Recognising the doctrinal authority of bishops’ conferences does not mean allowing them to reject the teaching authority of the Pope, but rather to apply Church teaching to their unique context, the prefect of the Vatican Dicastery for Bishops said yesterday. Source: Catholic Review.
“Each episcopal conference needs to have a certain authority in terms of saying, ‘How are we going to understand this (doctrine) in the concrete reality in which we are living?’” Cardinal Robert F. Prevost, prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, said during a Synod on Synodality briefing.
The authority of national bishops’ conferences has been a central topic in Synod discussions on the decentralisation of decision-making in the Church.
The working document for the Synod stated that bishops’ conferences had not yet realised the full capacities envisioned for them by the Second Vatican Council, including “genuine doctrinal authority”.
Cardinal Prevost said Synod members noticed that the Spanish and Italian translations of the working document mention developing “some kind of doctrinal authority” for bishops’ conferences rather than a more absolute form of doctrinal authority as could be insinuated from the English version, creating confusion among English-speaking Synod discussion groups.
The cardinal said decentralisation and allowing local churches to have a greater role in decision-making, recurring themes of the Synod, would not negate Church teaching on the primacy of the Pope.
“The whole understanding of synodality is not that all of a sudden there is going to be a fully democratic, assembly-style way of exercising authority in the Church,” he said.
“The primacy of Peter and of the successors of Peter, the bishop of Rome, of the Pope, is something which enables the Church to continue to live communion in a very concrete way.
“Synodality can have a great impact on how we are living in the Church, but it certainly takes nothing away from what we would call the primacy” of the Pope, the cardinal said.
Fr Gilles Routhier, a theological expert at the Synod from Canada, addressed concerns that giving bishops’ conferences more doctrinal authority could lead to “disorder” due to their proposing potentially conflicting dogmas.
He clarified that bishops’ conferences cannot possess “an absolute authority to propose new dogmas” but must develop “an authority that understands limits” and remains in communion with the universal Church.
FULL STORY
Synod deliberates on doctrinal authority of bishops’ conferences (By Justin McLellan, CNS via Catholic Review)
