Shut Up, Father

Cross Currents, Winter, 2000 by Terry Dosh

Terry Paul Collins, Papal Power: A Proposal for Change in Catholicism's Third Millennium. HarperCollins Fount Paperbacks, Blackburn, Vic., Australia, 1997. 239pp. $20.00 (paper); may be available from ARCC, PO Box 912, Delran, NJ 08075.

Paper Power has attracted the attention of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which published a critique by an "anonymous consulter" in 1998. The author placed this critique and his response on the World Wide Web (in an effort to open up Rome's secretive procedures. Although one might hope that this action would have assured global attention for his ideas on church reform, the book appears to be out of print and remains difficult to obtain outside of Australia, where Collins lives and works as a Missionary of the Sacred Heart priest, church historian, broadcaster, and ecologist. Papal Power deserves a wider and critical audience, one that will act on his traditional, even conservative, recommendations.

Collins views the papalism of the last two centuries as abnormal. After analyzing its recent origins and current practice, he proposes a response that jettisons the present monarchical model with its emphasis on primacy. Papalism's centralized, bureaucratic, narrow orthodox mode "distorts the traditionally understood structure of the church" (29). It likewise quashes the collegiality of the bishops and remains an enormous stumbling block to ecumenism. Sacred power has replaced the servant leadership of the first millennium. Even high medieval papalism had been balanced by synods, bishops, theologians, and the faithful. In the sixteenth-century absolute monarchy and the divine right of kings influenced the church. After the French Revolution dethroned secular absolute monarchy and a new European consciousness arose, the Church continued on its own monarchical trajectory.

At Vatican I, in a radical breach with tradition, the papalists handed over all power to the pope by conflating the three magisteria of bishops, theologians, and the sensus fidelium into one: the pope. A sense of doctrinal Catholicism was lost. Rome became normative. In the twentieth century the curia expanded from two hundred persons to over three thousand. Canon Law controlled the Church After Vatican II failed to create changes in the curia's infrastructure, John Paul II's reign gave a new legitimacy to papal monarchy.

A corrosive disjunction has developed between two mutually exclusive visions of church: as a sacramental community or as a hierarchy. The "destructive tension inherent in this disjunction" has not allowed a community-oriented, consultative vision to emerge in the Church; rather a hierarchical power structure has obtained. Hence the Church has become "an increasingly dysfunctional institution." A crisis in leadership has ensued, significantly manifest in the crisis of the priesthood. The high papalism of John Paul II is the antithesis of Vatican II and its balanced model of the church.

What now? We dispense with the monarchy model and, returning to tradition, reclaim a local, synodal, participative approach. This is a truly conservative, riot revolutionary, stance. The early church, marked by inclusivity, diversity, and servant leadership, saw tradition as a dynamic, developmental process. The norm for the first millennium was a localized, decentralized church where regional patriarchates and the principle of subsidiarity reigned. Rome remained the touchstone of orthodoxy and intervened only on major issues.

Collins proposes that the church adopt a constitution with a charter of rights that posits representative councils at all levels of governance. The Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church (USA) and the European Network have recently created such a document. He proposes a General Council as a necessity in reforming the papacy. An Anglo-American approach, a non-European venue, and a strong conciliarist bent are necessary components of this council.

The curia's fear of Papal Power is justified, for the book aims at significantly reducing its influence and abuse of power. The curia is both perpetrator and victim in an institutional system that contravenes the gospel of Christ that it purports to serve. This book will liberate the curia, with the freedom of the children of God.

TERRY DOSH is a church historian in Minneapolis, where he publishes Bread Rising, a newsletter on church reform.