October 8, 2013    Martin Mallon  (Ireland)     Martin's previous articles          

(Comments welcome here)

CURIA POWER FINALLY BROKEN

The Curia, as we know it, is finished and can never return. This is obvious from statements being made by journalists, such as Giacomo Galeazzo from Vatican Insider, like the following:  

 Francis’ reforms will remove dead branches and finally transform the Curia into a useful body that can better serve the universal Church.” Full article  

The purpose of the Pope’s reforms is to “transform the Curia into a useful body”; the implications are horrendous – the Curia is useless, pointless, not fit for purpose. This conception of the Curia is now widespread and includes most of the Cardinals; there is no recovery from this position. The Curia, as presently constituted, will no longer be accepted by the People of God, the Church.  

Some argue that, as I wrote in my article of Sept 24,
Francis has a problem. Despite his talk and statements we still have the Roman Curia, in the form of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, excommunicating an Australian Priest, Fr Greg Reynolds, for not following the orthodox line.  

Francis is attempting to reform the Curia and incorporate collegiality and subsidiarity into the church, together with a greater role for the laity, as advocated by Vatican II. This should go a long way to dealing with future cases such as those of Greg Reynolds and Tony Flannery. It looks as though Francis is not going to interfere in individual CDF cases in the interim, which is understandable although not ideal. He has a huge project to deal with, let us hope individuals are helped. The change in emphasis and personnel should also help to keep the CDF in check.  

Now we must do all in our power to insure that Curial reforms are sufficient. What can we do? We can inform our priests and bishops of changes we believe are necessary, verbally and in writing; we can post blogs, write to papers and, above all, pray.  

One reform that would change the church for the better in many ways, as per my article of 29 May 2012 , would be the repeal of Canon Law #129 which states that only the ordained can hold any “power of governance” in our church:  

Those who have received sacred orders are qualified, according to the norm of the prescripts of the law, for the power of governance, which exists in the Church by divine institution and is also called the power of jurisdiction.  

A particularly worrying aspect of this Canon is that, as I wrote in the above mentioned article, the 1917 Code of Canon Law permitted the laity to hold the power of governance and this situation was arbitrarily changed in the new 1983 Code of Canon Law:  

A worrying aspect of Canon 129 is that in the 1917 Code of Canon Law the power of governance included those with tonsures. According to Ladislas Orsy, in his book Receiving the Council, Liturgical Press, Minnesota, 2009: “Tonsure was a purely ritual act, not a sacrament; the theological status of the tonsured person remained exactly what it was. He continued to be a lay person. Yet from the moment he received the tonsure he could participate (and many did) in the exercise of the power of governance...which is now the exclusive domain of the ordained persons.” (p. 41)  

So it is shocking to realise that the new updated Code of Canon Law of 1983, promulgated eighteen years after the Second Vatican Council, should be more, not less, restrictive and works to prevent the laity from fulfilling their mission in the Church. It would appear that a teaching of Vatican II has been and is being contravened.  

As Ladislas Orsy, like Pope Francis a Jesuit, points out:  “History is not on the side of Canon 129. Therefore, the restriction can hardly be grounded in dogma. It must be a disciplinary provision, and if so, it can be changed.”

So here we have it; one of the first changes that should be made by the group of eight cardinals and the Pope, remove the discipline of Canon #129. This reform does not affect the Curia directly, but indirectly it would transform the whole church and would ensure that the Curia could never reclaim its recent position of authoritarian power and control over the church.

Not only that, but such a change in Canon Law would empower the laity and enable all the people of God to take part in running and governing the church from the parish up.