The Report of the Canonical Commission for a Synodal Church, dated September 22, sees the Synod on Synodality moving from being what many hoped would only be another modernist fad into the arena of official legislation.
The 26-page document proposes substantial alterations to the 1983 Code of Canon Law, and while the individual amendments might seem relatively insignificant, the larger project it embodies should raise considerable concern.
According to the Commission, which includes Monsignor Filippo Iannone as coordinator and Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda as a member, the present proposals are only an initial step as it envisages the eventual and complete revision of both the Latin and Eastern Codes. In accordance with Synodal processes, each code is to update its theological and ecclesiological principles.
The proposed amendments are therefore not isolated changes but indicative of the direction in which the Commission sees the Church’s canonical order developing.
The intended direction becomes very clear in the treatment of the sensus fidei, and all the amendments should be framed by what is suggested in Canon 749. This is arguably also the most worrying suggested amendment.
Infallibility and the sensus fidei
The Commission proposes placing a new paragraph at the very beginning of Canon 749, the canon governing the exercise of the Church’s infallibility:
The entire body of the Christian faithful, having received the anointing from the Spirit, cannot err in matters of faith, and it manifests this characteristic through the supernatural sense of faith of the whole people when, from the bishops down to the last of the lay faithful, its universal consent in matters of faith and morals is demonstrated.
While certain aspects of this idea are not novel, as discussed by Cardinal Franzelin in De divine traditione, Thesis 12, and by J.M.A. Vacant, it takes on significance because of its canonical location and juridical prominence. This paragraph will now precede the paragraphs dealing with the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff and the College of Bishops.
The Commission states that “the ongoing reception of the counsel of all the faithful must accompany the interpretation and application of the law,” and adds that this “may even lead to the necessary modification of certain legislative provisions in light of new insights and changing circumstances.”
How that doctrine might be translated into canonical mechanisms of “reception,” consultation, and communal discernment — and how those mechanisms might subsequently be invoked to alter ecclesiastical law — is not explained. This principle runs like a thread through the rest of the Commission’s report.
Bishops will need consent to govern?
At present, the presbyteral council — the body of priests described by Canon 495 as the bishop’s “senate” — has a consultative vote and the Commission proposes that this remain so, but that the bishop require its consent for certain major acts.
Such acts include “to erect, suppress, or modify parishes;” “to reduce a church to profane use or to construct a new church;” “to erect or suppress a seminary;” and “to incardinate presbyters and to receive ministers from Churches or ecclesial communities not in full communion with the Catholic Church.”
Consultation and consent mean that a bishop must listen, and that in the specified cases he cannot lawfully proceed without the council’s agreement.
The report still affirms that episcopal authority is rooted in “the hierarchical structure of the Church established by Christ” but it seems to contradict itself when it simultaneously states that authority “may not ignore a direction which emerges through proper discernment within a consultative process.” At the very least, this implies that despite authority technically remaining formally hierarchal, it will be extremely conditioned by synodal structures.
The Dispatch
The parish council becomes mandatory
Current law requires a parish pastoral council only if the diocesan bishop judges one opportune, but the new proposed Canon 536 declares that “a pastoral council is to be established in every parish,” and that “the pastoral council participates in the formulation of pastoral guidelines and decisions that the pastor is to implement by virtue of his pastoral authority…”
Here we see synodality concretely enter the ecclesial system, as the pastor will still preside and retain pastoral authority, but an optional advisory institution becomes a mandatory component of every parish. Moreso, it will be explicitly participating in formulating decisions that the pastor implements.
A lay majority in diocesan synods
The proposed changes to Canon 463 clearly aim to gradually overcome hierarchical authority as the Commission proposes that lay members be chosen “such that they constitute the majority of members” (emphasis added).
The bishop, in other words, will remain the sole legislator of the diocesan synod, but the Commission simultaneously proposes that diocesan synods, of which lay persons constitute the numerical majority, be celebrated at least every ten years.
Laymen and women to exercise delegated episcopal authority
The Commission further calls for a new office of an “episcopal delegate” in which a bishop could appoint such delegates “chosen from among the Christian faithful deemed suitable,” who would exercise their office “with delegated authority” in the same matters mentioned for episcopal vicars.
Since “Christian faithful” includes lay men and women, the proposal explicitly allows lay Catholics to exercise delegated authority in diocesan government. It also expands ecclesiastical governance to those who have not received sacred orders. Given that the Synodal Church uses the word “Christian” rather flippantly, the wording could be read as extending that role to Protestants as well.
Lay judges become ordinary
Canon Law 1421 states that diocesan judges are to be clerics while permitting episcopal conferences to allow lay judges, but the Commission instead urges that “in a diocese, the bishop is to appoint diocesan judges, clerics and lay persons.”
Where a collegiate tribunal cannot be constituted, proposed Canon 1425 goes further, allowing a case to be entrusted to “a single judge, cleric or lay, man or woman.” While lay participation in ecclesiastical tribunals are not new, the novelty consists in that they are now canonically becoming the norm.
Rome’s silence becomes permission
Presently, Canon 446 prevents decrees of a particular council from being promulgated until they have been reviewed by the Apostolic See, but the Commission now suggests a significant amendment.
Proposal B suggests that “if the Apostolic See does not respond within one year, the decrees can be promulgated.” This potentially opens the door for immense abuses with Rome being able to condone it through silence but without “getting their hands dirty.”
From ecclesiastical activism to synodal law
While none of these proposals abolishes episcopal authority as such or outright turns the Church into a democratic institution, the sub-text does point to something concerning, and even sinister, especially since all of this is presented as a short-term program preceding what the Commission describes as the eventual “complete revision of the two Codes.”
Most concerning is the proposed Canon 749, which appears to intentionally obscure the traditional distinction between infallibility in credendo “in believing” and infallibility in docendo “in teaching.”
According to traditional Catholic doctrine, the faithful possess the former as the “believing Church” and the Pope and bishops possess the latter as the divinely constituted “teaching Church.” But now the Commission proposes inserting the infallibility of the faithful directly into the canon whose existing provisions concern the infallible teaching acts of the Pope and episcopal college.
Together with the insistence that the “reception” and counsel of the faithful accompany the interpretation of law and may contribute to its modification, the proposed change raises the question whether sensus fidei will be transformed into a quasi-juridical source of ecclesiastical governance to push novel and even heretical theology advanced by dissident laypersons.
