WE THE PEOPLE OF GOD Democracy in the church
Russett, Bruce
WE THE PEOPLE OF GOD How democratic should the church be? Bruce Russett Sexual-abuse scandals, here and abroad, are but one symptom of a much deeper problem facing the church: its current...
...A second example of democratic structures might be found in local parish governance, particularly in parish councils, finance committees, and-for a brief period in nineteenth-century America-parish trustees...
...Yet informal grass-roots organizations are insufficient...
...They wither without sustained, committed, and collective leadership...
...Representative government is not completely alien to the church...
...The cardinal elec-tors are all chosen by previous popes, from the celibate male episcopate...
...The first is the process of electing a new pope, as carried out by the College of Cardinals through secret ballot...
...Recognizing this theological and historical insight, the question then becomes how to mitigate and restrain the inevitable abuse of power...
...Some of these decisions, of course, were disastrous...
...The faithful need to be led and taught...
...The hierarchical institutions themselves need to be reformed...
...This is a reasonable assumption...
...The people have a right to teaching by reasoned argument and to a leadership that truly listens and responds to their concerns-not just one that imposes as authoritative views that are deeply contested below...
...Without such mechanisms, Lord Acton's famous aphorism applies: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely...
...Antagonism toward democracy is embedded both in the church's culture and in its lack of adequate procedures to constrain abuses of power...
...Like the rest of us, though, such leaders are also subject to original sin...
...Moreover, should the judges and other officials listen, the dissenters are not required to accept the answer given to them...
...Saying the church is not a democracy becomes a point of pride that the church is not like those "others...
...They cannot refuse to listen, charging that the dissenters are incompetent and unable to understand, for then we would not have a decent consultation hierarchy, but a paternalistic regime...
...Not since the time of Archbishop John Carroll have American bishops been elected by their priests...
...Responsiveness to those below must be limited in any group...
...These are fundamental rights of a people both holy and free...
...Still, there is room for much more democracy...
...Government by plebiscite is only one form of democracy...
...Resisting the liberalizing winds of the Second Vatican Council, the centralization of power in the papacy has been deepened and extended, in sharp contrast to many other institutions in an era of widening democracy...
...Some church structures and processes can lay some claim to democratic principles, but their claim is limited...
...The further one looks above the local level, the less applicable that label becomes...
...Greater participation and responsibility in local churches, and independent organizations able to speak up to priests and bishops, would be an essential start...
...Still, the papacy as we know it today developed along with the rise of absolutist monarchies from the late-sixteenth into the nineteenth century...
...Still, leaders must not systematically pursue their own goals at the expense of the whole, ignoring the wishes of those below them...
...Centuries ago, popes won their struggles with secular rulers over the right of investiture...
...A priest may be removed by a bishop...
...Complex associations cannot be run by plebiscite...
...a bishop by the pope...
...Indeed, Acton was commenting on Renaissance papal power...
...The trustee experiment was abandoned by the middle of that century, and most parish councils and finance committees-if in fact they exist- have little real authority...
...Bruce Russett Sexual-abuse scandals, here and abroad, are but one symptom of a much deeper problem facing the church: its current structure of government is extraordinarily centralized and hierarchical...
...Cardinals lose their voting power at age seventy-five, resulting in an electorate chosen by the immediately preceding pope, if he has had any extensive reign...
...People at the top are expected to make decisions on behalf of those below...
...Here are two examples, one from the top and one from the bottom...
...Every institution needs structures for accountability...
...It is a rhetorical ploy of deliberate exaggeration to say the church is not a democracy, for it implies that democracy means that everyone gets to vote on everything...
...In any organization, some people must make decisions on behalf of others...
...Vatican II's Lumen gentium and especially Gaudium et spes called for greater participation and active involvement by the laity as "the people of God," and urged pastors to consult with them and to listen-but the council did not require them to do so...
...His last book, The Law of Peoples, describes such "decent consultation hierarchies" as those allowing [a]n opportunity for different voices to be heard-not, to be sure, in a way allowed by democratic institutions, but appropriately in view of the religious and philosophical values of the society as expressed in its idea of the common good....[Members] have the right at some point in the procedure of consultation (often at the stage of selecting a group's representatives) to express political dissent, and the government has an obligation to take a group's dissent seriously and to give a conscientious reply...
