Cardinal Burke’s Talk On The Limits Of Papal Power

By DIANE MONTAGNA

Part 1

(Editor’s Note: Raymond Cardinal Burke gave the address below on April 7 at a conference in Rome called “Catholic Church: Where Are You Heading?” His Eminence gave his talk in memory of Joachim Cardinal Meisner. Given the length of the talk, we are publishing it in two parts. Also, we eliminated the footnotes, which can be found in LifeSiteNews’ report of April 13, www.lifesitenews.com.)

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ROME (LifeSiteNews) — What is the extent of papal power? Are there any limits, and if so how is the violation of those limits judged and corrected?
These and other questions were addressed by Raymond Cardinal Burke Saturday, April 7, at a conference in Rome titled “Catholic Church: Where are you heading?”
The afternoon symposium, sponsored by the Friends of Cardinal Caffarra Community, was convened in honor of the recently deceased dubia cardinal, amid growing concern that Pope Francis is leading the Church in a direction not always in keeping with the Church’s nature and teaching.
Drawing on the Church’s Tradition, Magisterium, and canonical legislation, Cardinal Burke explained the fullness of power (plenitudo potestatis) of the Roman Pontiff does not mean that a Pope’s authority is “magical, but derives from his obedience to the Lord.”
The prefect emeritus of the Vatican’s Apostolic Signatura also explained that Popes must safeguard and promote Church unity, and that if a Roman Pontiff fails to act in conformity with Divine Revelation, Sacred Scripture and Tradition, such actions “must be rejected by the faithful.”
“Let no mortal being have the audacity to reprimand a Pope on account of his faults…unless he should be called to task for having deviated from the faith,” Cardinal Burke said, quoting the twelfth-century canon lawyer and Camaldolese monk Gratian.
In his speech, Cardinal Burke also outlined how abuses of the Pope’s fullness of power could be corrected, though time did not allow him to go into detail about how a formal correction might be offered, he said.
A number of readers have expressed a desire to read Cardinal Burke’s text in full. The cardinal kindly supplied the Italian original and has approved this English translation.

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Before entering into the heart of my topic, in this context of grateful and affectionate remembrance of the late Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, and of ardent desire to continue his work of selfless and total love for Christ and His Mystical Body, the Church, I would like to say a few words to honor the memory of Cardinal Joachim Meisner. From the beginning of the good fight to defend and promote the fundamental truths about marriage and the family, he was completely united with Cardinal Caffarra, Cardinal Walter Brandmueller, and myself. As a true pastor of the Lord’s flock, he considered it his first duty to present tirelessly the teaching of Christ in the Church. I remember two moments, in particular, in his final battle to serve Christ and the Church.
After Cardinal Walter Kasper’s inaugural address during the Extraordinary Consistory of February 2014, as we left the Synod Hall, Cardinal Meisner approached me and expressed his concern about the false direction in which the address would have led the Church, if an adequate and swift correction were not given. He added, “All of this will end in a schism.” From that moment on, he did everything possible to defend Christ’s word on marriage.
The last time I had the pleasure of seeing Cardinal Meisner was on March 3 of last year, when I visited the Archdiocese of Cologne for an academic presentation in which he also participated. Cardinal Meisner was truly happy to be able to express to me in person all of his support for the work done to obtain a just response from the Holy Father to the dubia raised by the Post-Synodal Exhortation Amoris Laetitia. While he was clearly and deeply concerned about the present state of the Church, he did not fail to express all of his trust in the Lord who will not fail to sustain His Mystical Body in the truth of the faith.
Today, in honoring the memory of the great Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, let us also honor, as I am sure Cardinal Caffarra would have liked us to do, the memory of Cardinal Joachim Meisner, who, together with Cardinal Caffarra, in the words of St. Paul, fought the good fight of faith, finished the race of his episcopal mission for the good of countless faithful, and, with fidelity and generosity, kept the faith. Requiescat in pace!

