The Proposal

“For the Jubilee we thought we should do something about reconciliation as three conferences, Ireland, England & Wales and Scotland. A working party was set up including Archbishop Kelly of Liverpool, a good theologian, and Bishop Donal Murray from Ireland. . . .

“The proposal was that Lent next year would begin with a pastoral letter from our bishops about reconciliation, referring to the Jubilee, and during Lent there would be a catechesis, homilies, instructions on reconciliation and so on.

“On the Saturday before Palm Sunday there would be general absolution in all of our parishes in the British Isles and Ireland and on the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of Holy Week there would be opportunities for individual confession, fulfilling canon law as it were. . . .

“The Curia—the Congregation for the Sacraments—would not approve of that, despite the fact that it was approved by the hierarchies of our countries.

“As far as I know it [the refusal] was from the curia and I wouldn’t think the Pope knew anything about it.”

—Archbishop Keith O’Brien
of Edinburgh, Scotland

The smooth public veneer that usually covers the working relationship between Rome and local hierarchies was cast aside at the last press briefing of the recent Synod for Europe, when the Archbishop of Edinburgh, Scotland, revealed to the press that the Vatican had shot down a plan for the Church in Britain and Ireland to use general absolution during the Jubilee Year as a way to bring people back to confession. Archbishop Keith O’Brien presented that action as an example of how, as he saw it, the Roman Curia were disengaged from reality, and tended to treat local bishops merely as branch managers rather than as Vicars of Christ in their own dioceses.

However, all was not quite as it seemed. After the archbishop’s remarks became public, denials came in quickly from several prelates, prompting some further investigation into what was really going on behind the scenes, and whether or not Archbishop O’Brien’s indictment of the Vatican was justified.

Hence, a thorough account of the sequence of events—inasmuch as they can be gleaned from the various accounts advanced by several different individuals connected with the process, placed in the context in which these events occur—would seem to be in order.

Events unfolding

In September of 1998, the Conference of Bishops of England and Wales organized an in-service session, which they held in Rome (not at the Vatican, although they did meet with some Curial officials). Delegates were also present from Scotland and from Ireland. During the course of the gathering, the bishops discussed doing something to bring people back to the Sacrament of Penance during the Jubilee Year; there was some discussion of how a plan for general absolution could be a part of such an effort. The bishops decided to set up a six-man committee to examine the proposal, consisting of a bishop and a theologian from each country’s episcopal conference—except that Scotland sent two theologians instead of only one.

After this, the three episcopal conferences—of England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland—followed different paths. All three conferences had agreed on establishing the committee and nominated their own representatives to it. In addition, at some point the Scottish bishops gave their unanimous approval to a concrete proposal suggesting the introduction of general absolution. (The substance of the proposal is sketched in the accompanying sidebar.) The English and Welsh bishops deferred making a decision on it, waiting instead to see how the Holy See would rule on the lawfulness of the proposal. Yet the English and Welsh bishops decided not to submit the proposal to Rome because, according to a spokesman for the conference, they felt that a formal approach might not be fruitful. (The spokesman was unable to confirm whether or not an informal approach had actually been made.) The Irish bishops, it seems, made no decision at all on the general-absolution proposal, apart from their initial agreement to support the establishment of the joint committee.

Meanwhile, in November two other events unfolded.

First, the Vice-Rector of the Irish diocesan seminary in Rome had an article published in a theological journal in Ireland, proposing an extended use of general absolution as a means to celebrate the Jubilee and to bring people back to the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Second, at the time that theological journal appeared, the Australian hierarchy were arriving in Rome to attend the Synod for Oceania. But before that Synod opened, a delegation of Australian bishops met with leading Curial officials to discuss the state of the Church “down under.” At the top of the agenda during those discussions was the issue of general absolution. Together the Australian bishops and Curial officials decided—and announced in their Statement of Conclusions—that the Australian Church should stick more closely to the prescribed norms, promoting a renewal of individual confession rather than general absolution. A clear message to the same effect was also included in the Pope’s ad limina discourse to the Australian bishops.

