Roman Catholics: Reformists in Command

By calling together the second Synod of Bishops, Pope Paul VI had hoped to gauge—and to control—the growing resentment against his absolute rule. Instead, after last week’s discussions in the Vatican’s Hall of Broken Heads, reformists out to curb the Pontiff’s power were clearly in command. The 144 assembled prelates, in fact, had taken a groping first step toward something resembling parliamentary government in the Roman Catholic Church.

This week the bishops will vote on a summary of reforms drawn up after days of debates and vigorous lobbying, which drew hundreds of newsmen from all over the world (see THE PRESS, overleaf). The recommendations from nine working committees—in which the prelates were grouped according to their language of preference—were strikingly similar in spirit, and often in details as well. In general, they expressed serious reservations about the way papal authority is being exercised.

Among the proposed reforms:

> The Pope should consult the bishops before issuing major statements and, like last year’s Humanae Vitae encyclical opposing artificial birth control.

> The synod should meet regularly and decide on its own agenda—instead of being called when the Pope sees fit to discuss an agenda that he puts before it.

> A permanent committee should represent the bishops in Rome so that they can more directly express their views to the Vatican.

> The concept of “subsidiarity”—the idea that a higher level of authority should never intervene in matters within the competence of a lower one —should be strengthened.

The French-speaking group of prelates, which included the synod’s leading reformist, Leo-Jozef Cardinal Suenens of Belgium, made some of the most radical recommendations. It raised the possibility of bishops becoming involved in the election of the Pope; it also urged that the Roman Curia serve the church’s bishops as well as the Pope.

Curbing the Curia. One committee of English-speaking prelates that included Detroit’s John Cardinal Dearden suggested that papal nuncios be bypassed in most communications between national episcopates and the Vatican. Another English-speaking group asked that the Roman Curia stop using the expression “the Holy Father says” and giving the impression that it speaks in the name of the Pope when, in fact, it is speaking for itself. Nor, it said, should the Curia issue decrees or make major press statements without informing the concerned bishops beforehand.

The Latin and Italian groups—in which most Curia members and papal appointees gathered—kept closer to the status quo. They suggested that the synod have some voice in choosing its own agenda but continue to be convened only at the Pope’s pleasure. “Synods should never be a way of ‘getting the Pope,’ ” said John Cardinal Wright, former Bishop of Pittsburgh and now head of the Vatican’s Congregation of the Clergy. He warned that yearly synods could become a prime example of Parkinson’s Law and a burden to all.

Despite the criticism, the mood of the gathering was one of elation over what England’s John Cardinal Heenan described as the “tolerance and charity” of the bishops. The prevailing sentiment of the synod was so clearly in favor of reforms that it seemed unlikely that the Pope could long avoid implementing them. But no one challenged the Pontiff’s supreme authority, or his right to delay acting upon or even to ignore what the prelates recommended.

What will come of the reforms lies entirely in the hands of Pope Paul. Describing himself as a spectator who did not want to interfere with the synod’s “complete liberty,” he listened attentively to synod speeches at five of the seven sessions and scribbled notes. During intermissions, he mingled with the prelates over coffee and biscuits in the daily clerical kaffeeklatsch.

But during his regular public audience last week, the Pope resorted to unusually outspoken terms to make it clear that any sharing of his authority will have to come gradually. The church, he said, “is a spiritual and religious fact. Faith generates it. Authority directs it. The Holy Spirit enlivens it. It cannot be changed at will.”