Vatican II Reversals Not Expected : U.S. Bishops Optimistic About Synod to Review Reforms

The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops see no turning back from the church reforms set in motion 20 years ago at the Second Vatican Council, judging from a wide range of remarks and speeches made at their national conference this week.

The American prelates, who closed their five-day annual meeting here Friday, particularly praised “collegiality,” the controversial concept of shared responsibility between the Pope and the bishops for worldwide church governance.

Collegiality was a fundamental theme of the Second Vatican Council and has since been a highly visible feature of leadership in the Catholic Church. It appears also to be a major item for discussion at the forthcoming Extraordinary Synod of Bishops, called by Pope John Paul II to review the reforms of Vatican II.

Rome Is Synod’s Site

The synod will convene Nov. 25-Dec. 8 in Rome. Representatives of national hierarchies, including the United States, will participate.

Bishops here dismissed as unfounded the predictions of some American Catholics that the worldwide meeting will roll back the church’s modernizing trends of the last two decades.

Cardinal John Krol of Philadelphia, one of several American prelates who will attend the synod, said “the speculation is absurd” that John Paul and Vatican conservatives would use the occasion to halt the collaborative powers of the national hierarchies and the Pope.

Such speculation “makes good copy” but is “a non-issue,” Krol said.

Bishop James W. Malone of Youngstown, Ohio, president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, spoke positively about the special synod and collegiality during his presidential address.

“I find dismaying the voices which speak of the synod with apprehension,” Malone told his fellow bishops. “I see the synod as an opportunity to enhance, broaden and deepen the process of faithful implementation of Vatican II.”

Further, he suggested the synod should support the teaching authority of the national conferences of bishops and their ability to collaborate with each other and the Vatican on important policy issues.

Some Vatican officials, particularly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, have been sharply critical of the role of the national conferences, arguing that they have whittled away the near-absolute authority of individual bishops over their dioceses and created too broad a pluralism in a church traditionally known for its monolithic structure.

Ratzinger, who heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith--the theological watchdog agency of the church, has argued that church authority stems only from the Pope and individual bishops and not from episcopal, or national, conferences.

But Malone, supported by the comments of a number of U.S. bishops in an open forum on Tuesday, said he will go to Rome as head of the U.S. delegation prepared to strongly defend the usefulness of such groups.

“I believe there may be more convergence here than may immediately meet the eye,” Malone said, noting that Ratzinger had urged that the teachings of the Second Vatican Council be put into practice “without reservation.”

Malone said he, Ratzinger and “reasonable people generally” tend to agree with three propositions: that Vatican II was “a great and positive event”; that “a lot has gone right since the council,” although not everything had gone as well as was hoped, and that new efforts are needed in light of post-council events in order to build effectively upon Vatican II foundations.

“The far-reaching consequences, for both the church and the world, are still being worked out,” Malone said in his presidential speech. “Twenty years later, we have only begun to tap its riches.”

The perception here that the Pope thinks the American church is basically on the right track regarding collegiality was reinforced by none less than Archbishop Pio Laghi, the papal delegate to the United States.

“I . . . offer you my congratulations and my encouragement for all that you have done and are doing to put collegiality into practice,” he said in his annual speech to the American hierarchy. “The experience of episcopal conferences in general, and yours in particular, can be of great value to the church’s understanding of this reality, which signifies diversity within unity, for the sake of fidelity and enrichment.”