All the Pope's Men (25 page)

THE ROMAN CURIA

Surprisingly, Catholic theology is relatively underdeveloped when it comes to the precise relationship between the primacy of the Pope and the Roman Curia, the administrative arm through which the Pope exercises the primacy. There is general agreement that the papacy cannot simply be collapsed into the Curia and that not every document that comes out of a Vatican office can be accorded the same authority as formal papal teachings such as encyclical letters. Beyond that, however, the precise nature of the authority exercised by the Roman Curia, and the extent to which it draws upon the personal authority of the Pope, is a disputed point. Noted Catholic theologian Richard Gaillardetz has put the question this way: “While it is generally recognized that in certain circumstances papal primatial authority extends to the activities of Curial offices, the scope of this extension, its purpose and limits, and more importantly, the relationship of the activity of the Curia to the supreme power and authority exercised by the College of Bishops, has not been satisfactorily clarified with respect to sound canonical and ecclesiological principles."

In contemporary Catholic debate, generally speaking, doctrinal conservatives support a strong Curia and strong papacy, while liberals tend to support decentralization and the prerogatives of local bishops and churches. This may seem ironic to observers of secular politics where the normal tendency is the reverse—liberals support a strong central government, conservatives advocate local control. In Catholicism, however, conservatives tend to think of the Roman authorities as more sympathetic than many local bishops or ecclesiastical bureaucracies. Yet this should not obscure the point that in some circles on Catholicism’s right wing there is also a fierce critique of the Roman Curia, not so much for having too much power, but for being feckless in how they exercise it. Indeed, perhaps the most widespread conservative criticism of Pope John Paul II was that his pontificate failed to systematically root out the sources of alleged dissent from ecclesiastical institutions.

One point does appear settled, which is that the Roman Curia is not part of the divine mandate for the Church. In his 1988 apostolic constitution on the Curia,
Pastor Bonus
, John Paul II acknowledged that the Roman Curia does not belong “to the essential constitution of the Church as willed by God." In other words, while it is theologically impossible to imagine a Roman Catholic Church without the papacy, or the bishops, or the sacraments, it is possible to imagine Catholicism without the Roman Curia. In fact, as we saw in chapter 1, the Curia as currently structured dates only from the sixteenth century. Popes carried out their work in a variety of ways, and used a variety of instruments, in earlier centuries. While the Pope has to have some administrative support, in principle there is nothing sacrosanct about the structures and procedures of the Roman Curia as they now exist.

In traditional canonical language, the authority of the Roman Curia is considered to be both
ordinary
and
vicarious
. It is ordinary in the sense that it depends upon the office and is not delegated to anyone individually. The authority of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith thus comes from relevant Church law, especially
Pastor Bonus
, and not from the personal authority invested in its prefect. This power is vicarious because it has been delegated to the Curia from the Pope, and in that sense the various dicasteries are the Pope’s vicars. This ordinary and vicarious power extends to the entire Church. It is not extinguished with the death of the Pope, since John Paul’s 1996 apostolic constitution,
Universi Dominici Gregis
, acknowledges that on urgent matters that cannot await the election of a new Pope the Curia will continue to make decisions also during the interregnum. This curial power, according to canon law, obliges all the faithful to obedience.

The fact that the Curia’s power is derivative from that of the Pope is reflected in the fact that prior to the publication of their decrees, dicasteries must obtain the Pope’s approval. This approval may come in one of two forms:
comune
or
specifica
. There are various Latin formulas used to signal the difference between the two, and canon lawyers and bishops are always attentive to this point. The essential difference is that documents approved in the
comune
form remain documents of the dicasteries that issue them, while documents issued in the
specifica
form become documents of the Pope himself. Ecclesial tradition recognizes that an inferior legislator, meaning a local bishop or the head of a religious community, has some discretion when it comes to the edicts of dicasteries. He or she can apply these decrees as seems best, and can even in some circumstances modify or abrogate them if serious circumstances warrant. With a document approved in the
specifica
form, however, its content becomes normative, and any evasion of its terms would be considered sinful. Canonical tradition holds that approval in the
specifica
form has the effect of giving even otherwise invalid decrees full legal force. In either case, curial decrees are considered to be officially promulgated once they are published in the
Acta Apostolicae Sedis
, the official bulletin of the Holy See.

