Admittedly, I know very little about Catholic dogma…but if a Cardinal is almost always an Archbishop, why are the priest/pedophilia policies currently being discussed headed by Bishops only and no Cardinals? It seems that Cardinal Mahoney of the Los Angeles Archdiocese is deferring to the Bishops for answers? Or are there Cardinals on the legislative body? Please enlighten this lost soul.
Well, the organization that’s drafting pedophilia policies is the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. All the bishops in the US, including archbishops, are members of the Conference.
Cardinals are bishops who have been ‘promoted’. Cardinals, and only Cardinals, vote for the next pope.
however, i believe, that’s the extent of the ranking. for instance, a cardinal can not order a bishop to do something (as in the military- you know, a general ordering a sergeant around or what have you).
so here in america, you can be a priest (ordained), a bishop (already a priest, a priest who has had the pope’s hands laid on him and ordained a bishop), an archbishop (not anywhere near sure bout that), or a cardinal (i believe maybe you have to have the College of Cardinals approve your appointment to cardinal, or (more likely) the Pope appoints cardinals as he sees fit).
anyway, here’s where it gets hairier. the conference of bishops is made up of american bishops, archbishops, and cardinals. so any (american) priest (priest meaning any ordained man- no matter the title) is probalby going to defer to the Conference.
grain of salt- i am a lapsed motherfucker, and i have a terrible memory.
jb
All cardinals are bishops, but not vice versa.
Well, here’s the way it works. The smallest Catholic organization unit is called the parish. It contains a church, along with whatever other things that church runs…a school for example. Priests run parishes. A collection of parishes that cover a set geographical area is a diocese, which is overseen by a bishop. A collection of dioceses together is called a region (I believe). There’s no one who’s the head of a region…it’s just a grouping. However, the largest diocese in each region is called an archdiocese, and the head of the diocese is called an archbishop. Archbishops don’t have any direct control over dioceses (except their own) in a region, but the other bishops in the region usually defer to him when it comes to making general statements anyway, and archbishops are usually better known than bishops. You could probably name the Archbishop of New York sooner than you could the Bishop of Brooklyn, or the Archbishop of Washington before the Bishop of Alexandria.
“Cardinal” is an honor, bestowed by the pope, that gives the cardinal the right to participate in papal elections. Currently, I believe, only bishops can be cardinals, but there were in the past, cardinal-priests, and cardinal-deacons.
I apologize. Cardinal-bishop, cardinal-priest, and cardinal-deacon don’t refer to the status of the cardinal as either a bishop, priest, or layperson. I believe the terms are strictly different degrees of honor that can be bestowed on a cardinal, and have value when it comes to ceremonial occasions.
The conference of bishops consists of all the bishops and archbishops of the United States. Some of them are also cardinals, but that doesn’t of itself give them any special status in the conference. However, they are likely to have been made cardinals either because they are very senior or very experienced or are the bishops of very important dioceses, and those factors may give them more influence in the conference.
The conference itself is a consultative and collaborative body, but it can’t actually give orders to individual bishops. It can act as a forum in which the bishops try to reach agreement on matters, and it can encourage bishops to adopt a common position, but in the end it can’t force a bishop to “toe the line”.
Here are some figures that might put things in perspective, although I’m simplifying a bit from the original source - the numbers will be different depending on how you count them. In the USA, there are active 260 bishops, 34 archbishops, and 7 cardinals.
Boy, but I’m having trouble finding the number of American Catholics and the number of American priests. Does anyone have those figures?
No, no, no. Lots of misinformation in the above.
BobT and Captain Amazing: It’s a dispensible requirement that a Cardinal be a Bishop. There are several well-known cases: just last year, Pope John Paul II appointed theologian and Fordham University Professor Rev. Avery Dulles, S.J., as a Cardinal. Fr. Dulles was a well-known academic, but not a bishop.
