Challenge To Pope

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32120, 16 October 1969, Page 13

Challenge To Pope

IN Z P A.-Reuter—Copyright) VATICAN CITY, Oct. 15. Roman Catholic bishops yesterday confronted Pope Paul with demands for changes which would considerably reduce his absolute power over the Church. The Pope sat smiling and relaxed as “progressive" bishops outlined their ideas for changes in the Church’s system of government at the second working session of the bishops’ international Synod. Led by the controversial Belgian Primate, Cardinal Leo Suenens, the “progressive” bishops heavily outnumbered traditionalists among the 19 speakers. At one point, Cardinal Suenens likened the exercise of Papal power to an absolute monarchy: and an Indonesian bishop said that the Pope should seek his bishops' advice before issuing important encyclicals such as that last year, ruling on birth control.

Cardinal Justinus Darmojuwono, referring to the birthcontrol ban declared: “Many bishops do not adhere to this doctrine, even if they do not show it publicly.” As he had done the day before, Pope Paul sat through the Synod’s entire morning session, which lasted 3t hours and led the bishops in an opening prayer.

His decision to attend was welcomed by yesterday’s president of the Synod, the Archbishop of Bombay (Cardinal Valerian Gracias), as a real sign of collegiality, the doctrine by which the Pope and the bishops share supreme power in the Church. Cardinal Suenens began his six-minute address by saying that all the bishops wholeheartedly supported the doctrines of Papal supremacy and collegiality, but he added: “the questions arise when the

doctrine has to be applied. There are some who insist on the primacy of the Roman Pontiff to the extent that it resembles the absolute mon- ' archism of the time before I the French Revolution. ; “We are not only under the ! Pope, we exercise our power ' with him.” ' Cardinal Suenens attacked 1 the Synod’s working documents as insisting too much on the primacy of the Pope, 1 and as appearing to regard

the bishops as only his assistants.

He said the same tendency could be observed in the Vatican newspaper, “L’Osservatore Romano," which seemed to regard itself as the only true organ of the Church. Cardinal Suenens, who provoked an uproar early this year by proposing that the Pope should be elected by the bishops rather than the cardinals, and other radical changes, said that the great importance of local churches should be taken into account He said that the international theological commission appointed recently by the Pope to study Church doctrines should examine the relations between the Pope and the bishops. He also called for a study of the Eastern Rite churches, which have permanent Synods with the right to elect their own bishops without consulting the Pope.