The week of November 11 was the week of the U.S. bishops’ annual November conference. The big news this time was the bishops’ acceptance of the revisions that the Holy See mandated for the child sexual abuse norms the bishops had approved at their June meeting. But the bishops addressed other issues, some of which made the news. One was a statement dealing with the looming war with Iraq.
By Thursday the press was buzzing with claims that the U.S. bishops had come out with a statement against the potential war with Iraq, leaving many Catholics who supported the idea of the war wondering what their obligations were, given the bishops’ reported action. Sure enough, the first call that day on our radio show, Catholic Answers Live, was a gentleman wanting to know whether he was obliged to agree with the bishops’ opposition to the war.
I told him that because I hadn’t seen the statement, I couldn’t comment on its contents one way or the other. (Unless you see the actual language of documents, it is unwise to try to interpret them. As it turned out, I was glad I refrained.) I did sketch for him the principles covering statements from bishops’ conferences. Since it was live radio, I couldn’t do so in full, but the discussion was helpful to the gentleman.
The topic of how to weigh the authority of statements from a bishops’ conference is significant and often comes up, so I thought I would use this instance as case study.
National Bishops’ Conferences
The Church has always had mechanisms for the bishops of a given area to work together—the particular councils that have been held at various times in Church history, going back to the council in Acts 15, for example. But national bishops’ conferences are something new. These existed in some parts of the world prior to Vatican II, but it was the Council that called for their creation everywhere.
As on many issues of a pastoral nature, Vatican II gave only general guidelines, and left the details to be worked out after the Council was over. In the case of the bishops’ conferences, it spoke only of the conferences being able to issue binding decisions of a juridic nature, not doctrinal ones (Vatican II, Christus Dominus 38.4). A controversy therefore arose about the authority of doctrinal statements issued by the conferences.
As Christ constituted the Church, its supreme teachers were the apostolic college, headed by St. Peter. This supreme teaching function devolved upon the successors of the apostles (the bishops) and the successor of Peter (the bishop or Rome).
At the advent of the conferences, Catholic theology had established that individual bishops have a local teaching authority and that the whole episcopal college in union with the bishop of Rome has a universal teaching authority. But the teaching role of national conferences was a new question.
Since these conferences were not part of the Church as constituted by Christ, they are a creation of mere ecclesiastical law. This raised questions regarding how their doctrinal statements interact with the teaching authority of local bishops, who are part of the fundamental constitution of the Church by divine law.
In particular: Could a local bishop’s teaching authority be restricted by doctrinal statements of the national conference? If not, did the national conferences have any authority at all? Some held that the doctrinal statements had no authority in a given territory apart from the consent of the local bishop; others disagreed. (For a fascinating review of the relevant positions and arguments, see Avery Cardinal Dulles’s 1989 paper Doctrinal Authority of Episcopal Conferences, available on the Internet.)
Teaching Authority of National Conferences
National conferences may be useful institutions, but they are not part of the Church as constituted by Christ. How could such conferences issue an authoritative doctrinal declaration without violating the authority of the local bishop whose office is constitutive of the Church?
There would seem to be two ways this could happen: (1) If all the bishops of the conference agreed to the declaration, then none of them would have their authority stepped on by the conference. (2) If Rome itself intervened on behalf of the document, since the pope is the only individual bishop whose universal jurisdiction would allow him to grant authority to a document in a diocese where the local bishop did not support it.
Of course, the pope may draft his own doctrinal declaration at any time and invest it with authority in all particular dioceses, so something more than this would be needed for it to count as the statement of a conference. Not only would one want the decree to have originated from the conference, one also would want it to reflect substantially the views of the conference, such as by having a majority or even a supermajority of bishops voting for it.
Considerations of this nature seem to have been what informed Pope John Paul II’s 1998 motu proprio titled Apostolos Suos (AS). In it he discussed the theological and juridical nature of episcopal conferences and provided a number of articles governing their ability to issue authoritative doctrinal declarations. The first article reads:
“In order that the doctrinal declarations of the conference of bishops referred to in no. 22 of the present letter [i.e., doctrinal declarations ‘dealing with new questions and . . . resolving new problems arising from changes in society’] may constitute authentic magisterium and be published in the name of the conference itself, they must be unanimously approved by the bishops who are members or receive the recognitio [i.e., approval] of the Apostolic See if approved in plenary assembly by at least two thirds of the bishops belonging to the conference and having a deliberative vote” (AS, art. 1).
There you have it: Either the declaration has to be unanimously approved by the bishops or it has to be approved by Rome after a supermajority has voted for it. That way the authority of the local bishop isn’t stepped on by the national conference.
If neither option is fulfilled, the declaration is not authentic magisterium. It may be something useful to think about or consider, but it isn’t authoritative teaching.
As a further safeguard to the authority of the local bishop, the Holy Father also pointed out that “no body of the episcopal conference, outside of the plenary assembly, has the power to carry out acts of authentic magisterium. The episcopal conference cannot grant such power to its commissions or other bodies set up by it” (AS, art. 2).
This means that there can’t be end-arounds the whole conference. If a doctrinal declaration is going to be authoritative—”authentic”—in a nation, then all the bishops have to vote on it—at least, all bishops who by law have a “deliberative vote,” which excludes many auxiliaries and retired bishops. The vote cannot be circumvented by handing the decision to someone else, as might be tempting for coalitions that knew they were unlikely to get either a unanimous vote or a recognitio.
Article 2 is directed against documents such as the notorious Always Our Children (1997) and the more recent Reflections on Covenant and Mission (2002). The first was a document on homosexuality released by the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Marriage and Family that was so flawed the Holy See mandated changes in it.
