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As cardinals prepare to elect a new pope, Emeritus Archbishop John Quinn of San Francisco has urged major reforms in Church governance, including how the papacy is exercised.
Calling for major decentralisation of Vatican and papal authority, he said this could be achieved through the creation of regional bishops’ conferences and synods of bishops with decision-making authority.
Archbishop Quinn, who has often advocated reform of Church governance, said shared bishops’ decision-making with the pope is urgently needed.
Such decision-making “is not the result of a juridical decree, not the result of the action of a council, and not the result of the decision of any pope”.
Rather, he said, it is rooted in the ordination of the bishop and the doctrine that he is a successor to the apostles of Jesus.
However, he maintained, “a very large number of bishops are of the opinion that there is not any real or meaningful collegiality in the Church today”.
The emeritus archbishop, who was speaking at a symposium on Vatican II at Stanford University, said local bishops “have no perceptible influence” in the appointment of bishops. Instead, appointments are made in Rome, often by men who do not adequately know local diocesan needs.
Introducing regional bishops’ conferences and deliberative episcopal synods would involve separating two aspects of the function of the papacy — “the unity of faith and communion” and administration.
The pope would have “the burden of fostering unity, collaboration and charity”, but Church administration would become more regional.
In such a reconfiguration, the appointment of bishops, creation of dioceses, questions of liturgy and other matters of Catholic practices would be up the regional bishops’ conferences, he said.
In the case of Asia and Africa these would enable local churches to develop their liturgy, spirituality and practice in accord with their own cultures, He said there has been a long-standing complaint from both Africa and Asia that “they feel impoverished and constrained in not being able to integrate elements of their culture into Church life”.
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Image: Intermountain Catholic
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