Thus from a theological point of view, some texts are more authoritative than others depending on the content, the manner in which the text is presented, and under whose authority the text is given. Catholicism recognizes a series of gradations in Church teaching as described in the document
Lumen Gentium
, paragraph 25, at the Second Vatican Council. The idea is that not all doctrines are of the same importance or on the same level, and the authority a particular document carries is to some extent tied to how important the teaching it presents is in terms of human salvation. Generally theologians would recognize something like the following gradation in the importance of Roman documents.

Definitive teaching solemnly proposed as infallible by the Pope and/or ecumenical councils.

Teachings of ecumenical councils, which themselves have differing levels of authority, such as constitutions, decrees, and declarations. Vatican II, for example, did not intend to teach new doctrine, so the principles in documents such as
Gaudium et Spes
arguably enjoy a less binding status than the decrees of the Council of Trent.

Papal encyclicals

Apostolic constitutions, such as Pope John Paul’s 1990 document on Catholic education,
Ex Corde Ecclesiae

Papal apostolic exhortations, such as those following the Synod of Bishops

Apostolic letters (for example, a personal letter written by a Pope either to the whole church, a local church, or some particular group or body; or used to issue norms, establish a new institute, restructure various situations, etc.)

Occasional papal allocutions, such as the Pope’s catechesis at the Wednesday audience

Documents of Roman dicasteries. These differ as to whether they come from a congregation, council, or tribunal, and what form they take—whether it is a declaration, instruction, letter, notification, or response to a
dubium
, or formal question, submitted by a bishop.

The point is not that Catholics are free to ignore the documents of the Roman Curia, but rather that the evaluation of precisely what authority they enjoy, and exactly how much freedom local authorities may have to make adaptations for their own circumstances, is a debated point. Canon 18 of the
Code of Canon Law
says, “Laws which prescribe a penalty, or restrict the free exercise of rights, or contain an exception to the law, are to be interpreted strictly." Nevertheless, it is generally the case that in Vatican offices, there is a fairly maximalist stance on the binding force of curial decrees. As a cardinal, Pope Benedict XVI said that the distinctions made above among different types of teaching concern the mode in which they oblige the conscience of the faith, not whether they do so.

To some extent, distinctions in the authority of Vatican pronouncements become especially relevant when observers suspect that a particular dicastery is actually working at cross-purposes from the Pope. The system is designed to make this impossible, and yet over the years it’s been clear that sometimes the Roman Curia, or at least elements within it, have attempted to undercut particular papal initiatives. Resistance from within the Curia to Pope John XXIII’s calling an ecumenical council, for example, and to the reform energies it unleashed, is well documented. It is to avoid this sort of conflict that
Pastor Bonus
in article 18 specifies that the Curia must do nothing of significance without the knowledge of the Pope, to ensure that orders being issued in his name genuinely reflect his will. It is for the same reason that Paul VI once said the Roman Curia must be “an instrument of immediate adhesion and perfect obedience," to avoid the impression that curial prefects are calling their own shots. The climate of submission to the will of the Pope is indeed very strong within the Holy See. Yet human nature being what it is, different officials will have different readings of the Pope’s inclinations on any given issue. Inevitably, therefore, there is a tendency to attach less importance to the documents of a dicastery than to those of the Pope himself.

This tendency at times exists within the Curia itself. When
Dominus Iesus
appeared in September 2000 from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, for example, among the people it riled was Cardinal Edward Cassidy, an Australian who at the time was the head of the Council for Promoting Christian Unity. He felt the document’s slighting attitude toward other Christians, refusing in many cases to call their denominations “churches," was unhelpful, an example of ill-considered “timing and tone." Questioned by reporters, he pointed them to the Pope’s 1995 encyclical,
Ut Unum Sint
, saying, “I prefer to focus on the Pope’s own words." Those opposed to a particular Vatican action or document will thus often attempt to soften the blow by suggesting that the document is inconsistent with the Pope’s views. This is more a rhetorical than a juridical ploy, however, since curialists rightly point out that no document exits the Vatican without the Pope’s approval. Whether that approval is always well considered is another matter.

