’ (Mark 10: 42–5).² There was only one authority over the Church, notes Robert Markus, and that was the authority of God mediated through Christ: ‘In the Church there was to be no authority set over the community, to initiate its functioning and living other than the authority of the Lord. Within the Church, office was conceived as service or ministry (diakonia) to one another.’ However, although the notion of service was not entirely lost, he observes, ‘it was soon to be overlaid by other ideas’. Two major developments modified this serving notion of authority. One was the adoption, through the influence of certain forms of Platonism, of the notion of a hierarchical order in the universe (into which the pyramidal structure of pope, bishops, clergy and laypeople, it would seem, fitted neatly). The other was a change in the nature of the episcopal office. ‘From the time of the emperor Constantine, Christian clergy and especially bishops were given special privileges. The episcopal office began its gradual assimilation to that of a Roman magistrate.’ Those with authority in the Church came to be seen more as rulers than as servants.³ It would seem, moreover, that the notion of authority as something arising from the lending of power by those subject to authority was one that held little or no sway until quite recent times. This was clearly the case when the theory of the divine right of kings appeared on the scene – a theory which matched or complemented the supposed divine right of popes. The power that authorities had was the power of superiors (in some sense or other of that word). It was dominating power.

In an article in which he discusses several kinds of power, David McLoughlin describes domination as ‘the power that works through control, usually backed up by some threat – most crudely that of force, punishment or more subtly through hinted intimidation or psychological manipulation or indoctrination’. The long history of the Church, he opines, ‘bears witness to its constant collusion with every form of dominating power’. That same history ‘bears witness to the repudiation of such force in the name of Christ by Christian leaders and thinkers in every age but our record is sordid enough’.

Dominating power, he notes, can take on subtle guises: ‘One can dominate by classifying forms of life that are morally or spiritually superior – monastic over lay; celibate over married. Such ideas become so internalised and ingrained that they go unquestioned although they dominate and control the shape of thought and discourse for centuries.’⁴ At its worst, the kind of power referred to by McLoughlin is seen in the use of torture and the death penalty for heretics and supposed witches in various branches of Christianity over the course of several centuries. Occasionally, it seems, such use of dominating power was backed up by the use of a claimed teaching authority. Thus we find Pope Leo X condemning Martin Luther’s assertion that burning heretics at the stake was against the will of the Holy Spirit.⁵

Since the Second Vatican Council, the expression of misgivings about the exercise of ruling power in the Church has undoubtedly borne some fruit. Much of the distance between priests and laypeople has disappeared. Most bishops now, it seems, do not seek to be treated like princes. Since the short pontificate of John Paul I, moreover, even popes have lost some of the trappings of royalty.⁶ With or without royal trappings, however, the authority and, therefore, the exercise of power on the part of the papacy remain a major cause of dissension within Christianity – a dissension that has ancient roots. From the earliest times, it would appear, the Church of Rome enjoyed a certain primacy. What that primacy entailed, however, was not something upon which everyone agreed. In the early centuries, notes Eamon Duffy, the primacy of the Roman Church was experienced and understood differently in the various regions.

In most of peninsular Italy, the pope was in effect the sole archbishop, and his power … was wide ranging and very direct. The popes called and presided at synods, ordained the bishops, intervened to regulate discipline and enforce the canons. Outside Italy, in the west more widely, this metropolitan authority only obtained directly in those areas where the popes had succeeded in establishing and maintaining vicariates, a succession of local episcopal representatives through whom they exercised supervision – at Arles in Gaul, in the Balkan regions, and briefly for Spain at Seville … Elsewhere, the pope’s authority was that of the patriarch of the West, on a par with that of the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and eventually, Constantinople and Jerusalem over their regions, though the pope’s patriarchal authority was uniquely enhanced by the added prestige of Peter’s authority. That prestige, however, was a matter of moral authority rather than of administrative power. It was occasional rather than constant, for the regional churches governed themselves, elected their own bishops without reference to Rome, held their own synods, ordered their own life and worship. Rome was important not as a daily presence, but as a fundamental resource, the only apostolic see in the West, above all functioning as a court of appeal in special circumstances.⁷

