The sacking of William Morris as bishop of the Australian diocese of Toowoomba raises more than a few theological questions about the relationship between bishops and the Bishop of Rome.
Many Catholics believe, and so apparently does Benedict XVI, that the Bishop of Rome is free, by the will of Christ, not only to appoint all bishops in the Roman Catholic church, but to dismiss them as well.
This is an incorrect assumption, and the firing of Bishop Morris provides us with a teachable moment in ecclesiology.
From the very beginning of church history, bishops were elected by the laity and clergy of the various local churches, or dioceses. And this included the Bishop of Rome, known more popularly as the pope.
One of the most important bishop-saints of the third century, Cyprian of Carthage in North Africa, offered explicit testimony about the election of bishops in the early church.
"It comes from divine authority," Cyprian wrote, "that a bishop be chosen in the presence of the people before the eyes of all and that he be approved worthy and fit by public judgment and testimony."
Indeed, when Cornelius was elected pope in 251, Cyprian described the process in a letter to a contemporary: "Cornelius was made bishop by the judgment of God and His Christ, by the testimony of almost all the clergy, by the vote of the people who were then present, by the assembly of venerable bishops and good men."
As I said at Of Course, I Could Be Wrong, where MadPriest posted the story earlier, "The article is brilliantly timely, and, as you say, its significance applies far beyond the story of the persecution of Bishop William Morris by the Vatican.
The NCR was my mainstay for many years, as the newspaper gave me great comfort in knowing that I was not alone in my resistance to swallowing the Vatican line whole and entire."
The Catholic Encyclopedia admits as much:
As to the earliest ages, Ferraris (op. cit. infra) says that St. Peter himself constituted a senate for the Roman Church, consisting of twenty-four priests and deacons. These were the councillors of the Bishop of Rome and the electors of his successors. This statement is drawn from a canon in the "Corpus Juris Canonici" (can. "Si Petrus", caus. 8, Q. 1). Historians and canonists, however, generally hold that the Roman bishopric was filled on its vacancy in the same manner as other bishoprics, that is, the election of the new pope was made by the neighbouring bishops and the clergy and faithful of Rome. Nevertheless, some maintain that the naming of the successor of St. Peter was restricted to the Roman clergy, and that the people were admitted to a part in the elections only after the time of Sylvester I (fourth century). (My emphasis)
MadPriest adds a gentle commentary to the article in NCR:
So there you have it. Of the three main denominations of the Christian Church, Roman Catholicism, Byzantium Orthodoxy and Anglicanism, the most orthodox, when it comes to the election of bishops, is Anglicanism and the province within the Anglican communion that has got it the most correct is the USA. This fact emphasises just how devious and perverted the accusations of revisionism and apostasy, levelled at the US Church by its jealous detractors, actually are, especially as they come mostly from bishops who have assumed dictatorial powers for themselves and who have been elected in processes that reflect those practiced by the secular powers of the cultures they minister within.
