Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - Share thoughts with Church authorities and do what the authorities advise. This is the secret of the unity between Catholic Bishops and the Pope, from which none of the forms which express collegiality may depart. Much less a Bishops' Conference: a word which comes from the verb “conferre” which means “to carry together”. Therefore it presupposes a body consisting of head and members who play each their own part fully aware of the diverse responsibilities of each: the personal responsibility of a bishop cannot be compared with the personal responsibility of the Pope which is universal.
It causes no surprise that an arm moves on its own while being articulated with the rest of the body; why the surprise then if a single bishop exercises his own legitimate authority and, at the same time, is bound with that of the Pope? If this were understood it would come as no surprise that the primate of the Bishop of Rome requires the personal exercise of authority.
Instead some would like to see the Pope, before taking any action, convoke this or that body. But he too is a Bishop with ordinary powers, except that among the members of the body his function is “capital”, since it corresponds to the head, and therefore it never concerns only himself but the whole body, to ensure that communion is organic. Church “communio” is not vague or spiritual, it is hierarchical and Catholic.
If the Council said that the pope and the bishop are respectively the visible principle and foundation of universal and particular unity, this means to say that the Bishops' Conference exists solely in view this contribution and can in no way take the place of the primacy of the Bishop of Rome or the authority of the individual bishop, since only the latter were divinely instituted, that is, willed by Jesus Christ.
Sovra-episcopal institutions such as Patriarchates and Metropolitates, and Bishops' Conferences themselves are of positive ecclesiastical right and, therefore, never superior to the authority of the local bishop; most useful for exercising the collegial dimension of episcopal governance, although restricted to certain functions limited, they remain auxiliary and subordinate to the episcopal function in the Church, because the College of Bishops is indivisible (John Paul II, Pastores gregis, n. 63). The Motu Proprio Apostolos suos also recalls that they have no doctrinal prerogatives, instead they serve to coordinate apostolic activity in a certain region.
Therefore if a bishop, a priest, a theologian may not dissent from the Magisteriom of the Pope, as if the former were a quasi private doctor, still less a Bishops' Conference or a member of a Bishops' Conference. John Paul II recalls in the encyclical Veritatis Splendor (6 August 1993): “ Dissent, […]is opposed to ecclesial communion and to a correct understanding of the hierarchical constitution of the People of God. Opposition to the teaching of the Church's Pastors cannot be seen as a legitimate expression either of Christian freedom or of the diversity of the Spirit's gifts. When this happens, the Church's Pastors have the duty to act in conformity with their apostolic mission, insisting that the right of the faithful to receive Catholic doctrine in its purity and integrity must always be respected ”(n 113).
As stated in the Motu proprio Ad tuendam fidem, which ordered the inclusion in the Code of Canon Law of certain paragraphs concerning the obligation to believe, accept and obey the truths of faith and morals proclaimed by the Magisterium of the Pope and the Bishops united with him, explaining that this element is decisive for the certainty of the faith for every believer – visible obligation – ; and re-proposed at the general audience on 10 March 1993 on “The doctrinal mission of the Successor of Peter” and also in the address to the Cardinals on 21 December 1999 on “divine assistance to the Magisterium of the Successor of Peter”. In full continuity with the faith of the fathers and the impossibility of any “opposite” reading, between one pontificate and another.
The faithful are scandalised when they see dissent with the Apostolic See on the part of Bishops' Conferences or certain members of a Conference ,– almost a phenomenon of neo-Gallicanism– since obedience to the visible Supreme Shepherd, the Bishop of Rome is proper to genuine Catholic faith. (Agenzia Fides 30/4/2009; righe 51, parole 676)
