Perspectief 2014-26

2014-26 Towards a Healthy Future of Catholicity in the Roman Catholic Church 47 Reag eer - Of great ecumenical significance, finally, is the paragraph of Evangelii Gaudium dealing with the “conversion of the papacy.” Pope Francis reminds his readership of the invitation raised by Pope John Paul II in his 1995 ecumenical encyclical Ut Unum Sint to theologians and leaders of other churches and denominations to help him reflect on the mode of exercising the primacy. The judgement of Pope Francis is crystal clear: “We have made little progress in this regard.” (§ 32) Without entering in great details he makes it clear, by quoting the lines in Lumen Gentium on episcopal conferences, that particularly this institution in his opinion has to play an important role in the transformation of “the papacy and the central structures of the universal Church.” By stating that “a juridical status of episcopal conferences which would see them as subjects of specific attributions, including genuine doctrinal authority, has not yet been sufficiently elaborated”, and by referring in footnote to the 1998 motu proprio Apostolos Suos of John Paul II which precisely intended to determine the juridical status of this institution in a very narrow way, pope Francis publically criticizes the decision of his two predecessors, since one can be sure that the president of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was the main drafter of this document. 10 European Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE) and the Conference of European Churches.” Also Felix Wilfred, “ Evangelii gaudium – Reflections from Asia,” Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft und Religionswissenschaft 98 (2014) 138-142, p. 138, draws ecclesiological conclusions from this important move of the pope: “I have hardly found documents of bishops’ conferences being quoted in papal writings, and was overjoyed to see a statement of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India cited when the pope speaks of inter-religious dialogue, Brazilian Bishops’ conference when he speaks of poor and poverty; and the Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, when speaking of environmental issues. (…) In this way, it seems to me that Pope Francis is giving concrete expression to the truth that the universal Church is made up of local Churches whose voices need to be listened to. He is probably bringing to a close the discussion on the relationship of the local church and the universal Church in the interpretation of Vatican II which has been for some years now a hot point of debate. (…) The position of Pope Francis seems to be that both local Church and universal Church exist simultaneously and there is no question of speaking about priority.” 10 It is also known that the Pope has read the famous book by the former archbishop of Boston, John Quinn. Cf. J.R. Q UINN , The Reform of the Papacy: The Costly Call to Christian Unity , New York, Crossroad, 1999, p. 105: “The Second Vatican Council, then, does not reflect the idea that there are only two divinely based expressions of the episcopal office, the relationship of the individual bishop to the Pope and the formal united and collegial action of the bishops of the world