"Checks, Balances, and Bishops"

Here is a post, from the First Things blog, about the work of the called the National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management.  Fr. Neuhaus writes: 

The initiative has produced a book, Governance, Accountability, and the Future of the Catholic Church, and a report, “The Church in America: The Way Forward in the 21st Century.” (Information is available on the website of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Life, which is directed by Alan Wolfe.) In its initial and subsequent meetings, the Roundtable has continued to advance its goal, which, according to Mr. Boisi, is to provide a “check and balance” on the role of the bishops and, according to Mr. Butler of Foundations and Donors, to “allow lay people to speak in the name of the Church.”

Undoubtedly, some who have been recruited by the Roundtable only want to assist the bishops in their leadership of the Church. And nobody would dispute that the bishops need all the help they can get in improving management and financial practices, and, to that end, should draw more fully on the talents of lay people. Yet it seems evident that the Roundtable has much bigger things in mind. The apparent goal is to create an institutional structure that will propose itself as representing the lay people in speaking for the Catholic Church, whether in tandem with or as an alternative to the voice of the bishops. The further apparent goal is to gain control of—or at least to exercise major influence in—a large measure of Church governance, employing the immense wealth to which the Roundtable has access.

These are goals long espoused by the academics, editors, and Church activists associated with this project. In its more modest statement of purpose, the project is to be a “clearinghouse” for the bishops, providing them with “best practices” in business management. But there is also the plan to establish a permanent national “Leadership Roundtable” of up to 225 members. Such an institution seems disproportionate to the task of giving the bishops business advice. Not surprisingly, some think they detect an effort to “democratize” the Church by establishing—somewhat along the lines of the Episcopal Church—a “house of delegates” composed of laity to balance the “house of bishops.” If that is the long-term goal, it would indeed be a radical change in the way the Catholic Church understands her constitution. . . .

The introduction to Governance, Accountability, and the Future of the Catholic Church notes that the book’s essays “focus on the urgent and far-reaching changes in ecclesial governance, administrative style, and financial accountability called for if the congregation of the faithful in the future is to fulfill its hallowed aspiration to be the salt of the earth and the light of the nations.” In his own essay, Francis Butler writes, “Many, if not most, bishops have proven themselves unable to measure up to the demands of running the multimillion-dollar organizations which U.S. dioceses have become.”

Again, nobody should deny that the bishops need all the help they can get. But talk about “far-reaching changes in ecclesial governance” would be less problematic were it more obvious that those pressing for such changes have a firm understanding of and commitment to the ecclesiology by which the Catholic Church is constituted.

I have not read the initiative's book, but it does seem to me worth being concerned about an uncritical importing of "checks and balances" language -- which is great in the constitutional law context! -- into our ecclesiology.