PETRINE PRIMACY AND VICARIAL POWER: WHEN CANONISTIC CRITICISM FORGET THE PREVIOUS NOTE

About a recent article on the primacy of the Bishop of Rome: the sources cited are authentic, but the ecclesiological montage that holds them together does not stand the test of the texts.

– Theology and canon law –

Author
Teodoro Beccia

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Sometimes inspiration is needed, for this reason the Fathers of The Island of Patmos are grateful to the stimulating blog I can not remain silent, capable of inspiring serious scholars to correctively deal with interesting topics that require a structured approach based on criteria of solid legal precision.

This is the case of the recent article: «A power that decides everything: perhaps the time has come to rethink the Petrine primacy?» (cf.. who), which raises a legitimate question - the tension between the synodal rhetoric of Francis' pontificate and the technical-juridical practice of centralization of power - and supports it with a largely authentic set of sources: the Preach the Gospel, Gianfranco Ghirlanda's study on Periodica de re canonica, the document of the Dicastery for Christian Unity The Bishop of Rome (2024) who, a correct reference to Afanassieff, Meyendorff and Clément on first among equals eastern. The problem is not the invention of non-existent sources, but the way they are mounted: an operation that could be defined as ecclesiology done with scissors, where the passages that support the thesis remain, those who would complicate it disappear as if by magic.

Four issues deserve to be resolved publicly, not for the sake of controversy, but because the topic - the foundation of government power in the Church - is too serious to be left to such a partial reading. The first knot: the article reconstructs the doctrine on the governing power of bishops as if the Second Vatican Council had closed the question in favor of the sacramental derivation alone, keeping quiet A preliminary explanatory note which connects the sacrament and the juridical exercise of power. The second knot: extends to the proper power of the bishops a principle - that of the vicarious power of the curial departments - designed for an organ that has never had its own power. The third knot: hyperbolically compares an organizational regulation of 2022 to the dogmatic definition of Vatican I, ignoring its limits relationship Gasser set the record. The fourth knot: cites Gianfranco Ghirlanda as independent historical proof of a thesis that he himself constructed and then translated into law. Let's tackle them one by one, in the order in which the article presents them.

First: the absence of the Explanatory Note praevia

The article presents the tension between the doctrine of The light 21-22 (which links the governing power of bishops to episcopal consecration, exercised in hierarchical communion with the college and its head) and the thesis - revived by Ghirlanda - according to which the power of government derives rather from the canonical mission received from the Roman Pontiff. He does so as if the Council had closed the issue in favor of the first reading, leaving the second as a pre-conciliar residue now obsolete.

Lacks, in this reconstruction, a decisive textual fact: the A preliminary explanatory note, desired by Paul VI and attached to the conciliar text precisely to clarify in what sense the doctrine of The light on the college of bishops. The N. 2 of the Note specifies that the consecration ontologically confers the office, but that the exercise of that power remains subordinate to "canonical or juridical determination by the hierarchical authority". It is exactly the connection between the sacramental dimension and the juridical-canonical dimension that the article presents as an unresolved contradiction between the Council and subsequent doctrine. Soon said: omitting it out of ignorance would already be a problem, but omitting it because it complicates the thesis you intend to support is much worse.

Second: the confusion between vicarious curial power and the bishops' own power

The point 5 of the «Principles and criteria» of Preach the Gospel — correctly cited in the article — concerns the power with which the dicasteries of the Roman Curia operate: vicarious power, exercised in the name and by mandate of the Roman Pontiff. This has never been controversial: the Curia, by definition, it never had its own power, being the executive body of the Pope since its historical origin.

The bold logical leap of the article consists in extending this principle - designed for dicasteries - to diocesan bishops, abbesses and major superiors of religious institutes, as if they too were mere executors of a power that always and exclusively remains with the Pope. But it's the same The Eternal Shepherd, mentioned shortly afterwards in the article, to deny this extension: the primacy of the Roman Pontiff is defined as ordinary and immediate potestas over every Church, but the text explicitly takes care not to undermine the power - also ordinary and immediate - that bishops exercise over their particular Churches (DS 3061). They are two distinct powers that coexist; not one absorbing the other. The case of the commissionerships of monasteries and religious institutes, which the article cites as proof of the thesis, it must be assessed on a case-by-case basis from the perspective of the law of institutes of consecrated life (where the relationship between its own internal authority and the intervention of the Holy See follows a distinct discipline, cf. cann. 596 e 622-624 CIC), not generalized starting from the internal regulations of the Curia.

Third: the hyperbole of the “most ultramontane Council in history”

The article argues that the doctrine underlying the reform of the Curia, if generalized, «it goes beyond what even the most Ultramontane Council in history has ever done», with reference to Vatican I. It is a rhetorically effective statement, I dare say bombastic, but theologically untenable, because it compares two non-commensurable categories: an internal organizational arrangement of 2022 (the regulations of the Curia) and a universal dogmatic definition of the 1870 on the primacy of jurisdiction. It is worth remembering that the First Vatican Council itself, in relationship of Bishop Vinzenz Gasser who accompanied the vote of the The Eternal Shepherd, he made it clear that the defined primacy was not an absolute or despotic power, and that it did not suppress the ordinary power of bishops. And with this it is obvious: if even the strongest dogmatic definition ever produced on the primacy was careful to set this limit, Comparing it unfavorably to a curial regulation - which dogmatically binds nothing - is not an argument, if we want to be good we could good-naturedly define it as a rhetorical device.

bedroom: Garland as a source of himself

The article cites Ghirlanda's study 2017 his Periodica de re canonica as proof that the thesis of the derivation of the power of government from the canonical mission alone has a genealogy in Leo XIII, Pius XII and John XXIII. But Ghirlanda is not a neutral witness here: he is the canonist who physically drafted the legal framework of Preach the Gospel is that, In the 2017, five years before promulgation, he was already building the argument in support of the reform he would sign. Citing the architect of a thesis as independent historical proof of the validity of the thesis itself is a self-referential short circuit: the source does not prove the thesis, presupposes it.

The one that remains standing

Not everything, in that article, it must be thrown away. The underlying question - whether the synodal rhetoric of recent years has been accompanied by an opposite technical-juridical practice - is real, and is discussed by canonists of the opposite orientation: the article acknowledges this by citing both Cardinal Müller in a critical way and progressive voices who complain about the opposite outcome, a power disconnected from the sacrament and the Word. Also the reference to the ecumenical document of 2024 on first among equals it is relevant and not misrepresented.

The problem is therefore not the question, which deserves to be asked and discussed seriously. The problem is the response constructed by selecting the sources that are convenient and keeping quiet about those — the Note the preliminary, the distinction between vicarious power and proper power, the Gasser relatio — which would have complicated it. Whoever wrote that article knows where to look for the texts, but it does not weigh them against each other with logical rigor, chronological and scientific. And it is exactly this, not the invention of sources, the sign of the canonical amateurism of those who have been giving lessons to others for five years now.

Velletri of Rome, 18 August 2026

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