The conversion of the Church is essential to the mission of evangelisation. This fact is plain enough. Whether speaking of the universal Church, a diocese, local parish or of the individual Christian there is an obvious and intrinsic relationship between self-reform and the power and depth with which the Gospel is proclaimed and received.

In our own time Pope Francis has made clear by his charismatic witness and his courageous address of issues such as collegiality, subsidiarity, financial accountability and synodality that the growth of the Gospel in the world depends on no small part on the reform of the Church in both spirit and structure.

Pope Francis has emphatically underscored the need for a conversion of heart, a human heart which he describes as being in ‘crisis’ and at ill-ease with itself, with others, and indeed creation (cf. Laudato Si 210). However, the pontiff has not hesitated to inaugurate as well significant reform in ecclesial structure and forms of administration, understanding that the Church does not hover above history but is firmly earthed within it.

Analogous to Christ, the Church walks the streets of Jerusalem. Its temporal realities can serve eternal ends. Hence, we have witnessed under Francis an increase of oversight over the material resources entrusted to curial departments, the long awaited restructuring of the Vatican’s media channels earlier this year, and the reform of synodal processes to encourage discussion and even forceful debate amongst the world’s bishops on contentious issues.

While the upheavals of papal rule or the complexities of Vatican bureaucracies may seem somewhat aloof from the realities of the local parish pastoral council or the parish ministry group, any Christian leader seeking to grow the missionary outlook of a community will engage issues of governance in one form or another. Governance is a complex reality involving decision-making by authority and in the Church entails judgements about the faith, the discernment of those organisations, systems and resources that will best serve to promote and advance the Kingdom of God in a given context.

Understandably, governance in the Church is under close scrutiny, on account of not only scandal and abuse but in the light of the clarion call to a ‘new evangelisation’ which signals or beseeches a new way of exercising authority for the sake of the Gospel mission.

As ‘reform of the Church’ for the sake of mission can mean many things to many people (a return to an idealised past, a breakaway from all that has been, development in the midst of what is)  and this reform can be achieved in various ways by those who govern (the excision or suppression of current realities, reform by addition or the revival of past forms, by accommodation or adjustments to time and place) it is helpful for Christian leaders to reflect on the specific source and nature of governance responsibilities in the Church and to place that responsibility in its proper perspective.

Authorities in the Church

The first place to start in considering governance within the Church is with the notion of ‘authority’. From the perspective of faith, all authority originates in God’s own life and power, for He alone is the author (auctor) of life as well as the source of its flourishing. Thus, to hold authority is to properly share in something that is not our own.

This anchoring of authority in God’s life accounts for the diverse forms in which authority finds expression. Take for instance the ‘authority of holiness’ manifested in the communion of saints which reflects the creativity and profundity of God’s self-disclosure, mediated through human participants. Then, as Pope Francis has brought to clear light, there is the ‘authority of the poor’, the anawim who disclose with urgency the divine bidding to human solidarity, inclusion and communion precisely because they are the ones to whom it is always denied.

It is notable that the charismatic authority manifested in the saints, can indeed – but does not necessarily – coincide with those who hold sacramental or ministerial authority within the Church. To this end, Aidan Nichols observes that while St Birgitta of Sweden stands below her contemporary Pope Gregory XI in the suborder of office, she stands above him in the suborder of charismatic holiness. Thus, the manifestations of authority in our Church can be said to be numerous.

To reflect on the issues of Church governance, then, is to turn with a greater degree of specificity to a distinct type or subset of authority. The power of governance, also known as the ‘power of jurisdiction,’ is reserved by the Church to the ordained with laity understood by the Code of Canon Law as ‘cooperating’ in the exercise of that power (cf. Canon 129).

It’s notable that in the development of the 1983 revision of the Code, the ‘Roman’ school of canonists favoured the language of lay ‘participation’ (partem habere) in the power of governance, however the ‘Munich’ school, which included the then-Cardinal Ratzinger, prevailed with the more restrictive term ‘cooperate.’ Thus, as it stands, laity do not possess the powers of governance in themselves but ‘cooperate’ in its exercise, with the practical upshot that the power to take legally binding decisions within the Church is limited to those with Holy Orders.

