So there will be no plenary council or regional synod of bishops to search for solutions to the grave problems that plague the Church in the United States. Soundings among the bishops didn’t generate enough interest, the bishops were told at their Washington, DC, meeting last month.
The news that the plenary council and the regional synod are dead in the water didn't generate much interest either. The media gave the story barely a nod.
That's hardly surprising. At first glance, such matters seem too esoteric to register on journalistic radar screens. But that's a mistake. For ultimately what's at stake here is nothing less than the future of the Church in America. The plenary council and the synod may have been bad ideas but who's got a better one?
The proposal for a plenary council first came to light in the summer of 2002 at the height of the outcry over clergy sex abuse. Eight bishops circulated a letter suggesting the plan. A hundred or more bishops eventually signed on.
A plenary council is a top-level assembly where a nation's bishops make binding decisions, subject to the approval of the pope. There have been three such gatherings so far in this country, with the last in 1884. Proponents of a new plenary council said it was needed to face up to issues of sexual morality and the carrying-out of Vatican Council II.
The idea involved problems of its own, of course. A plenary council would be a very large gathering of a thousand or more people. Very likely it also would be a media event in danger of going haywire. Thus it was suggested that a smaller, more manageable meeting, a regional synod of bishops, be held either instead of a plenary council or else to set the agenda and rules.
In the last two years the bishops spent many hours at their general meetings talking about these things. Most of the talk went on behind closed doors. As experienced bishop-watchers know, the bishops' enthusiasm for camaraderie and dislike of journalists lately have converged to bring it about that more and more episcopal business at the national level gets done that way.
What happens next?
In a series of non-binding votes in November, the bishops expressed a strong preference to keep on talking. The most popular format appeared to be still another closed-door assembly, possibly either in 2006 or 2007.
In place of a focused agenda dealing with sexual morality and Vatican II, the matters they'd like to talk about are covered in seven “pastoral challenges and issues” that include such things as “the Church as 'communion'” and the “preferential option for the poor.” At the risk of cynicism, it might be said that these are things people can discuss without having to do much.
To repeat: The synod and the plenary council especially the latter may never have been very good ideas. The risk that an oversized and out-of-control body would posture for the media and pander to interest groups was hardly appealing.
But there's something troubling here just the same.
“The problems of the Church in the United States didn't come about overnight, and they won't be solved quickly either,” a Vatican official close to the pope remarked to me in Rome some months ago. Who can quarrel with that? Yet there also are dangers in ignoring problems or doing nothing but talk. Take it for granted that the problems of the Church won't go away quietly. The chance to do something about them just might.
Russell Shaw is a freelance writer from Washington, D.C. You can email him at RShaw10290@aol.com.
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