Pope Benedict XVI has come to America, and my e-mail box is alive with unsolicited commentaries on the Roman Catholic Church, as well as pitches for experts to interview to get the real picture of the church that lays claim to the bedrock of Christianity. One man calls himself the consummate insider at the
Vatican.
As the vicar of Christ, all strikingly dressed in white, makes his rounds, many Arizona Catholics are reminded of two decades ago when Pope John Paul II roamed for a day around Phoenix and Tempe in his historic visit. Benedict has been buzzing around in a Popemobile certainly more rad than what conveyed JPII back then.
His American trip, then, unleashed a litany of reform ideas, as well.
One commentary sent my way this week is titled Reforming the Vatican: What the Church Can Learn from Other Institutions by Jesuit writer Thomas Reese, former editor of America magazine, the national Catholic publication, and senior fellow of the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.. It was Reese, who in 2005, abruptly resigned as the magazines editor, after Cardinal Joseph Radzinger, the future pope, had repeatedly criticized Reeses writings that questioned the Vatican, which wanted to put more prior-publication restraints in place.
Reese argues that the church has long been borrowing from secular political institutions, so why doesnt it go further and adopt some best practices that would revitalize the 2,000-old church troubled by lagging attendance, closed parishes, sexual misconduct and sharply fewer Catholics interested in become priests, nuns and workers.
Today, the governance of the church is more centralized than at any time in its history, he asserts. To make the church more collegial, the Vatican should once again adopt practices of the secular political world.
Over the past two centuries, civil society has learned that good government calls for: the elimination of a powerful nobility, adherence to the principle of subsidiarity and creation of a system of checks and balances, Reese writes.
Reese lays out six needed reforms:
- Make the Vatican a bureaucracy, not a court. With cardinals viewed as princes, it is hard to fire nobles and bishops when they are incompetent or in changes of administrations. All in all, he wants merit to be based on work performed and not vaunted titles.
- Strengthen the legislative bodies in the church: No modern political philosophy would advise a polity to depend only on the wisdom of an executive. He calls for synods with members elected at Episcopal conferences and not appointed.
- Convert congregations into elected synodal committees: It would give synods and conferences authority to act as policy-making and oversight bodies of the Vatican. As it is, Reese says, cardinals wield powerful influence over each area they oversee, limiting ideas and input from other realms of the church.
- Create an independent judiciary: Such an entity is fundamental to institutions to ensure rule of law prevails. To allow the executive to indict, prosecute, judge and sentence a defendant is today considered a violation of due process. One of the scandals of the church, he said, has been the treatment of theologians accused of dissent by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which Benedict, while a cardinal, had overseen.
- Elect bishops: Though the current procedure whereby the pope names his bishops may be the corporate model with the pope as the CEO and bishops are branch managers, the merit of local leaders being chosen by local citizens is critical, as was endorsed by Pope Leo I (1878-1903).
- Strengthening episcopal conferences by making them councils: Not everything can or should be decided by a centralized government and that what can be done locally should be done locally. In centuries past, the episcopal conferences had an important part in determining church teaching and discipline. They should not need to have every decision and document reviewed and ratified by the Vatican, Reese said.
The writer argues the change actually would be a return to earlier practices and structures of the church. He asks aloud whether such reforms can be made. As a social scientist, Id have to say theyre probably close to zero. The church is now run by a self-perpetuating group of men who know such reform would diminish their power, he writes. It is also contrary to their theology of the church. But as a Catholic Christian, I still have to hope.
The entire articlecan be found at Commonweals web site.