In the East, notes Duffy, the papal primacy of honour was acknowledged, but the practical consequences that the popes deduced from it were either ignored or denied outright. There were, then, he says, three distinct functions of the papacy in the early centuries: the hands-on role in Italy, that of patriarch of the west and, third, the ill-defined place of honour among all the Churches of both East and West, the precise implications of which were never universally agreed and which were viewed with considerable reservations in the East. Duffy goes on to say that ‘Much of the history of the papacy has been the collapsing of these distinct roles into each other and the growing claims of the popes to exercise all three functions as if they all involved metropolitan authority everywhere’.⁸

One way in which the expansion of papal power has been demonstrated has been in the appointment of bishops and certain other clerics. Before the Renaissance this function passed more and more into the hands of the popes. After the Renaissance, however, popes were forced to relinquish much of this power to secular rulers. In this regard, Duffy refers to the case of Spain: ‘In 1753 … Benedict XIV conceded to the King of Spain the right to appoint to 12 000 benefices in Spain, leaving the pope with just 52.’ However, in more recent times, he notes, states surrendered the right to appoint bishops. Canon 319 of the Code of Canon Law of 1917, moreover, stated that all bishops were to be nominated by the pope, and Canon 377 of the later 1983 Code states that it is the pope who freely appoints bishops or confirms those who have been legitimately elected.⁹ Thus we see power accruing to the popes for a time, then to state rulers and then back to popes through what appears to be nothing more mysterious than the machinations of human beings and accidents of history. All of this, however, is in the sphere of ruling authority – the kind of authority about which most misgivings, one imagines, have been expressed. The history of the use of ruling or dominating power by the papacy, of course, clearly has an effect upon present-day attitudes to the role of the bishop of Rome, but most of the controversy surrounding the pope nowadays revolves around his teaching authority – his power (or ability) to teach.

The Ability to Teach

As is well known, something of a crisis in regard to teaching authority within the Roman Catholic Church arose in 1968 with the publication of the papal encyclical Humanae vitae, in which Paul VI described as intrinsically wrong¹⁰ all intentional uses of artificial contraception. In the years that have passed since then, huge numbers of Catholics have chosen not to act in accordance with Pope Paul’s teaching, which is also the teaching of John Paul II. Indeed, from time to time, one hears of surveys which reveal that only a tiny percentage of Catholic laypeople and their clergy in most (or perhaps all) Western countries agree with papal teaching about the ethics of artificial contraception. It seems not to be unusual, moreover, to hear Catholic moral theologians referring to the controversy about artificial contraception as a non-issue.¹¹ If one confused the two types of authority to which I have referred and ignored claims about teaching authority coming directly from God, one might be tempted to conclude from all this that here we have an example of people (in this case, laypeople and members of the clergy) taking back some of the power that they had previously given to the authority figure. Here, however, we are dealing with authority as the ability to teach. What is more likely to be happening in this case, then, is that people are simply not accepting that the pope is competent to teach on such a matter. In other words, they are not withdrawing power which they had previously given, since they did not give such power in the first place. They are merely refusing to accept that such power (whatever its original source is supposed to be) now resides where various popes have claimed it resides.

Nearly a century before the publication of Humanae vitae, the famous declaration of infallibility had been made at the First Vatican Council:

We teach and define as divinely revealed dogma that when the Roman pontiff speaks ex cathedra, that is, when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church, he possesses, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, that infallibility which the divine Redeemer willed his Church to enjoy in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals. Therefore such definitions of the Roman pontiff are of themselves, and not by the consent of the church, irreformable.¹²

This declaration was not a spontaneous communal action of the bishops of the world gathered in Rome. There have since been numerous allegations of manipulation and pressurization by those in favour of such a declaration. Indeed, apparently finding themselves in a difficult position, 80 bishops chose to leave Rome before the final vote was taken.¹³ It would seem, moreover, that some, including the pontiff at the time, Pius IX, had been seeking a declaration of greater power for the pope than that which actually materialized. One thing apparently being sought was that Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors be declared an infallible statement. This was the document which, among other things, contained teachings opposed to religious liberty – teachings which were later overturned at the Second Vatican Council. Thus, a few months after the declaration, John Henry (later Cardinal) Newman wrote to Lady Simeon: ‘From what I heard at Rome, while the matter was going on, from almost the first authority, they hoped...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• 1 Introducing the Main Issues
• Part I Authority and the Church
• Part II The Role of the Faithful
• Part III Ecumenical Dimensions
• Part IV Organizational Culture and Authority
• Part V Marginalization and Authority
• Part VI A Step Beyond
• Index