...they may renew their protest, provided they explain why they are still dissatisfied, and their explanation in turn ought to receive a further and fuller reply...
...Finance committee members are usually appointed by the pastor, not elected by the parish...
...Thus the College does not represent in any proportional way the perspectives of the clergy at large (not to mention the laity...
...Nor may the priest have much to say about where he serves...
...Parish councils, even when elected, rarely have any role in the appointment of new priests for the parish...
...If a superior chooses to keep an official in office, those below have little recourse...
...This state of affairs has proved disastrous...
...Democracy in the church...
...It is a one-time event, however, since the person elected is pope for life...
...Powerful and hostile secular authorities often threatened the church's independence...
...Judges and other officials must be willing to address objections...
...Yet how are the electors chosen...
...There are historical reasons for this centralization...
...Leaders in a representative democracy may make and enforce decisions on behalf of all the members...
...We like to think that church leaders are especially motivated to serve God and humanity, to look out for the well-being (spiritual as well as physical) of all...
...Churches are not immune from this problem...
...John Rawls, the eminent political theorist, conceded that some hierarchies can share with democratically governed systems the label "well-ordered peoples...
...Rome responded by seeking temporal as well as spiritual power, and by constructing a centralized, hierarchical, even monarchical, institution capable of resisting such threats...
...Holiness and spirituality give some protection against self-seeking, but not sufficient protection...
...Some degree of hierarchy operates in most social institutions...
...Those expected to contribute to the treasury have a right to monitor fiduciary responsibility: "no taxation without representation...
...In ancient Athens, all citizens (meaning adult males, not women, foreign residents, slaves) voted on all major decisions of the city...
...Currently 96 percent of the voting cardinals were appointed by John Paul II...
...Kings claimed to rule by divine right, and church authorities could not, in those conditions, claim anything less than divine right for themselves...
...Many would not...
...Rather, they continue a hierarchical opposition to democratic government itself, as manifested in nineteenth-century papal pronouncements like Pope Leo XIII's condemnation of the heresy of "Americanism...
...Theological dispute cannot be settled by simple majority vote...
...Not only is the church not a democracy, it is not even as responsive to the vast majority, as many hierarchical systems are...
...Moreover, in this papacy in particular, cardinals have been chosen with painstaking attention to their loyalty to the principles so forcefully articulated by this pope...
...This is a democratic process...
...This article draws on his chapter in a forthcoming book edited with Francis Oakley, Governance, Accountability, and the Future of the Catholic Church...
...Instead, they rely on representative institutions whose members are elected by citizens, and who are held responsible for their acts by the periodicrisk of being voted out of office...
...Leaders who grossly violate the trust of the faithful can be removed and replaced only by a superior official...
...A "decent consultation hierarchy...
...As parliaments and other representative bodies arose in various kingdoms, a conciliar tradition in the church resisted strong papal claims...
...Moreover, being in possession of teaching authority does not guarantee good judgment in more worldly issues such as finance or personnel...
...Bishops themselves are not chosen by any national or regional body, and are not even self-selecting...
...It was solidified Bruce Russett is Dean Acheson Professor of Political Science at Yale...
...Those whose lives may be blighted by leaders' scandalous acts have a right to participation in procedures that call those leaders to account and replace them...
...by the First Vatican Council, in a Rome beleaguered by revolutionary forces...
...Yes, the church is not a democracy, because it has no apparatus of democratic accountability, and that is precisely the problem...
...The answer is hardly democratic...
...The church may never be a democracy in the sense of having elected leaders from bottom to top...
...Some-perhaps many-local parishes would qualify as "decent consultation hierarchies...
...a pope only by God...
...History gives many examples...
...Structures must be put in place to give voice and influence to those below...
...Papal reminders that the church is not a democracy are not just warnings that democracy in the church would be bad...
...Democracy also means an institutionalized system of restraints: checks and balances, decentralization (as in the Catholic principle of subsidiarity), and regular community reauthorization of the leadership...
...Yet, last fall, Pope John Paul II, repeating a familiar refrain, warned a group of Austrian bishops, "The church is not a democracy, and no one from below can decide on the truth...
...Modern democratic organizations have far more members than those in the small citizen class of Athens, and must eschew direct government...
...Consequently, such parish bodies tend to exemplify hierarchy all the way down...
Vol. 130 • September 2003 • No. 15
