William M. Shea is the director of the Center for Religion, Ethics, and Culture at the College of the Holy Cross. Shea's reflections, titled The Imperial Papacy, will appear in the May 6th Commonweal. To read the whole piece now, click here. Two excerpts:
Many other things must be said about the last papacy,
but I have the awful sense that over the past twenty-five years one
voice has filled the ecclesial airwaves, leaving little room for any
other. Pardon me a hyperbolic metaphor, but in this regard I would say
the Catholic Church has been undergoing asphyxiation. I see two large
problems in this. I hope the next pope can begin to resolve them, but I
have serious doubts that he will be able to do either. Both have to do
with governance of the church.
First, the last papacy revealed in acute form what
everyone knew already: the Catholic Church is a monarchy. That fact
grounds both the achievements and failures of John Paul II. Though the
intensity of the monarchical rule depends on factors ranging from
political context to the psychological character of the monarch,
historical inertia has lead to the centralization of power in the pope
and his curial servants and advisors. Though many regard this
centralization as having a supernatural root, I do not. To me it has
been and remains an unfortunate natural development resting on the myth
of Peter and the gradual and willful accretion of political and
ecclesial power to the bishops of Rome. This power has been hardened in
Catholic doctrines of the papacy and has displayed itself in the
popular revival of ultramontanism in the last papacy.
. . .
The second problem the next pope will face is reversing the quality of
the episcopate created by his predecessor. That Catholic bishops, like
Catholic popes, are and should be men of orthodox catholic faith,
well-versed in the classical creeds, conciliar teaching, and the
doctrines of the churches of Christ, seems evident. But there is no
need for Catholic bishops to be hermeneutical parrots. Bishops,
archbishops, and cardinals seem devoted to repeating, without nuance,
the never ending stream of papal and curial pronouncements under John
Paul. We need bishops with brains and the courage to use them, bishops
who believe that their job is to witness to the gospel in their own
circumstances without wary and pious eyes cast over their shoulders to
“the holy father,” waiting on him for enlightenment. They are appointed
to witness to Christ’s resurrection and to serve their churches, not to
witness to the papacy and serve it. They should be men capable of
telling the pope he is wrong. I am not sanguine about this possibility,
although under as powerful men as Pius XII and John XXIII such men were
raised to the episcopacy and revealed themselves at the council. The
full flown imperial papacy has been in place now for a quarter of a
century and one must ask whether reversal is any longer possible and
whether the bishops, most of them appointed by the deceased pope, are
capable of honest and decent rule of their churches. Surely they are
not up to a council and John Paul II could not have abided one.
