Dr. Luca Badini Confalonieri presents on the “Proposed Constitution for the Catholic Church” by Michael Centore

In memory of the passing of John Wijngaards, the founder of the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research, on January 2, Dr. Luca Badini Confalonieri gave an online presentation on the institute’s “Proposed Constitution for the Catholic Church” on January 29. The presentation was offered under the auspices of the Global Ecclesial Synodal Council (GESC), an initiative of Catholic Church Reform International (CCRI).

According to a statement issued by the institute upon news of his passing, Wingaards “was at heart a scholar and teacher with a deep thirst for justice.” The statement described him as “a prolific writer, authoring over 350 articles, 12 educational websites, and 12 pamphlets.” He also wrote 35 books over the course of his lifetime.

Wijngaards founded the Institute for Catholic Research in 2005 as “an independent theological think tank” to produce ground-breaking academic studies on a variety of church-related topics. He “recruited some of the most distinguished scholars from around the world to develop these reports with objective, academic rigor,” the statement said.

Dr. Confalonieri is the director of research of the Wijngaards Institute. He described the origins of the constitution as having come about “as the result of a thought experiment: ‘What would the structure of the Catholic Church look like if the miracle had happened?’” In other words, he asked, “What would it look like if all the liberating possibilities the gospel calls for were implemented?”

The ultimate goal of this “thought experiment,” he said, was to assess “whether and to what extent proposals for church reform can be brought together into a whole that is coherent, pragmatic, as well as compatible with biblical studies, theological research, and ecumenical dialogues.”

Dr. Confalonieri stressed that the idea of a church constitution isn’t new. The Vatican worked for more than 10 years on such a document before shelving a finished draft in 1980, just prior to promulgating a new Code of Canon Law.

During 1990s, professor Leonard Swidler coordinated team of academics to draft another proposed constitution for a more democratic church. The current Wijngaards document builds upon the these efforts, as well as analogous documents of other Christian churches.

Dr. Confalonieri laid out five key principles of the proposed constitution, beginning with its fundamental assumption: that all of the baptized are co-responsible for the church’s mission and governance.

Jesus himself gave to all of his followers, “women and men, slaves and free, the mission to preach the good news to the end of the earth and to be agents of God’s kingdom of peace and justice,” Dr. Confalonieri said. All Catholics, therefore, have an “inalienable right to participate in [the church’s] government,” either directly or via freely chosen representatives.

Dr. Confalonieri described the second principle of the constitution as the “separation of powers.” There are many tasks in the church, including teaching, preaching, pastoral care, and financial management, he said, and “no single minister can or should be responsible for everything.”

In current church law, all powers are centralized in ordained ministry, which is unaccountable to the people of God, Dr. Confalonieri explained. He said that abuses will continue to flourish within the church until this model changes.

Dr. Confalonieri advocated instead for a “division of labor” and a “separation of powers” based on two key factors: 1) that decision-making and governance require different skills, talents, and charisms than pastoral work and the administration of the sacraments; and 2) that maintaining a division of labor is “one of the checks against unaccountable power.”

The third principle of the proposed constitution is “consent and representation.” A vital yet often underreported element of Catholic doctrine is that the consent of the faithful is “normative” for church decisions, including doctrinal decisions, Dr. Confalonieri said. This means that “all baptized have the right and responsibility to participate in the governance of the church.”

Though ecclesiological theory recognizes the foundational role of the consent of the faithful in church governance, there are still “no structures in place to allow that consent to be expressed and its existence verified,” he said.

The constitution sets forth concrete proposals to ensure the baptized have the right to elect people to lead the church. It advocates for a decision-making body at every level of church life in the form of an assembly of elected representatives with deliberative powers.

Representatives would serve limited terms of office, Dr. Confalonieri elaborated. Assemblies would discern together to formulate policies and priorities to guide actions of ministers working in all areas of church life, including ordained ministers working in pastoral care. Another crucial part of their common discernment would be the allocation of church assets.

The fourth principle of the proposed constitution is the integration of “relevant expertise in church decision-making.” Church decisions require specialist knowledge of the Bible, church history, sociology, and other religious and secular fields. As representatives cannot be specialists in all necessary disciplines, the constitution attempts to ensure that church decision-making is informed by relevant evidence, Dr. Confalonieri explained. In this it borrows from the best practices of contemporary liberal democracies as well as traditional practices of the Catholic Church, such as having theological experts present at ecumenical councils.

Dr. Confalonieri offered two excerpts from the proposed constitution to illustrate his point. The first, paragraph 44, states: “should the decision require specialised knowledge—e.g. in biblical studies, theology, canon law, medicine, psychology, economics, sociology, financial administration, etc.—church representatives and leaders, both individually or in groups, have a legal duty to seek and take into account relevant and independent expert advice.”

The second, paragraph 72, explains that membership of independent expert advisory bodies “shall be selected via an open and transparent peer-review process, whose criteria for selection must include relevant expertise, lack of conflict of interests, independence from church representatives and church leaders, and good standing within the relevant scientific community.”

The fifth and final principle of the proposed constitution is perhaps the most crucial, Dr. Confalonieri stated. This is the principle of determining the appropriate level for taking doctrinal decisions, or what is technically referred to as “subsidiarity.”

In Catholic doctrine, subsidiarity is the principle that “a greater and higher association shall not take from lesser and subordinate organizations what they can accomplish by their own initiative.” In a worldwide church “whose constituent national churches hold considerably different beliefs and practices on many issues,” the principle of subsidiarity is “crucial,” Dr. Confalonieri said.

Quoting from the proposed constitution, Dr. Confalonieri stated that “every decisional level in the church has an inalienable right and responsibility to determine both what decisions and actions falls within their competence, and what instead should be decided by delegation to a higher level.”

He continued: “Each higher decisional level may only undertake those decisions and actions which the lower level freely delegates to them, and may not impose restrictions on the lower levels as to matters for decision or action without their consent.”

In practice, this would lead to “a decentralization which includes doctrinal issues,” he explained. As to the question of whether such decentralization would cause confusion, he clarified: “Respect for the freedom of conscience of every baptized [person] demands nothing less.”

Mutual listening and dialogue among churches is “the only way to allow individuals and the local churches to act according to their deeply held, prayerfully discerned beliefs about what the gospel requires of them in their own specific societies and cultures,” he stated. He added that these dialogical practices are also a way to make the “rich diversity” of Catholicism more public.

The constitution’s “interlocking sets of democratic reforms” are “the best way to advance synodality,” Dr. Confalonieri said. Without proposals for concrete structural changes, “synodality will continue to remain sort of a vague aspiration with very little meaningful implementation.”

To this end, representatives from the Wijngaards Institute will carry the proposed constitution to Rome for the Jubilee Year. They will also send the text to the synodal study group established by Pope Francis to examine “theological criteria and synodal methodologies for shared discernment of controversial doctrinal, pastoral, and ethical issues.” ♦

Michael Centore is the editor of Today’s American Catholic.

Image: Dr. Luca Badini Confalonieri speaks on the proposed constitution via Zoom on January 29.

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