Important teaching by bishops' conferences "needs to take seriously the democratic climate in which we live", Father Eugene Duffy has written in this month's Furrow magazine.
Father Duffy, who is director of the Western Theological Institute, was addressing reaction to two documents published by the bishops last year. "The first, Conscience, received very little attention," he wrote, while "the second, One Bread, One Body, . . . was the source of much negative comment."
Where the latter document was concerned, priests were expected to promote and defend it once it had appeared, even though "they had no prior warning that such a document was being prepared and there was no significantly wide consultation in its preparation". In such circumstances, he felt it was not surprising the documents failed to have the desired impact.
He contrasted the style of preparation of such documents in Ireland with the widely consultative process adopted by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in the United States.
"The American bishops have institutionalised a certain democratic ethos in their approach to teaching in their conference and done so to good effect," he wrote. He noted that the late Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago stressed the need for a consultative process on the part of the bishops with theologians and scholars, "and significantly with those whose opinions were likely to differ from those of the bishops themselves".
People expected to be participants in the making and shaping of the various policies which affected their lives, Father Duffy wrote. "When One Bread, One Body appeared, most people assumed the only reason why the document was published was to deal with the public incidents of the British Prime Minister and the Irish President taking Communion in churches to which neither belonged," he said.
The bishops found themselves having to say that the document was in preparation long before these incidents occurred, while "had a consultation process about how to present Eucharist doctrine been known to be in place, then the subsequent justifications would not have been necessary and a much wider group of people would have been in a position to explain and clarify the very valuable doctrine being presented".
Father Duffy also addressed criticisms that the timing of the document's publication had been insensitive, as it followed so quickly on the Belfast Agreement. That agreement had taken place after much dialogue and participation by both sides and long negotiations, he noted.
"In one case, people saw the value of a dialogical process, even where traditional adversaries finally sat down and spoke to one another. In the other, an authoritative statement emerged without any prior notice."
The bishops again found themselves having to explain that in fact the teaching document had been in preparation long before the peace process was agreed, he observed. Would it not have been much more easily defended, Father Duffy asked, "had a much wider church membership been aware of the bishops' plan to offer instruction on Eucharist doctrine?"
