Episcopal Conferences: Historical, Canonical, and Theological Studies Episcopal Conferences: Historical, Canonical, and Theological Studies Edited by Thomas J. Reese, S.J.
(Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1989)
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The full text of Episcopal Conferences: Historical, Canonical, and Theological Studies is on the Web.
There follows the preface of the book.
In the Catholic church, Roman officials perform many useful functions. One of their contributions to the academic community is to highlight certain topics as important for the church and therefore worthy of study. At one time, a statement by a Vatican official might have ended debate in the church. Today, however, the maxim Roma locuta est, causa finita est (Rome has spoken, the case is finished) yields to Roma locuta est, causa incepta est (Rome has spoken, the project begins). By issuing an instrumentum laboris or working paper, Rome is inviting not only bishops but the scholarly community to participate in discussions and debates that will clarify issues so that the truth can be found. This collection of essays is a response to the Vatican invitation to examine the theological and juridical status of episcopal conferences.
My interest in episcopal conferences began when, as associate editor of America, I followed the development of the peace pastoral by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB). The conference and its pastoral were front-page news across the country, thanks in part to attacks on the letter by the White House and conservative Catholics. More importantly for our purposes, the pastoral had also been questioned by some European theologians and bishops. In order to discuss these differences, the NCCB drafting committee met in Rome in January 1983 with Vatican officials and representatives from the European episcopal conferences. The minutes of that meeting reported that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, stated that "A bishops' conference as such does not have a mandatum docendi. This belongs only to the individual bishop or to the college of bishops with the pope."
When I saw this quotation, I recognized that it could be used by the bishops' opponents to undermine the teaching authority of the peace pastoral and any other statement issued by the conference. I immediately contacted Avery Dulles, S.J., and suggested that he write a letter to America responding to Cardinal Ratzinger's comments which I had quoted in an article reporting final passage of the peace pastoral. After discussions back and forth with Avery, the proposal grew from a letter to an op-ed piece, and finally to an article.
Cardinal Ratzinger continued to raise questions about episcopal conferences in an interview that received wide circulation. The status of episcopal conferences was therefore put on the agenda of the 1985 extraordinary synod. At the synod, Bishop James Malone, then president of the NCCB, called for a study of the theological and juridical status of episcopal conferences, a request that was incorporated into the final report of the synod.
Interestingly, the report did not say who was supposed to do this study. When Cardinal Godfried Danneels, the relator for the synod, was asked who would do the study, he responded that anyone could do it: the episcopal conferences, theologians, Vatican agencies. He invited everyone to go to work on the topic.
Sad to say, after taking the initiative in calling for the study, the American bishops then dropped the ball in the Vatican court and went home. The NCCB committees and staff devoted no time to the project, nor did they contract with American scholars for research on this topic which was of such vital interest to their teaching authority. They simply waited for the Vatican to do the study for them.
The Vatican study was released in early 1988 with a letter from Cardinal Bernardin Gantin, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops. He called the document an instrumentum laboris, a working paper, and requested corrections and emendations from bishops and episcopal conferences before the end of the year.
As soon as the working paper was available, the Woodstock Theological Center brought together a team of prominent American ecclesiologists who went to work analyzing and discussing the document. Avery Dulles, Joseph Komonchak, Ladislas Orsy, and James Provost were members of this original group. Komonchak, Orsy, and Provost also took part in an international symposium at Salamanca on episcopal conferences that occurred right before the instrumentum laboris was released.
The Vatican instrumentum laboris was a great disappointment. Although the document had been completed as early as July 1987 and was not released until January 1988, the English translation was poorly done and appeared rushed. The released text contained whiteouts, crossed out words, misspellings, typos, and handwritten corrections. Worse yet, the theological reasoning was onesided, inconsistent, and lacked any historical sense. Large sections of the document were lifted from articles or editorials in Civiltà Cattolica. As one professor commented, "If this paper were turned in by a graduate student, I would not give it a 'C' grade." Many theologians considered the instrumentum laboris so poorly done that they did not want to waste their time commenting on it.
Encouraged by the Woodstock Center, Dulles, Komonchak, Orsy, and Provost pursued the issue in a series of articles that were published in America. Copies of this issue of America were distributed by the Woodstock Theological Center to all the U.S. bishops and to episcopal conferences around the world. Correspondence indicated that the articles were helpful to bishops preparing responses not only in the United States but in the Antilles, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ecuador, Mexico, New Zealand, Paraguay, the Philippines, South Africa, southeast Asia, Venezuela, and other parts of the world. One conference told the Vatican that the America articles "represent what is the basic view of our seminary professors as well as the general consensus of the Bishops of this Conference." In less than a year, the articles were also being cited by scholars writing in Belgium, Canada, Germany, India, and Italy.