In December, Cardinal Jorge Arturo Medina Estévez, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments sent a strongly worded letter to the heads of the episcopal conferences in England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, reminding them of the restrictions on the use of the “third rite” for the Sacrament of Reconciliation —that is, general absolution. It is not entirely clear whether this letter was prompted by an informal approach to the Congregation or by the bulletin of the Scottish bishops’ conference, which had contained a reference to the establishment of a committee to consider general absolution, or perhaps even to a combination of these two developments.

On the very morning that the letters from Cardinal Medina arrived, the late Cardinal Basil Hume of Westminister telephoned Cardinal Thomas Winning of Glasgow, asking him to write to Rome to appeal the case. The Scottish cardinal agreed to make a presentation to Rome— not in writing but in person, during a forthcoming trip there where he was scheduled to ordain students at the Scottish College to the diaconate.

In January, the joint committee of the bishops’ conferences met for the first time. While concentrating on putting together a catechesis on reconciliation, the committee did leave general absolution as one of the options on the agenda.

In April, Cardinal Winning traveled to Rome and pleaded the case for the proposal with Cardinal Medina Estévez. But he was unsuccessful.

In June, the Irish bishops went to Rome for their ad limina visit, and in his discourse to them the Pope specifically reminded them of the norms governing the third rite.

In August, the bishops’ committee finished its work and submitted its final report to the three conferences—a report which specifically excluded the use of general absolution. The bishops’ response to this report was to be discussed during the next meetings of the three episcopal conferences.

Sources of resistance

If Archbishop Keith O’Brien was confused about what exactly was going on with regard to the proposed use of general absolution during the Jubilee Year, then it can at least be said in his defense that he was not alone. Confusion, misperceptions, and inconsistencies seem to abound among the Church leaders of the British Isles, judging from the conflicting accounts that have come from those who should be best acquainted with the proposal. Whatever the reasons for this confusion, it does raise two very important questions: To what extent was each bishop fully informed on the matter? And how were the bishops represented in Rome?

The Archbishop of Edinburgh labored under the false impression that all three conferences were backing the proposal—a point which must have helped the Scottish bishops to decide in favor of the plan. Likewise he had the false impression that the proposal carried the weight of the convictions of all the members on the committee—an impression which Bishop Donal Murray, who had served on the committee, specifically denied.

Nonetheless, there must have been an influential group of bishops within each of the three conferences who were intent on getting the proposal passed. The biggest barrier was always going to be the Congregation for Divine Worship in Rome. The objections set forth by that Congregation derived from the Code of Canon Law itself, which does not allow such deviations from the usual practice of individual confession. And the position established in canon law is in turn the consequence of a sacramental theology that sees the individual confession of sins as essential to the integrity of the sacrament. Looming behind and above these three connected elements was the Pope himself. He was temporarily aloof from the fray that was being played out behind closed doors, but nevertheless it was the Holy Father who had installed Cardinal Medina as prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship; it was he who had promulgated the new Code of Canon Law (1983); and it was he who had insisted, right from his very first encyclical (Redemptor Hominis, 20), on the necessity of individual confession—a practice he had emphasized time and time again in recent ad limina discourses to various groups of bishops.

A final barrier—if perhaps not a particularly formidable one—would be individual bishops within the conferences who held strong reservations about this use of general absolution.

The trouble with conferences

Could it be then that while the proposal was being explored, representations were being made to Rome, purporting to have the approval of the three episcopal conferences, and thus putting more pressure on the Congregation to yield? Was the strategy set so that if Rome did yield, the proposal could then be presented at home as a fait accompli—to be given a quick pro forma approval by the episcopal conferences, with the remaining recalcitrant bishops under pressure to accept the inevitable and step in line with the trend?

