Archbishop Chaput warns against greater role for episcopal conferences

October 12, 2015

In a brief address at the Synod of Bishops on October 10, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia warned that “devolving important disciplinary and doctrinal issues to national and regional episcopal conferences” would threaten the Church’s unity, according to The National Catholic Register, which published the full text of his remarks.

“The Church is ‘catholic,’ or universal,” said Archbishop Chaput. “We need to honor the many differences in personality and culture that exist among the faithful.”

“But we live in a time of intense global change, confusion and unrest,” he continued.
“Our most urgent need is unity, and our greatest danger is fragmentation. Brothers, we need to be very cautious in devolving important disciplinary and doctrinal issues to national and regional episcopal conferences-- especially when pressure in that direction is accompanied by an implicit spirit of self-assertion and resistance.”

Archbishop Chaput added:

Five hundred years ago, at a moment very like our own, Erasmus of Rotterdam wrote that the unity of the Church is the single most important of her attributes. We can argue about what Erasmus actually believed, and what he intended with his writing. But we can’t argue about the consequences when the need for Church unity was ignored. In the coming days of our synod, we might fruitfully remember the importance of our unity, what that unity requires, and what disunity on matters of substance implies.

 

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Further information:

• Archbishop Chaput Warns About Dangers of Devolution to National Bishops’ Conferences (National Catholic Register)