With the completion of these initial responses to the instrumentum laboris, the Woodstock Theological Center expanded its research group to include more theologians, canonists, and historians in order to do a more scholarly and extensive analysis of the theological and juridical status of episcopal conferences. We decided to expand our research beyond the instrumentum laboris to include aspects of the question that had not yet been considered. The result of this research is this collection of essays.
The Woodstock Center and I are very grateful to the outstanding scholars who generously gave of their time and energy for this project, not only in writing their own articles but in critiquing and commenting on drafts of each other's papers. An entire weekend in December 1988 was devoted to a discussion of the papers by the participants together with invited guests who included Donald E. Heintschel, associate general secretary of the NCCB/USCC, Michael J. Buckley, S.J., staff to the NCCB Committee on Doctrine, James L. Connor, S.J., director of the Woodstock Theological Center, and other Woodstock fellows. This was truly a collaborative effort. Some of these scholars also helped the special committee of former NCCB presidents who drafted the NCCB response to the instrumentum laboris which was approved in November 1988.
The collection of articles is divided into three parts, with an introduction by Joseph A. Komonchak, professor of theology at the Catholic University of America. He places our research in the context of the debates on episcopal conferences that began at Vatican II and have continued ever since.
Part 1 uses historical scholarship to look at episcopal conferences and their predecessors. Brian E. Daley, S.J., professor of church history at the Weston School of Theology, takes us to the patristic period of the church to examine regional councils and how they interacted with the church of Rome. Elizabeth K. McKeown, professor of church history in the theology department of Georgetown University, and Gerald P. Fogarty, S.J., professor of history and religious studies at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, bring us back to the twentieth century with descriptions of the origins and development of the National Catholic Welfare Council, the predecessor of the NCCB.
Part 2 presents papers of a more analytical nature. Since I am a political scientist, my article examines the NCCB/USCC as a consensus-making institution by looking at the procedures used by the conference assembly in approving statements. Thomas J. Green, professor of canon law at the Catholic University of America, investigates the treatment of episcopal conferences in the 1983 Code of Canon Law. Joseph Komonchak then returns with a detailed analysis of the Vatican instrumentum laboris.
Finally, part 3 examines episcopal conferences from a theological perspective. Avery Dulles, S.J., holder of the Laurence J. McGinley Chair in Religion and Society at Fordham University, examines the doctrinal authority of episcopal conferences. Ladislas Orsy, S.J., professor of canon law at the Catholic University of America, also explores the teaching authority of bishops' conferences. Michael A. Fahey, S.J., professor of ecclesiology and dean of the faculty of theology at the University of St. Michael's College, Toronto, examines the pertinence of Eastern church synodal practices for Western episcopal conferences. James H. Provost, professor of canon law at the Catholic University of America, discusses episcopal conferences as manifestations of communio.
This study of episcopal conferences would have gone nowhere without the generosity of these scholars who gave time and energy to this task in the midst of their many other commitments. Thanks are also due to foundations and individual contributors who recognized the importance of this project and gave it their support, especially the U.S. Catholic Conference, the Raskob Foundation, the Cambridge Center for Social Studies (a funding arm of the Jesuit Conference), and another foundation that prefers to remain anonymous. I am also grateful to David Staples, who oversaw production of the book, and David Collins, S.J., who helped in editing and research. John Breslin, S.J., director of the Georgetown University Press, and his staff saw to the speedy printing and distribution of the text.
As a fellow of the Woodstock Theological Center, I am especially grateful for the encouragement and assistance of our director, James L. Connor, S.J. The Woodstock Theological Center is an independent research center based at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Sponsored by the Maryland and New York Provinces of the Society of Jesus, the center is committed to research on contemporary problems in the light of the Christian faith. A list of Woodstock publications is on page ii.
In many ways, this project on episcopal conferences is a model for future collaboration between the center and the academic community. By identifying an important issue and providing logistics and funding, the center has brought together the best scholarly minds to work on a topic of critical importance to the church. Interaction between the center's research fellows and outside scholars has produced results that would otherwise have taken years to realize if it had been done at all. The center has also taken responsibility not only for encouraging the research, but for disseminating its results to both the hierarchy and the academic community. We look forward to many more such productive and fruitful endeavors.
Thomas J. Reese, S.J.
Woodstock Theological Center
Georgetown University
