Nov. 21 of this year marked the 60th anniversary of the promulgation of Lumen Gentium, the dogmatic constitution of the Church, at the Second Vatican Council. Obviously, there are a lot of topics surrounding this event that could be highlighted. I would like to focus on the changes Lumen Gentium made on the issue of episcopal jurisdiction and authority, as it’s something of special importance today, especially in light of the current emphasis on synodality.

To put things into proper historical context, it is important to remember that the First Vatican Council was interrupted and ended prematurely in 1870, before the council could completely develop its dogmatic definition of papal infallibility in its landmark text, Pastor Aeternus, which was promulgated on the last day the council was able to meet. Left hanging in the light of this definition, with its strong affirmation that the pope has universal jurisdictional and teaching authority over the entire Church, was the proper relationship between papal authority and that of the College of Bishops, both collectively and individually.

This ambiguity allowed for the emergence of a view of the authority of the local bishop as something granted to him via the path of delegation from the pope. Bishops, to use a common metaphor, came to be viewed as little more than branch managers of “Catholic Inc.,” with the pope as an all-powerful CEO.

The question hinges on the three functions (munera in Latin) traditionally ascribed to the episcopal office: teaching, governing and sanctifying. But in the modern era of the Church, especially after the Council of Trent and then made even more pronounced by Vatican I, it was the commonplace teaching of the Church that although the power of sanctifying the faithful comes with episcopal consecration, the functions of teaching and governing do not. Those powers, according to the teaching before Vatican II, come directly from the pope, who grants them to each bishop upon his consecration. Pius XII makes this explicitly clear in his encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi, where he says episcopal governing and teaching authority comes “directly from the same Supreme Pontiff” (42).

But Vatican II in Lumen Gentium, harking back to a much older tradition and practice in the Church, says the exact opposite. As Msgr. Thomas Guarino notes, quoting Claude Troisfontaines:

“On this point, Vatican II ‘abandons the position of Pius XII in order to restore a more traditional position: episcopal consecration confers not simply the power of sanctifying, but also the power of teaching and of governing.’”

Specifically, what changed was that the Council was now affirming that all three episcopal functions accrue to a bishop by divine right in virtue of his consecration as a bishop and not as a result of delegated authority from the pope. This means that the College of Bishops has a teaching authority that is not reducible to that of the pope, even as the bishops’ authority remains sub Petro et cum Petro (“under Peter and with Peter”).

It is indeed true that Christ gave to Peter the “keys to the kingdom” in a supreme and supereminent way, but the power of the keys was also granted to the other apostles directly from Christ and not by Petrine delegation.

The average Catholic can be excused for not fully grasping the theological importance of this shift. However, it is of enormous importance and was one of the most hotly contested issues at the Council. The fear of many bishops was that if the authority of the local bishop was strengthened vis-à-vis the pope, then the specter of national episcopal bodies setting themselves up as supreme authorities within their national boundaries, and in opposition to the authority of the pope, would arise.

This approach was usually known as “Gallicanism” and referred to a period in the history of the Church in France where the local bishops sought independent governing authority from Rome. However, and this is significant, this move for independence from Rome came with a greater dependence upon, and subjugation to, the French crown.

Therefore, for many of the bishops at Vatican II, any lessening of total papal control signaled a return of this Gallican impulse. And this was not an idle fear, given the rise in the modern world of strong centralized, secular states that were very much wanting to increase their authority over the local Church and to thereby marginalize the role of the papacy.

This concern led to the famous nota praevia, which was an addendum from Pope Paul VI to the end of Lumen Gentium. It affirmed the teaching of the Council that restored the three munera to every bishop by divine right, but also emphasized that this new teaching, which was the retrieval of an old teaching, in no way undermines the pope’s total jurisdictional authority over the Church.

This intervention from Pope Paul VI assuaged fears and facilitated the final vote in favor of promulgating Lumen Gentium. Nevertheless, it did not resolve the issue of how the Church can avoid an ultra-papalism where the pope is regarded as an absolute monarch whose every utterance is treated as an infallible decree.

In his homily of May 7, 2005, Pope Benedict XVI specifically warned against this understanding of the papal office:

“The power of teaching in the Church involves a commitment to the service of the obedience to the faith. The pope is not an absolute monarch whose thoughts and desires are law. On the contrary: The pope’s ministry is a guarantee of obedience to Christ and his word.”

Therefore, the pope and the bishops are co-stewards together of God’s revelation in Christ and they are jointly its servants. But the exact contours of what this subjugation of papal and episcopal office to Revelation looks like is still something left unresolved. After all, they might be subject to Revelation, but they are also its official magisterial custodians and interpreters, with the pope as the supreme and universal authority.

What role might the bishops play in making sure the pope remains true to Revelation, and what canonical processes might empower them to challenge a papal decree on those grounds? What rights does an individual bishop possess if he decides to challenge a papal decision? Conversely, the papal responsibility for preserving ecclesial unity in faith and morals might require him to discipline and correct wayward bishops, but what canonical rights do bishops have to appeal such adjudications?

All of these questions relate to what has come to be known as the doctrine of episcopal “collegiality,” and the presumption of the post-conciliar Church has been to err on the side of maintaining strong papal authority, while emphasizing the procedural need for broad consultation of the bishops by the pope. In this manner, the Church has avoided the pitfalls of the modern, cultural centrifugal forces that have torn apart other ecclesial communions, while keeping open a process of dialogue and fraternal collegiality.

In my view, therefore, the current discussions about a more synodal Church need to focus on this question of the relationship between the Petrine ministry and the other successors to the apostles, the bishops. Such a clarification and focus would be a genuine development of the teaching and ecclesiology of Vatican II.

Sadly, this is not how the synodal deliberations have played out. Very little attention was paid to the topic of collegiality — and the one effort in the last synod to grant national episcopal conferences their own semiautonomous doctrinal authority met with stiff resistance on the floor of the synod and thus floundered; and rightly so, since its broader implications undercut the supreme authority of the papacy.

In short, it is indeed easy to solve this problem if one simply jettisons the doctrine of papal supremacy in a practical, backhanded manner. But that is not an option. We are, after all, Catholics and not Anglicans. And the pope can never be a mere figurehead of unity, as with the archbishop of Canterbury.

Thus, in this regard, the theological renewal of Lumen Gentium remains unfinished. And the question of how to avoid the extremes of a pope viewed as an absolute monarch on the one hand or a Gallican figurehead on the other remains an ongoing challenge.