Problems that arise from the structure of episcopal conferences (to say nothing of groups of episcopal conferences), particularly in the realm of decision-making, are not something new. In his 1985 book-length interview The Ratzinger Report, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith remarked that one of the paradoxical effects of the post-conciliar period was that the decisive new emphasis on the role of the bishop was in reality diminished or actually risked being smothered by the insertion of bishops into conferences that are ever more organized, often with burdensome bureaucratic structures. Cardinal Ratzinger observed:

It happens that with some bishops there is a certain lack of individual responsibility, and the delegation of his inalienable powers as shepherd and teacher to the structures of the local conference leads to letting what should remain very personal lapse into anonymity. The group of bishops united in the conferences depends in their decisions upon other groups, upon commissions that have been established to prepare draft proposals.

The cardinal also mentioned a problem that, “in many episcopal conferences, the group spirit and perhaps even the wish for a quiet, peaceful life or conformism lead the majority to accept the positions of active minorities bent upon pursuing clear goals.” He continued:

I know bishops who privately confess that they would have decided differently than they did at a conference if they had had to decide by themselves. Accepting the group spirit, they shied away from the odium of being viewed as a “spoilsport,” as “backward,” as “not open.” It seems very nice always to decide together. This way, however, entails the risk of losing the “scandal” and the “folly” of the Gospel, that “salt” and that “leaven” that today are more indispensable than ever for a Christian (above all when he is a bishop, hence invested with precise responsibility for the faithful) in the face of the gravity of the crisis.

If there is a lesson to be learned from this, it lies in the renewed recognition that individual bishops are prone to the dangers outlined by Cardinal Ratzinger —of having their role usurped by the corporate structure of the bishops’ conference. This is an issue that the Holy See addressed in 1998 in the document Apostolos Suos, which affirmed the strictly limited teaching authority of a conference of bishops. There is an indispensable role for episcopal conferences in issuing norms, releasing letters on topics of importance, in implementing coordinated pastoral plans, but it does not need to be at the expense of the authority of the bishop as the vicar of Christ in the local Church.

The pastors’ preferences

There is also a certain irony attached to the appeal by Archbishop O’Brien (among others) that the proponents of general absolution were working with Catholics at a grassroots level, given that this proposal did not come from the laity of Britain and Ireland. In fact the ordinary Catholics in the pews knew almost nothing about this proposal until Archbishop O’Brien mentioned it to the assembled journalists at the last English-language press briefing of the European Synod.

The archbishop presented this entire affair as an alleged example of how the Roman Curia stands in some sort of trenchant opposition to local pastors, who (if the archbishop’s remarks were to be credited) formed a united front as they responded to the real needs of the souls under their care. Another irony here lies in the fact that many lay people in Scotland have been deprived of the opportunity for individual confession in their local parishes, because of the preference some priests have for general absolution. Far from supporting the proposal explored by the bishops, those same lay people might have been shocked that the bishops would have lurched further down the road away from the individual encounter with Christ that is individual confession and absolution. They might also have been offended by the suggestion that the veto by Rome was another example of clandestine political machinations by “right-wing bishops” in the Curia operating without the knowledge of the Pope, from whom the Curia derive their authority.

It is a sad reflection on the state of the Church that her universality is so often forgotten. The unifying function of Rome is disregarded, leading to a situation in which two regions of the Church pull in opposite directions on the same issue: So now while Australia decides to crack down on abuses of the third rite of Reconciliation, the bishops of Britain and Ireland announce their intention to explore those same programs as a means of pastoral renewal.

Still, there is hope to be gleaned from this sequence of events. That hope could be realized if now the hierarchies in Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales embark on a zealous catechesis on reconciliation, leading people back once more to the merciful love of Jesus. The people of Europe do not need to be sacramentalized, they need to be converted, or as Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi of Genoa has said: The task right now is not to baptize the converted but to convert the baptized.

Paraic Maher is a free-lance writer based in Rome.