This might surprise some and it is for this reason. The experience of the post-conciliar Church has been of lay persons engaging the powers of governance to such an extent that the distinction between the ‘possession’ of such powers by the ordained and mere ‘cooperation’ in them by the laity can appear rather abstract. As canonists have noted, lay persons can be effectively exercising the power of governance as judges, auditors, finance officers of dioceses and parishes, school principals, and directors of social services and health care facilities, with such persons exercising a role which is not simply consultative but, in fact, deliberative.

The recent application of the sturdier term ‘co-responsibility’ to lay persons may indicate a tacit recognition of this pastoral reality and, at the very least, has opened ground for renewed theological reflection on the question of laity and governance in the Church’s mission.

Decisions within a Hierarchical Communion

Of course, this question of lay participation in powers of governance engages a much broader theology of Church, one in which the baptismal identity and vocation of the one communion coincides with the hierarchical ordering that our Catholic faith maintains is a part of that communion’s nature as such.

While most appreciate the need for authority and order as a sociological given for any community if it is to function well and realise the purpose for which it exists, Catholic tradition goes much further in its understanding of order. For Catholic faith, the hierarchical structure of the Church is a dimension of God’s revelation, divinely revealed at the service of the apostolic proclamation from generation to generation.

In this context, ordained ministry is understood in terms of identity rather than mere functionality and so any form of ‘congregationalism’ that relativises the ministry of clergy to functionaries within the worshipping community should be resisted. It is within a Catholic emphasis on ministerial identity, and not managerialism or functionalism, that the power of governance is seen as intrinsic to ordination for the priest is ‘so configured to Christ, the priest, that they can act in the person of Christ, the head’ (Presbyterorum Ordinis 2).

The power of the ordained to govern is neither an extrinsic function that ‘just so happens’ to be carried out by these members of the Church rather than others, nor is it an extension of the general ministry of the congregation but a responsibility derived from the act of ordination which bestows ‘a particular gift so that [the priest] can help the People of God to exercise faithfully and fully the common priesthood which it has received’ (John Paul II, Pastores Dabo Vobis 17).

The quandary placed before contemporary theology is that the sacrament of order just outlined intersects with historical precedents that evidence lay participation in the governance of the Church in earlier ages, a role in effective decision-making that is precisely not tied to ordination. From lay scrutiny in the election of clergy and bishops in the third century – a practice well described by Cyprian of Carthage – to the role of the laity in the ‘handing on’ and development of Christian doctrine in the same epoch, there is sufficient evidence that the effective co-responsibility of laity in the governance of the Church cannot be, in itself, contradictory to the Church’s nature.

We can add to this the example of the governance of monastic communities by non-ordained monks, the insistence of the sixth-century Rule of St Benedict that ordination did not, in fact, confer any right of governance, and even the 1917 Code of Canon Law which required not ordination but only tonsure as a requirement for the exercise of jurisdiction.

In addition, while honouring the hierarchical structure of the Church and the distinctive vocation of the ordained, there is the perennial danger of ‘christomonism’ which would constrict the flow of the Spirit who, from a proper Trinitarian perspective, is never mediated exclusively through the ministry of clergy but is present throughout the whole body of Christ. As Lumen Gentium upholds with clarity, ‘It is not only through the sacraments and the ministries of the Church that the Holy Spirit sanctifies and leads the people of God and enriches it with virtues, but, “allotting his gifts to everyone according as He wills,” He distributes special graces among the faithful of every rank . . . toward the renewal and building up of the Church’ (Lumen Gentium 12).

Conclusion

It can be seen from this brief treatment of governance in the Church and in addressing it in the light of various forms of authority and historical variation, that we are left as Church in the twenty-first century with questions and tensions in the exercise of authority for the sake of mission rather than one-dimensional results or prescriptions.

Those exercising leadership in the Church, both ordained and lay, are challenged now more than ever to reflect deeply on their responsibilities in the light of faith, to remain ever faithful to the questions that pastoral reality brings forth (the need for renewed evangelical vigour, the reality of limited resources, the enduring hunger for the joy that is the Gospel) while attending to the multidimensions of a tradition that remains, nevertheless, singular and a resource for leadership and evangelical reform into the future.

Thank you for reading my blog throughout the year and sharing your own thoughts and questions on pastoral ministry and evangelisation. I wish you, your families and communities a merry Christmas and a blessed New Year. May the peace of the Christ-child reign in your hearts and fill you and your endeavours with the joy and mercy of God, and I look forward to sharing news of developments, conferences and activities in 2016. Daniel