The second was a document released by a subcommittee of the Bishops Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs that seemed to imply that Jews should not be evangelized and that they can be saved without any need of becoming Christians. It too provoked a storm of controversy. Cardinal Keeler, head of the relevant subcommittee, quickly clarified that it does not represent a formal position of the bishops, and recently the document seems to have been unceremoniously deleted from the bishops’ website (usccb.org) along with documents commenting upon it (though they missed a few links, which are still there for your clicking pleasure).
While article 2 is supposed to prevent circumvention of the full body of bishops, it is not envisioned that all publications of the conference be voted on: “For statements of a different kind, different from those mentioned in article 2 [i.e., for statements that are not acts of authentic magisterium], the Doctrinal Commission of the Conference of Bishops must be authorized explicitly by the Permanent Council of the Conference” (AS, art. 3). This creates some room for non-authoritative documents to be published by the conference.
What Level of Authority?
What level of authority do documents have that do get a unanimous vote or a two-thirds vote plus recognitio?
In his motu proprio (an apostolic letter written “on his own initiative”), John Paul II explained that in such cases “the faithful are obliged to adhere with a sense of religious respect to that authentic magisterium of their own bishops” (AS 22).
The phrase “a sense of religious respect” (Latin, religioso animi obsequio) can be rendered different ways, including “a religious submission of mind” or “a pious inner deference.” It is a different response than that called for when the Church proposes something definitively, whether as part of revelation or not.
According to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “When the magisterium of the Church makes an infallible pronouncement and solemnly declares that a teaching is found in revelation, the assent called for is that of theological faith. . . . When the magisterium proposes ‘in a definitive way’ truths concerning faith and morals, even if not divinely revealed . . . these must be firmly accepted and held” (CDF, Donum Veritatis [1990] 23).
However, the CDF continued, “When the magisterium, not intending to act ‘definitively,’ teaches a doctrine to aid a better understanding of revelation and make explicit its contents, or to recall how some teaching is in conformity with the truths of faith, or finally to guard against ideas that are incompatible with these truths, the response called for is that of the religious submission of will and intellect. This kind of response cannot be simply exterior or disciplinary but must be understood within the logic of faith and under the impulse of obedience to the faith” (ibid.).
This means that the response called for is one that does not necessarily result in the “firm acceptance” called for by definitive teachings. Neither is it a “simply exterior or disciplinary” conformity whereby a person might simply remain silent in the face of a teaching he disagreed with but give no thought to the matter. Instead, one must seek to understand the non-definitive teaching “within the logic of faith and under the impulse of obedience to the faith.”
This amounts to saying that one must at least give it favorable consideration and seek to agree with it unless there are compelling reasons to the contrary. The basis for this favorable consideration is that even when infallibility is not invoked, the Holy Spirit continues to guide the teaching of the magisterium, though not in such a way that the result is guaranteed to be true.
One is not required to believe such declarations if one in good faith believes there are overriding reasons to the contrary. Speaking of a case where a bishop disagrees with the pronouncement of his national conference, Cardinal Dulles explains, “One may say that when the episcopal conference issues authoritative pronouncements the individual bishop is in principle bound to agree, but that he may conscientiously dissent—either internally or externally—under the same conditions that other Catholics may dissent from noninfallible teaching” (op. cit.)
The Iraq Statement
With this as background we must ask a couple of key questions about the Iraq statement:
First, does it meet the tests needed to make it authoritative?
No. The statement is not unanimous. It was passed by a vote of 228 to 14 with three abstentions. It is a two-thirds majority, so Rome could grant the document its recognitio, but this seems highly unlikely, as we shall see.
Second, is it intended as an authoritative teaching on the legitimacy of a war with Iraq?
No. On this subject, it says, “We offer not definitive conclusions, but rather our serious concerns and questions . . . People of good will may differ on how to apply just war norms in particular cases, especially when events are moving rapidly and the facts are not altogether clear. Based on the facts that are known to us, we continue to find it difficult to justify the resort to war against Iraq. . . . [W]e fear that resort to war, under present circumstances and in light of current public information, would not meet the strict conditions . . .
“There are no easy answers. Ultimately, our elected leaders are responsible for decisions about national security, but we hope that our moral concerns and questions will be considered seriously by our leaders and all citizens. We invite others, particularly Catholic lay people—who have the principal responsibility to transform the social order in light of the Gospel—to continue to discern how best to live out their vocation to be witnesses and agents of peace and justice” (op. cit.).
This is far from an authoritative pronouncement or on how moral teaching is to be applied to a current situation. The statement expressly disclaims “definitive conclusions.” It notes “people of good will may differ.” It raises concerns based only on “the fact that are known to us” and “current public information.” It finds the war option “difficult” to justify and “fear[s]” that it wouldn’t be justified. The statement confesses that “there are no easy answers” and that ultimately “our elected leaders are responsible for decisions about natural security.”
Regarding Catholic lay people, the statement does not demand that they adopt any particular opinion. It “hope[s] that our moral concerns and questions will be considered seriously by . . . all citizens,” and it “invite[s]” Catholic laity “to continue to discern how best to live out their vocation to be witnesses and agents of peace and justice.”
The text of the statement thus reveals that it is not a doctrinal declaration meant to bind the consciences of the faithful. Instead, it is an exhortation to reflection. For this reason, no recognitio is likely to be sought (or granted), and the statement is non-authoritative.
While responsible decision making involves reflection on all aspects of a question, including those raised in the statement, Catholics who support a war to disarm Saddam Hussein or remove him from power do not have their consciences restricted by the document. We need to be aware of this in case we encounter statements to the contrary in the secular or Catholic press. And it’s a good idea to be aware of the principles concerning the authority of national conference statements, because there will be more of these in the future.