One suggested option is to establish continental advisory and decision-making bodies with their own rules alongside or in addition to the existing national bishops' conferences.

This authority-sharing might even involve deciding on issues such as priestly celibacy.

Paolo Ruffini, the Vatican's head of communications, outlined the ongoing discussions.

Key topics include the relationship between local churches, fostering communion within and between bishops' conferences, and exploring the possibility of granting bishops' conferences greater doctrinal authority and local authority over practice.

However, a senior member of the Synod warned, "A fragmented faith also means a fragmented church!"

Call for concrete change

Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, the synod's content coordinator, emphasised the importance of sharing the experience of "synodality" with all church members.

"If we keep this treasure only for ourselves, we transform it into a privilege rather than a service to the whole church" he said on 15 October as discussions on the third and final part of the working document began.

Cardinal Hollerich urged participants to propose concrete changes to the Church's institutions, asking -

"How do we need to rethink our institutions? Which institutional and organisational forms need to be changed and how?"

He highlighted the need to consider different local and cultural conditions while maintaining the unity of the worldwide Catholic Church.

A global perspective with local roots

The debate on decentralisation has highlighted the importance of balancing global unity with local diversity.

Benedictine Mother Maria Ignazia Angelini reminded members that faith is always practised within specific cultural contexts.

"If the ‘place' of the Church is always a concrete space-time of gathering, the journey of the Gospel in the world goes from threshold to threshold: it shuns being static, but also any ‘holy alliance' with the cultural contexts of the age" she said. "It inhabits them and is led by its life principle — the Spirit of the Lord — to transcend them."

Limit the scope of local and cultural universal faith

Despite the push for inclusivity, some church leaders have expressed concerns over the potential implications of decentralisation.

Australian Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP voiced his apprehension, warning against the idea of "reinventing" the Catholic faith.

"We cannot ‘reinvent the Catholic faith' or ‘teach a different Catholicism in different countries'" he said this week in an interview with conservative-leaning EWTN News Nightly.

The Archbishop acknowledged that our understanding of the deposit of faith has developed and will continue to develop but told the programme that he is "very concerned" that Catholics "hold on to the deposit of faith, the apostolic tradition".

Fisher wants limits on the scope of the ‘local and cultural' elements in a universal Catholic Church.

Fisher took over from Cardinal George Pell as the archbishop of the Archdiocese of Sydney, NSW and was recently overlooked in being elevated to the position of Cardinal.

Sources

• Katholisch.de
• CathNews NZ
• Our Sunday Visitor
• CNA
• Crux

Among the 43 participants were the President of the Council of European Bishops' Conferences (CCEE), Archbishop Gintaras Grusas (Vilnius), and the Presidents of the Bishops' Conferences of Italy, Austria and Switzerland, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi (Bologna), Archbishop Franz Lackner (Salzburg) and Bishop Felix Gmür (Basel).

Also present was the well-known Czech priest, theologian and philosopher of religion Tomas Halik (pictured).

He reported in the run-up to of the interview of two conferences at the Belgian University of Leuven on the subject of "Church and Society in China and the West".

Asian delegates from the Synod on Synodality took part, including two bishops from China and a theologian from Hong Kong.

In this context, the theologian emphasised that he had become aware for the first time of how important the decentralisation of the Church is, as the conditions for Church life are very different in the various cultures.

In an interview with katholisch.de, he therefore talks about decentralisation, reform projects and which ministries the Church should create.

Question: Professor Halik, what structural changes do you think are necessary for the Church to meet the demands of today's world?

Halik: There is a need to establish ministries in the Church that do not require ordination, including the ministry of spiritual direction.

This ministry requires both a personal charism and special training, i.e. training and supervision. It is one of many ministries in the Church for which God has given many charisms, not least to women.

Question: You mentioned decentralisation earlier. What does this mean in concrete terms for the whole Church?

Halik: The service of the Church in the age of a globalised world cannot be limited to territorial communities.

The following also applies to the Church in the globalised age: act locally, think globally.

Acting locally always means respecting the context. This requires a decentralisation of the Church, the application of the principle of subsidiarity, but also solidarity: in respect for those who are different from us.

The ministry of chaplains in hospitals, in the army and in prisons is the vanguard of this Church ministry, which is open to all, not just its own members.

Question: And "thinking globally" means?

Halik: Thinking globally means constantly deepening catholicity and ecumenism.

The universal openness of the Church, which is a sacrament, is sign and instrument of the unity of all humanity.

This unity is an eschatological goal, but one for which we must constantly work. The Catholic unity of the Church must be an organic unity in diversity, not the uniformity and conformity of totalitarian systems.

Question: Speaking of diversity, one of the aims of the European meeting was to recognise diversity in Europe and make it visible. But what does diversity mean for the Church in Europe?

Halik: European Christianity finds itself in a paradoxical situation: we are a minority in a largely dechurched society, which nevertheless carries two thousand years of indelible experience with many forms of Christian faith in its genes.

This is a rich and at the same time burdensome heritage. This heritage also includes European secularism and atheism. Our mother, the European Church, has many unknown descendants and many "lost sons and daughters".

A deeper understanding of European culture brings us many surprising encounters with our unknown brothers and sisters.

Question: What role does the voice of the Church in Europe play in the universal Church?