Captain Amazing: a collection of dioceses is known as an ecclesiastical province. One diocese in the province is designated the metropolitan diocese, and headed by a metropolitan archbishop; the other dioceses are called suffragan dioceses. Canon law gives a few minimal supervisory powers to the archbishop in his suffragan dioceses: for example, if a suffragan diocese has no bishop - the see is vacant - and the college of consultors in the diocese has failed to act, he may appoint a diocesan administrator. He may also celebrate Mass and hear confessions in any of the suffragan dioceses as if they were his own.
UDS’s post is exactly right: each bishop is responsible only to the Holy See. An Episcopal Conference can establish norms, but individual bishops are free to accept or reject them. A directive from the Holy See must be obeyed.
A Cardinal is a mark of honor, and does not confer any particular administrative authority apart from what is already possessed, and apart from the special case of being a voter in the next papal election. One other mark of distinction: a Cardinal may hear confessions anywhere in the world.
This may surprise you, thinking that any priest can hear confessions anywhere. That’s not strictly true. By canon law, a pastor and other priests in a parish may hear confessions only of their parishoners. To hear confessions elsewhere, they must have permission. A bishop may hear confessions anywhere in his diocese. A chaplain, appointed by the cognizant bishop, may hear confessions from any of the group his chaplaincy covers. An archbishop, as mentioned above, may hear confessions in his province, and a Cardinal - anywhere.
- Rick
Captain Amazing pretty well covered it.
Under the sacrament of Holy Orders, there’s three types of ordination: deacon, priest, bishop. In practice Rome delegates small-b bishop ordinations to the senior bishops in each Region or Ecclesiastical Province. Someone who has the ordination as bishop, has it for life. The Pope may then appoint him to the office of Bishop/Archbishop of [Your City Here], which the person holds at Rome’s pleasure, until mandatory retirement (age 80, iirc)
And Bricker, of course, corrected a lot of our oversimplifications.
According to this site http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_tren.htm as of 1999 there were 62.4 million Roman Catholics in the US. There were 30,940 diocesan priests, 15,465 religious priests (i.e. priests who are members of religious orders), 5,746 religious brothers (male members of religious orders not ordained as priests) and 81,161 women members of religious orders.
My guess is that the numbers of clergy would have declined since then t a rate of somewhere between 1% and 4% a year.
Not quite. Once appointed as the bishop or archbishop of X, he can only be removed from that office if he submits his resignation (which he can be requested but not forced to do) or following the procedures required by canon law. In the case of a bishop who was sought to be removed for some kind of misconduct, the procedure would involve a trial of the allegation of misconduct before the Roman Rota.
I vaguely recall a case from some years back where, if my memory serves me, a Scottish bishop was accused of an inappropriate relationship with his (adult, female) housekeeper. The bishop was invited to submit his resignation to Rome to avoid further scandal. He refused, saying that to do so would imply not only an admission of guilt on his own part, but also an imputation of guilt to his housekeeper, and he was not prepared to do that. (Both the bishop and the housekeeper denied the allegation strenuously, and it may have been nothing more than a scurrilous allegation.)
The outcome was that the bishop remained in office. I don’t think there ever was a trial of the issue, presumably because it was clear that there was no evidence which might have lead to a finding against the bishop.
The retirement age is 75, but the relevant provisions of canon law state simply that a bishop is requested to submit his resignation at that age. He can’t be forced to, but he invariably does. Presumably, if he didn’t, he could be tried before the Roman Rota for the offence of ignoring canon law without good reason and, if found guilty, he could then be removed.
Can. 416 provides that a see becomes vacant "by the death of the diocesan Bishop, by his resignation accepted by the Holy See, by transfer, or by deprivation notified to the Bishop. "
Can. 418 §1 provides that within two months of receiving notification of transfer, the Bishop must proceed to the diocese to which he has been transferred and take canonical possession of it; on the day on which he takes possession of the new diocese, the diocese from which he has been transferred becomes vacant.
The bishop has no option here – while he can’t merely be fired, he can be transferred.
- Rick
True. But the considerations which lead to his being considered unsuitable for his current diocese will often preclude his being appointed to another diocese.
But I take the point that, if he is considered suitable for transfer, he can be transferred at will.