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November 1, 2001
From The Record, Louisville, KY 10/25/01
By JOHN THAVIS Catholic News Service
Debates at Synod mirror Vatican II
Of the nearly 250 bishops attending the Synod of Bishops this fall, only a handful were present at the Second Vatican Council more than 35 years ago.
But on several controversial issues, synod speeches strongly echoed the council's debate.
At the top of the list was 'collegiality,' the concept of shared responsibility and authority among the Bishops and the pope. At the Sept. 30-Oct. 27 synod, everyone was for it, but, like those at Vatican II, they had a hard time agreeing on what it should mean in the day-to-day life of a bishop.
On the synod floor, several bishops called for a greater decision-making role for heads of dioceses and bishops' conferences and a decentralization of Roman authority on nondoctrinal questions. Some called for new, permanent agencies in which bishops would work with the pope on matters of church governance. They might have been@ reading a page from the council's debate on the issue in 1963-64, when a number of prelates supported the idea of a periodic gathering of selected bishops from around the world to help govern the church with the pope.
Then, as now, the Roman Curia - the Vatican's administrative agencies - came under fire.
This year's synod heard complaints about decisions being taken out of the bishop's hands, and one bishop wondered whether the Roman Curia was really interested in urgent pastoral problems at the local level. In response, one high Vatican official pleaded: Don't expect the impossible from us.
Back in 1963, bishops also voiced objections about Vatican procedures, saying they should not stand between the pope and the bishops. Back then, an Asian bishop received thunderous applause when he suggested limiting the power of the Roman Curia and granting bishops "all the faculties for the exercise of their office which belong to them by common law and divine law."