Indifference main worry, says Dr Pell

Sydney
4 November 2001

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Indifference main worry, says Dr Pell

By CNS and Catholic Weekly Staff

Church leaders should not let questions of governance distract them from the major challenge of religious indifference, Archbishop Pell has told a press conference on the month-long synod of bishops in Rome.

Governance has figured strongly at the synod, with many bishops calling for the principle of subsidiarity – that higher authorities should not interfere in decisions lower authorities are competent to make – to be applied to the Church hierarchy.

Archbishop Pell said the synod’s draft list of proposals specifically invoked subsidiarity. But, he said, the sociological basis of subsidiarity – the premise that all power comes from the people – was inappropriate for Church structures.

“That is not the basis for authority in the Church,” he said. “Authority in the Church comes from God.

“I think the notion of subsidiarity is radically incompatible with the hierarchical and communitarian nature of the Church.”

Although Archbishop Pell said the question of the interrelationship between the Pope and other bishops should and must continue, he added that he was against giving regional bodies more decision-making authority.

“In a very real sense, the individual bishops answer to the Pope and, within the parameters of doctrine and discipline, individual bishops have a very, very considerable sphere of autonomy and room to move.

“I am not very keen on limiting that too significantly by new layers, either at the national level or supranational level or regional level,” he said, “although certainly we must and will continue to come together at those levels to cooperate.

“I would anticipate that this will be a long and ongoing discussion, but I will not be surprised if we do not use the notion of subsidiarity to take the discussion forward. In my book it is something where we can do better, but it’s not a major challenge like indifferentism.”

He added that he expected the primacy of the Pope to be “more important than ever” in the future, because of modern “doctrinal confusion and widespread theological differences”.

The list of conclusions to the synod also saw bishops split in regard to points of emphasis in a message on terrorism.

Cardinal Carlo Martini stressed that every bishop condemned terrorism, particularly the attacks in the US, and shared compassion for the victims.

But “this should not remove our attention from the causes of international injustice and poverty, which are not the immediate causes of terrorism but are in some way the roots of terrorism”, he said.

The Church’s role was not to act as an international agency of morality giving ethical “permission” for different types of intervention but to promote a deeper reflection by everyone on the Gospel values and their application to the current crisis.

Reflection should begin with a personal examination of conscience in which people ask themselves to what extent their own acts are marked by selfishness, injustice and violence.