The Local Church and its Bishop in Ecumenical Perspective

* Faculty of Theology, Saint Paul University, Ottawa 1 As historians of Vatican I are aware, there were many hopes that this council would also give careful consideration to the office of bishop in its constitution on the Church, but these were not realized due to the interruption of the council in 1870. The result was a truncated ecclesiology, centered primarily on the pope. 2 All citations from the documents of the Second Vatican Council are taken from: Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. Volume II. ed. Norman P. Tanner (Washington, DC : Georgetown University Press / London : Sheed and Ward, 1990). 3 Hervé Legrand, “Les évêques, les églises locales, et l’Église entière,” in Le ministère des évêques au concile Vatican II et depuis, Hommage à Mgr. Guy Herbulot (Paris : Cerf / La Croix, 2001) 201–260 at 209. Legrand’s assessment is confirmed by recent magisterial interpretations of Vatican II, which reflect a universalist notion of collegiality: “In fact, the power of the College of Bishops over the whole Church is not the result of the sum of the powers of the individual Bishops over their particular Churches; it is a pre-existing reality in which individual Bishops participate.” John Paul II, “apostolic letter motu proprio, Apostolos suos: On the Theological and Juridical Nature of Episcopal Conferences,” (May 21, 1998) 13: AAS 90 (1998) 650–651; also in Origins 28 (July 30 1998) 152–158;This position is restated in the post synodal exhortation on the office of bishop, together with the suggestion that one ought to recognize as normative for our theology of the episcopate “other forms of exercising the episcopate” different from “the specific form of presidency 59 The Jurist 69 (2009) 59–83 THE LOCAL CHURCH AND ITS BISHOP IN ECUMENICAL PERSPECTIVE Catherine E. Clifford* The Second Vatican Council did not set out to develop a comprehensive theology of the episcopate. Among the primary concerns of the drafters of the Dogmatic Constitution of the Church (Lumen gentium), and of the Decree on the Pastoral Office of the Bishops (Christus Dominus ) was a desire to redress the imbalance between papal primacy, a doctrine expressed forcefully by the First Vatican Council,1 and the role of the bishops. The effect of this was to describe the collegial nature of the bishop’s office in relation to papal primacy, thus, almost exclusively in terms of incorporation into a universal body (LG 22), or a common solicitude for the life of the universal church (LG 23). While Vatican II insists that within this college “individual bishops represent their own church” since each acts as “the visible principle and foundation of unity in their own particular churches” (LG 23),2 one is nonetheless left with the impression that the college of bishops is conceived of as “an independent body of ministers floating over and above the local churches” according to the astute observation of the French ecclesiologist Hervé Legrand.3 One of the challenges for contemporary ecclesiology, then, is over a particular Church.” In John Paul II, “Apostolic Exhortation Pastores Gregis,” Origins 33 (November 6, 2003) 353–392, at no. 8. For a more extensive discussion on collegiality and the challenges confronting Catholic theology and practice, see The Jurist 64/1–2 (2004) 1–360. 4 “Ministers who are endowed with sacred power are at the service of their brothers and sisters, so that all who belong to the people of God, and therefore enjoy real Christian dignity, by cooperating with each other freely and in an orderly manner in pursuit of the same goal, may attain salvation.” (LG 18). to develop a more adequate theology of the episcopal office with particular attention to the fundamental orientation of that office to the service of the people of God in each place.4 As the Catholic Church sought to articulate its self-understanding at Vatican II, it received a number of key developments in understanding the ministry of the bishop which have direct bearing on its theology of the local church. Bishops are presented as “vicars and legates of Christ” in their particular churches, and are “not to be considered vicars of the Roman Pontiffs” (LG 27). Their authority is no longer viewed...