What's in a name?

While I am glad that a number of bishops are now speaking out in support of the Church's teaching on marriage, I have been a little surprised that it is this issue that has fired them up.  There are any number of issues that, shall we say, have not necessarily been highlighted and defended with all the vigour that could be brought to bear.  Not all our bishops have been fired up for all areas of the Church's teaching - from morals to liturgy.

However, that aside, in the reporting over Christmas one (of my many) pet peeves has been rubbed up the wrong way.  Again and again the TV news and the print media refer to Archbishop Nichols as the "Head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales"( eg the Guardian) or "the Leader of the Country's Roman Catholics".  Of course, he is not and I'm sure would not lay claim to such a title. He is one of the Archbishops whose sees cover the capital and because the UK is covered by more than one hierarchy, he is not even the senior cleric, as at this point in time he has not been elevated to the cardinalate   It may be that the Archbishop of Westminster has a a higher profile by virtue of being in the capital and that he is usually a cardinal; he may chair the meetings of the Bishop's Conference of England and Wales.  For all these reasons, we might expect a certain leadership from whoever occupies the see of Westminster.  However, he has no direct control over any other diocese than his own; he not the CEO of the various provincial branches of a company, as if the diocese of Liverpool were a regional branch of Tesco. He cannot lead any diocese other than his own anywhere.  (as a Metropolitan he has certain oversight duties over his province in very limited ways - not the whole country and Westminster is not a Primatial See - and even if he were, Canon 438 makes it clear that the title of "Primate gives a prerogative of honour, but in the latin Church does not carry with it any power of governance").  If someone had a complaint against the bishop in their own diocese, they cannot take it to the Archbishop of Westminster.  If they cannot resolve it with their own bishop then the next level of authority is is in Rome with the appropriate Congregation representing the Holy Father.

Each bishop is a successor of the Apostles and apart from Peter, none was marked out with any governance over the others.  It is, I think, another ill-effect resulting from the rise to prominence of bishop's conference within each nation state - making national churches in some countries think of themselves as semi-autonomous bodies from the wider universal Church.  Although in the United Kingdom we have three hierarchies - which again militate against referring to the Archbishop of Westminster as "Head" or "Leader".   In fact, the only Primate, who would therefore have a prerogative of honour, resides in Northern Ireland, as the Primate of all Ireland. At this point in time Scotland has a Cardinal - again who could with more legitimacy have a leadership role ascribed to him.  While obviously some collective approach within a country can have uses at a practical level, the primacy of the Bishop's Conference mentality has robbed the individual bishop of the power to act alone; it appears to have made individual bishops beholden to the national conference instead of to the wider Church, to Rome, to the Holy Father or even to their own flock.  They must issue a statement through the bishop's conference and inevitably, in getting 20+ individual bishops to agree to something, the statement has to be a compromise and is watered down or policy making is farmed out to committees, who again would have to have an eye to keeping everyone on-board.  The "Leader" or "Head" in any diocese is only the bishop of that diocese.