A doctrinal authority for the Episcopal Conference? This is simply a mistake! Warned by Cardinal Walter Brandmüller

Giving conferences an episcopal of doctrinal competences is simply a mistake that contradicts the sacramental structure of the Church and leads to secularization of Catholicism. Cardinal Walter Brandmüller warns against this.

Pope Francis in the Apostolic Adhortation of the “Evangelia Gaudium” of 2013 proposed giving the Episcopal Conferences a certain authentic doctrinal authority. This is where he seeks to prosecute the Synod for Synodality, considering the deposition of this authority in canon law. According to Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, a 95-year-old historian of the Church and a erstwhile president of the Pontifical Committee of Historical Sciences, it is simply a mistaken direction which has nothing to do with the collegiateness of bishops within the meaning of the Church Tradition, including the teaching of the Second Vatican Council.

An extended article by his author was published on his blog by Vaticanist Sandro Magister.

The Cardinal pointed out that the first authentic body of expressing the collegiality of bishops was provincial synods, which gathered shepherds from a given ecclesiastical province, that is, from the metropolis. It is so a circumstantial unit headed by the Archbishop, which consists of a number of dioceses.

As Brandmüller emphasized, this is something completely different from the episcopal conferences. Conferences were created without mention to the natural process of historical birth of church structures. Conferences are linked to the territory of a secular state and in this sense are not ecclesiological, but alternatively political.

Purpurat noted that the first intent of the Episcopal Conference was so to make decisions concerning the life of the Church in relation to a peculiar political unit – to a peculiar state. It appeared that the tasks of the Episcopal Conference were limited to the management of relations between the Church and the context of the state and society. This did not begin to change until the 20th century; it was besides reflected in paragraph 23 of the Constitution ‘Lumen gentium’ of the Second Vatican Council, which speaks of the Episcopal Conference as an organ capable of a concrete implementation of the ‘collegiate spirit’.

In the meantime, further procedures and structures were developing which gave Episcopal conferences an increasingly "strong" character, so that in practice these bodies began to restrict the freedom and autonomy of individual bishops. Brandmüller cited here the criticism of the episcopal conference presented by the cardinals. Joseph Ratzinger, pointing to the usurpative nature of any activities of the Episcopal Conference, especially erstwhile it comes to teaching authority.

Cardinal Brandmüller himself noted that the most critical is the atomicization of the Catholic Church due to the increasing competence of the Episcopal Conference. The Church is inherently composed "of all tribes, languages and nations", whereas conferences are purely national – and thus can contribute to the creation of de facto national Churches, which are in a alternatively loose union with the Holy See.

According to the German purple, it is essential to separate clearly the competences of the episcopal conference from the competences of the provincial synod – and to revive or reconstruct the institution of that synod.

It is the provincial synods that are a form of exercising holy bishopial power based on the sacramental structure of the Church, in contrast to the meetings of Episcopal conferences, which, as bodies relating to the political structures of the state, can be considered more as sui generis "business meetings" of bishops.

According to the Cardinal, this would lead to a halt to the process of secularization of the Church, especially in Europe, as he believes that the expansion of the competences of national episcopals strengthens this process.

In another words, Episcopal conferences should, as originally intended, address “ad extra” issues, i.e. relations with the political community within which they operate; “ad intra” issues – interior issues of the Church, specified as teaching – should in turn be dealt with by the provincial synod as the authentic bearer of the sacramental collegiality of bishops.

Source: deakonos.be

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