The Pope’s intention appears to be to translate into action the Second Vatican Council’s desire for a realignment of forces within the Church that has remained largely theoretical over the last half–century. So far, most of Pope Francis’ actions have been symbolic of his much less grandiose interpretation of the personal role of the papacy than all recent popes have followed, and he has now given that style of approach some embryonic structural shape.
The new team of eight will not meet as such until the autumn, though it is said the Pope began consulting them individually immediately. What is more significant is that they have been carefully chosen so that, virtually, every part of the world is represented and, in most cases, by men who have themselves been selected for leadership positions by their episcopal colleagues. Thus, the European representative is the German Cardinal Reinhard Marx, who is president of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community and hence can speak for the Catholic hierarchies of Europe. Similar qualifications – and a similar democratic mandate – apply to most of the others.
This shifts the balance of power in the Church in favor of national or regional conferences of bishops. They have hitherto suffered from lack of status as a result of the ruling by the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that episcopal conferences “had no theological significance.” They were mere collections of bishops, and their theological weight was merely the sum of their parts.
If they have now been recognized as key components in the Church’s new architecture, that may go a long way to incorporating the idea of episcopal collegiality at the heart of the Church. The Vatican II decree Lumen Gentium declared that the primary responsibility for the government of the Church lay with the college of bishops, with the Pope as its head. Hence, the Curia’s role should be as a civil service answering to the college of bishops headed by the Pope, not to govern the bishops on behalf of the Pope – which has been the pattern so far.
This is where putting together a team of eight to advise him, and reforming the Curia, are two parts of the same project. If the team is really the beginning of Cabinet government under a “constitutional papacy,” particularly if the principle of subsidiarity is also to be followed, then the Curia will have to be reshaped and scaled back to provide appropriate structures. Clearly a period of upheaval has begun in Rome, with implications worldwide.
