U.S. Bishops Assail Vatican Statement on Conferences

A special commission of high-ranking U.S. prelates, in a move that signals renewed tension between the U.S. hierarchy and church leaders in Rome, has sharply criticized a Vatican statement on the status of national organizations of bishops.

The panel has written a response to the second draft of a Vatican working paper that calls into question the legitimacy of national bishops’ conferences. The U.S. Catholic bishops will vote on whether to adopt the response at their annual meeting here Nov. 14-17.

Made up of six bishops, the commission wrote a 20-page response using such words as “rigid,” “confused,” “inadequate” and “overly defensive and negative” to describe the statement from Rome.

The panel, headed by Archbishop John May of St. Louis, president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, includes five other past presidents of the conference--Cardinal John Krol of Philadelphia, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago, Archbishop John Quinn of San Francisco, Archbishop John Roach of Minneapolis and Bishop James Malone of Youngstown, Ohio.

Draft Called ‘Deficient’

The panel said it finds the Vatican draft “deficient enough to suggest that a new draft should be framed.”

Copies of the draft statement by the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops have circulated among Catholic bishops since early last summer. Sources here said the Vatican document was influenced by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the powerful Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The role and authority of bishops’ conferences has been a continual source of tension between the hierarchy in the United States and church leaders in Rome. The U.S. bishops’ conference has taken on an increasingly active role, adopting position statements on issues such as nuclear weapons, the economy and doctrinal and pastoral concerns.

But church conservatives have criticized what they regard as excessive activism on the part of the conference. Further, they say the expanded role of the national bishops’ conferences challenges the authority of both the Vatican and individual bishops as heads of local dioceses.

Church Reforms

Those criticisms are echoed in the Vatican working paper, which was requested by a special synod of bishops called by Pope John Paul II in 1985 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council. That council instituted church reforms, including expanded responsibilities for bishops’ conferences.

“Episcopal conferences were not instituted for the pastoral government of a nation, nor to substitute (for) the diocesan bishops as a kind of superior or parallel government, but to help them in the fulfillment of some common tasks,” the Vatican paper says. “They have, therefore, an auxiliary task.”

The bishops called the document “overly defensive and negative.” They said the paper fails to take into account the theological justifications for bishops’ conferences found in the teachings of Vatican II and statements by the Pope.