Another debated point in Catholic theology surrounding the question of curial, and indeed papal, authority is that of “reception." Medieval theologians said that one test of the validity of a law is whether or not it is received—that is, whether communities actually order their lives by it and accept its wisdom, or whether practical experience shows the law is ill-conceived or inapplicable. Many Catholic theologians have argued, for example, that the 1968 teaching of Pope Paul VI on birth control, expressed in the encyclical
Humanae Vitae
, fails this test of reception. While not denying the principle, Vatican officials argue that reception cannot be measured using the gauges of opinion polls and secular incomprehension. It instead has to be measured against the patient experience of those faithful Catholics who are honestly trying to think with the Church. (In fairness, it should be pointed out that even some of those who argue for this more restrictive standard would support a revision in the teaching on birth control.) Vatican officials also insist that the need for community discernment does not release the individual believer from the obligation of obedience in the meantime. It is up to the universal Church, these officials insist, in communion with the Pope, not the theological faculty of the local Catholic college or the editorial page of the local newspaper, to decide what has been received.

This brief overview suggests that Catholic theological reflection on the Roman Curia rules out two extremes. One would invest every document and disciplinary decision of the Holy See with a patina of infallibility, blurring the proper distinction between different levels of authority. The other would draw too sharp a distinction between the Pope and the Curia, ignoring the reality that the Curia is the Pope’s vicar. One extreme exaggerates the theological status of the Curia, while the other undervalues it. How exactly the relationship between the Pope and the Curia should be understood, and to what extent decisions of Vatican dicasteries in common form can be treated differently than papal teaching, remains an open question.

THE COLLEGE OF CARDINALS

As we saw in chapter 1, the Roman Curia developed out of the consistories, or gatherings of cardinals, that from roughly the eleventh century had become the most important body of advisors to the Pope. It was the reform of Sixtus V in 1588, in Immensa aeterni Dei, that established a set of congregations, conceived as subsets of cardinals, to deal with particular problems. That tradition survives today in the fact that heads of congregations are also cardinals. There is thus a sense in which the Roman Curia and the College of Cardinals are inextricably linked, and to understand the theological framework within which Vatican officials locate themselves, we need to understand something about the college.

The term
cardinal
originally referred to clergy who had been incardinated, or transferred, into a new position, as opposed to the one for which they were originally ordained. Generally when a cleric was incardinated, it meant he had been promoted, so the cardinals were thus the upper crust of the clerical ranks. The cardinals in Rome were, therefore, the most important clergy of the diocese. They were responsible for running important Roman parishes, administering diocesan programs, or advising the Pope in special capacities. All the cardinals together constitute what is known as the College of Cardinals. In 1179, this college acquired its most important prerogative when Pope Alexander III specified that the papal election was the prerogative of all, and only, the cardinals. In the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, cardinals reached the zenith of their power, though their wealth and political clout meant they were not always universally popular. One popular Roman ditty of the era scrambled the Italian word
cardinali
into two other words:
cani
, meaning dogs, and
ladri
, meaning thieves.

If one thrust of the Second Vatican Council was to revitalize the College of Bishops, that by default implied some reduction in the importance of the College of Cardinals. Under Paul VI, this trend reached its high-water mark when the Pope contemplated a reform in papal elections that would have included some presidents of bishops’ conferences in the electoral body. Yet Paul was dissauded from this change, and under John Paul II, the College of Cardinals made something of a come-back. Six times John Paul II called all the cardinals together in an extraordinary consistory to advise him on some topic of importance. The most recent was May 21–24, 2001, when he solicited ideas from the cardinals for taking the Church into the third millennium. John Paul II also often preferred to work with the cardinals rather than the bishops’ conference when a nation or region has had an especially urgent problem. In April 2002, for example, John Paul called the American cardinals to Rome to discuss the sexual abuse crisis. In
Universi Domenici Gregis
, John Paul II gave two arguments for having the cardinals as the papal electors. They are Roman, the Pope said, because they are linked by tradition to the churches of Rome, but they also embody the universality of the Church because they come from every continent.

