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Bishop
Elections – Not a New Idea
Joe O’Callaghan,
a professor emeritus of medieval history at Fordham University
and past president of the American Catholic Historical Society,
is the author of "Counsel and Consent as Christian Virtues:
Five Proposals for Structural Change in the Catholic Church." The
document has become known as “The
Bridgeport Proposals” for the VOTF Bridgeport, CT affiliate
where the document “grew up.”
ELECT
OUR BISHOPS? WHY NOT?
Joseph
F. O’Callaghan
From the
earliest times the clergy and people of the diocese elected
their bishops. The Didache or The Teaching of the Twelve
Apostles, dating from the second century, The Apostolic
Tradition of St. Hippolytus of Rome (d. c. 236), and
the letters of St. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage (d. 258) attest
to that tradition. In the fifth century, both Pope Celestine
I and Pope Leo the Great emphatically stated that the one
who is to preside over all should be chosen by all, adding
that no one who is unwanted or unasked for should be made
a bishop. Church councils, both provincial and ecumenical,
laid down rules governing the qualifications of candidates
for the episcopacy, and insisted that the bishop should be
chosen by the clergy and people assembled in a synod with
the metropolitan or archbishop and the other provincial bishops.
As the bishop was elected to serve a particular community,
he was forbidden to transfer to another see, though that
canon was later ignored.
Once Christians
gained religious freedom in the Roman Empire and bishops
came to enjoy greater power and influence, ambitious men
often coveted the office. Emperors and kings began to intrude
into the electoral process by insisting on the election of
their nominees. Reiterating the principle of election by
clergy and people, eleventh-century reformers demanded that
episcopal elections should be free of secular control. Nevertheless,
from the late twelfth century on, ordinary clergy and people
were excluded, as the election was reserved to the canons
of cathedral chapters. The people had no voice, except perhaps
to give consent by acclamation or in an even more ritualized
manner during the ceremony of episcopal consecration.
From the
late Middle Ages onward, popes and monarchs intervened more
frequently, imposing candidates acceptable to both. In the
modern era concordats between the papacy and various European
states usually recognized the ruler’s right of nomination
and the pope’s right of confirmation or rejection of someone
deemed unacceptable. In the fledgling United States, John
Carroll, with papal permission, was elected the first bishop
of Baltimore by his priests, but the people had no part in
the election. The pope subsequently named all the other American
bishops. In much of the world of the late nineteenth and
twentieth centuries the papacy assumed the right to name
all the bishops, a right affirmed in the Code of Canon Law
in 1917 and again in 1983.
As a consequence
of historical circumstances, the clergy and people have been
denied any meaningful voice in the election of their bishops.
They have been disenfranchised or, as Francine Cardman so
eloquently expressed it, dis-membered from the Body of Christ.
The restoration of the ancient tradition will return to the
clergy and people their baptismal right to elect their bishops.
If we take this one step toward re-membering our dis-membered
Church, we will be helping to make the Body of Christ whole
again.
Suggested
Readings: Peter Huizing and Knut Walf, eds., “Electing
our Own Bishops,” Concilium 137 (1980); William W. Bassett,
ed., The Choosing of Bishops (Hartford: The Canon
Law Society of America, 1971); Giuseppe Alberigo and Anton
Weiler, eds. “Election and Consensus in the Church,” Concilium 77
(1972).
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