December 2001 Call to Action News

McBrien: Synod bishops chafing under Vatican controls

Make no mistake about it, Fr. Richard McBrien told overflow audiences in Philadelphia and Chicago. The bishops at the October synod in Rome who complained about Vatican centralization, who lamented the total breakdown of collegiality, and who called for a radical reform of the curia were not directing their remarks at John Paul II. Their intended target was the college of cardinals who will meet in the not-too-distant future to elect a new pope. The vehemence of the bishops' protests and the extent of their anger - coming not only from the U.S. and Europe but from Asia and Africa and South America - constituted, said McBrien, an unmistakable message: Do not select a pope who intends to duplicate the principles of the present pontiff on church governance or you will have real trouble on your hands.

Press reports on the month-long international synod counted 53 of the 247 bishops who stood up and spoke for more collegiality and less Vatican control. Progressive cardinals like Danneels of Brussels and Martini of Milan were joined by conservatives like Keeler of Baltimore. Presidents of the council of European bishops' conferences and of the Latin American bishops (CELAM) joined the chorus, as did U.S. bishops' president Joseph Fiorenza, implying the support of hundreds of other bishops back home.

It is true, McBrien explained, that the overwhelming majority of the world's bishops have been appointed by John Paul, but they are saying loud and clear they do not intend to be errand boys of the Vatican, with their every decision subject to veto from abroad. Exactly who will be elected is anyone's guess, said McBrien, but whatever his personal preferences and inclinations, he should know by now, on the basis of the synod, that he had best relax the tight leash.

In fact, said McBrien, the concept of papal authority has undergone shifts and evolutions throughout the ages. The view that the church is primarily "a legal institution based on papal power" and established by one verse in the Bible ("Thou art Peter and upon this rock") may persist in the minds of many Catholics but, he insisted, it is wrong and always has been wrong.