Halik: We have to reckon with the fact that for many our synodal invitation is met with mistrust. To regain lost trust, we need patience and credible witnesses. Read more

Coleridge (pictured), who is the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference's outgoing president, explains what he means by this in his foreword to the Conference's 2021 Annual Report.

While "the real powers in the Church rest with the dioceses, not with the Conference", under Pope Francis, Bishops' Conferences are now "a work in progress", he says in the foreword.

"Given that Pope Francis wants to encourage what he calls ‘a healthy decentralisation', passing more responsibility to the bishops' conferences, it is clear that the profile and function of the bishops conferences is changing,"

The Plenary Council journey has shown bishops that they must learn to work with all the baptised, religious and ministerial public juridic persons, Coleridge says.

"The Bishops have to learn to listen to all the voices in the Church in order to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit, since unless we Bishops hear the voice of the Spirit we will end up in an echo-chamber where we hear only our own voice.

"In that sense, episcopal authority is not being undermined but resituated - and the resituating will only strengthen and clarify genuine episcopal authority, the authority of service.

"In this report, it is not only the voice of the Bishops that is heard. That is why it is much more than a company report or a bureaucratic manifesto."

Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB, of Perth Australian Catholic Bishops Conference president.

Source

• Catholic Weekly
• Report republished with permission

Writing in Welcom, Drennan made a plea for patience in regard to what action may be taken in New Zealand as a consequence of Pope Francis' recent Motu Proprio (personal edict).

In this document, the Pope shifted the responsibility of liturgical translations from Rome back to national Conferences of Bishops.

'What I can say is what we all know: a better translation of the Mass is possible."

"I can also say that our New Zealand Bishops Conference more than any other in the English-speaking world has laid before Rome and the Holy Father himself the frustrations experienced with the current translation, the causes of which Pope Francis has now addressed.

Drennan said that three main factors have given rise to the present situation:

• The decision of Cardinal Medina Estevez (Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, 1998-2002) to wrest control of translations by distancing the International Commission on English in the Liturgy ‒ which was a group of Bishops and language experts set up by a number of Bishops Conferences (New Zealand included) ‒ to provide translations;
• The publication by Medina's Vatican department in 2001 of Liturgiam Authenticam, which outlined that translations were to be tightly shackled - word by word - to the ‘original' Latin;
• The emergence of a group called Vox Clara whose role was to vet the International Commission.

"These three linked events have now been quietly placed on the sidelines of history and influence.," Drennan said.

Drennan said he did not see the motu proprio as a "progressive versus conservative" tussle.

"Pope Benedict's love for liturgy saw him underline the duty to preserve a sense of the transcendent and reverence."

"Pope Francis's love for liturgy sees him underline [the fact] that liturgy must be comprehensible and should be understood in the context of evangelisation, which draws people in as participants, not observers, of the liturgy."

"Both are right."

Read the full article in Welcom

Image: America Magazine

This would mean transferring some offices from the Vatican to local bishops or episcopal conferences "in a spirit of healthy decentralization."

The Council said they also discussed circumstances in which decisions that are currently made by Vatican congregations could be made by diocesan bishops or episcopal conferences.

Exactly which Vatican offices might be involved in such a change has not yet been announced.

Vatican spokesman Greg Burke referred to the Vatican offices that might be involved as dicasteries when he was briefing reporters after the latest Council meeting.

He did not make any distinction between those dicasteries classified as "congregations" and those that are "pontifical councils."

Noting that no immediate changes are likely, Burke cited the possibility of transferring authority over deacons as an example; he said this was just one of several types of decentralization the Council of Cardinals considered in its meeting.

"In many dicasteries there are things like this that [at present] depend on Rome [to decide them] but do not have to necessarily," he said.

The next meeting of the Council of Cardinals is scheduled for September.

Source

• National Catholic Reporter
• Catholic Culture
• Crux
• Image: abc.es

In a press release on Saturday, the Vatican announced this and gave an update on the council's meeting last week.

In their next meeting in February, the so-called C9 council, which advises the Pope on Church governance, will reflect on an October speech by Francis that called for a "health decentralisation" of the Church.

On October 17, during the synod of bishops discussing the family, Pope Francis called for a more "synodal" Church that listens to people on every level.

Referring to Evangelii Gaudium, the Pope said then he could not substitute the ability of bishops around the world to discern the problems facing Catholics in their regions.

The Pope added that he was aware "of the need to proceed with a healthy ‘decentralisation'".

Saturday's Vatican statement said: "In its reflections, the [C9] council has noted the importance of the Holy Father's October 17 discourse, in occasion of the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the institution of the Synod of Bishops,"

"The [C9] council has recalled the need to deepen the significance of that discourse and its importance also for the work of the reform of the Curia, so much so as to decide to dedicate a specific session to it during their upcoming meeting in February, 2016," the statement continued.

The C9 council's membership includes Cardinal George Pell from Australia.

At their meeting at the Vatican last week, the prelates continued to discuss a new "Laity, Family and Life" office.

They also spoke about a proposal to create another new Vatican office for "Justice, Peace and Migration."

The latter office would likely combine the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace with other offices to create one larger, centralised Vatican dicastery.

The C9 council also received an update from Cardinal Sean O'Malley on the work of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• Vatican Radio
• Image: Vatican Radio