Some theologians, however, regard the College of Cardinals as problematic. Retired Archbishop John Quinn, for example, in
The Reform of the Papacy: The Costly Call to Christian Unity
, wrote that the College of Cardinals is difficult to locate with respect to the College of Bishops. Does it form a rival source of authority? Is it a “college within a college"? The observation builds on the longstanding complaint of many national bishops’ conferences that the opinions of individual cardinals are sometimes taken more seriously in Rome than the collective judgments of the conference. This point is aggravated by the fact that while the office of bishop is clearly part of the divine constitution of the Church, the office of cardinal is not. Thus it is not obvious to many observers why an office that is a product of history should hold greater sway over governance than an office which was instituted by Christ. Further, the College of Cardinals is alien to the ecclesiology of the Eastern churches, whose top prelates are patriarchs. Indeed, when John Paul has occasionally named men from the Eastern churches as cardinals, it’s always been awkward for them to decide whether to accept, and if so, how to express the office, since it’s not part of their tradition.

During the second session of the Second Vatican Council, Melkite Patriarch Saigh Maximos IV made this point in a memorable speech (delivered in French rather than Latin in protest of the council’s bias in favor of the Latin Rite). Historically, he pointed out, the College of Cardinals is an organization of the clergy of Rome. Born with this original sin, it can never be fully representative of the universal Church. Far better, he suggested, to have a council including patriarchs, some cardinals who happen to be residential bishops, and some bishops who are heads of bishops’ conferences. Such a body, the patriarch concluded, would contribute substantially to universalizing the Church and promoting its adaptation to various situations and cultures.

In past centuries, laymen have been appointed cardinals. For example, Pope Pius IV appointed his young lay nephew Charles Borromeo a cardinal in 1560 and brought him to Rome, where he served as “cardinal-nephew," a forerunner of the secretary of state. It was not until 1563 that Borromeo was ordained a priest and transferred to Milan, taking up the duties of archbishop and leading the implementation of the decrees of the Council of Trent. Today, however, the link between the cardinal’s office and sacramental ordination is clear. Canon 351§1 of the
Code of Canon
Law
specifies that a cardinal must be at least a priest. In keeping with a policy adopted by Pope John XXIII in 1962, a cardinal who is not yet a bishop must first receive episcopal consecration. (Some cardinal appointees, especially those already over 80, ask to be excused from this provision.)

Given that the Roman Curia evolved from the College of Cardinals, and that the college grew out of the Roman clergy, there is a tendency inside the Vatican to regard the Curia as essentially
clerical
. From this point of view, the Curia is more than a bureaucratic structure analogous to the staff of a national bishops’ conference. The Curia is an organic extension of the cardinal’s office, and as such is linked to the sacrament of holy orders. In a positive sense, this encourages the view that service in the Roman Curia is a ministry and a vocation, not just a bureaucratic function; negatively, it can reinforce clerical elitism. Since the Second Vatican Council, there has been a growing presence of laypeople inside the Roman Curia, and
Pastor Bonus
welcomes this. The Curia, John Paul II wrote, includes not just clergy but “lay men and women who by virtue of baptism and confirmation are fulfilling their own apostolic role. By this coalition of many forces, all ranks within the Church join in the ministry of the Supreme Pontiff." Yet there is no question that in the Vatican, clergy hold most of the cards. There are only four laity at the level of the superiors, and all four occupy the lowest level for a superior, undersecretary or its equivalent. Many Vatican officials believe it would actually be impossible for a noncleric to head a dicastery, because their share in the power of governance necessarily implies that they share the hierarchical authority imparted by the sacrament of holy orders. We’ll return to this issue below. For now, the key point is that its connection to the College of Cardinals makes the Curia, for those steeped in the traditional theological outlook, something more than a papal civil service. If it is not expressly part of the divine constitution of the Church, it is nevertheless more than a mere accident of history.