Introduction

In one of the open discussions during the session of the Synod of Bishops held in October of 2014, the Synod Fathers were debating about the possibility of the Church permitting those living in irregular matrimonial unions to receive the Sacraments of Penance and the Holy Eucharist. At a certain point, one of the cardinals, thought to be an expert in canon law, intervened with what he judged to be a definitive solution to the difficulty. Making reference to the dissolution of marriages in favor of the faith, he strongly asserted that we have not at all begun to comprehend the extent of the plenitudo potestatis of the Roman Pontiff.
The implication was that the fullness of power which is, by divine law, inherent to the Petrine Office could permit the Holy Father to act in contradiction to the words of Our Lord Himself in chapter 19 of the Gospel according to St. Matthew and the Church’s constant teaching in fidelity to the same words: “And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another, commits adultery; and he who marries a divorced woman, commits adultery.”
The Cardinal’s quite shocking affirmation made me think again about something which the Holy Father himself had said, at the beginning of the 2014 session of the Synod, to all of the Synod Fathers.
He told the Synod Fathers: “It is necessary to say with parrhesia all that one feels.” He then concluded: “And do so with great tranquility and peace, so that the Synod may always unfold cum Petro et sub Petro, and the presence of the Pope is a guarantee for all and a safeguard of the faith.” The juxtaposition of the classic words which describe the power of the Pope, such that all things in the Church must be with Peter and under Peter, and the presence of the body of the Pope in a meeting risks a misunderstanding of the authority of the Pope which is not magical but derives from his obedience to Our Lord.
Such magical thinking is also reflected in the docile response of some of the faithful to whatever the Roman Pontiff may say, claiming that, if the Holy Father says something, then we must accept it as papal teaching. In any case, it seems good to reflect a bit on the notion of the power inherent to the Petrine Office and, in particular, on the notion of the fullness of power (plenitudo potestatis) of the Roman Pontiff.

The Fullness Of Power
In The Tradition

The history of the terminology, plenitudo potestatis, to express the nature of the jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff is succinctly described in a contribution of Professor John A. Watt of the University of Hull to the Second International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, held at Boston College from August 12 to 16 of 1963. The term is first used by Pope St. Leo the Great in 446. In his Letter 14, he writes about the authority of the Bishop with these words: “Thus we have confided to your charity our duties, such that you are called unto a share of solicitude, not unto the fullness of power.”
In his customary crystalline Latin, Pope St. Leo the Great expresses the relationship of the Roman Pontiff with the Bishops. While both the Roman Pontiff and the Bishops share the solicitude for the good of the universal Church, the Roman Pontiff alone exercises the fullness of power, in order that the unity of the universal Church be effectively safeguarded and promoted.
The term, fullness of power, is found extensively in treatises on papal authority, especially in the canonical literature. Gratian includes the dictum of Pope St. Leo the Great along with two others canons among his decrees. These decrees emphasized “papal primacy as expressed in the supreme appellate jurisdiction and the reservation of all major issues.” St. Bernard of Clairvaux contributed greatly to the reception of the term, so that “by the time of Huguccio it had reached a high level of development.”
Pope Innocent III, grounding the term theologically in the reality of the Papal office as the Vicar of Christ on earth (Vicarius Christi), emphasized the position of the Roman Pontiff “supra ius” and “as iudex ordinarius omnium.” Regarding the term, supra ius, “over the law,” it was clear that the Roman Pontiff could dispense from the law or interpret the law only for the purpose of serving the proper end of the law, not to subvert the law. The description of the exercise of the fullness of power as the action of Christ Himself, through His Vicar on earth, was made with “the qualification that the pope must avoid decreeing anything that was sinful or might lead to sin or subversion of the Faith.”
Cardinal Henry of Susa, called Hostiensis, an illustrious canonist of the thirteenth century, treated amply the notion of the fullness of power of the Roman Pontiff, using the term in 71 individual contexts in his writings: the Summa, the Apparatus or Lectura on the Gregoriana, and the Apparatus on the Extravagantes of Innocent IV.
In Appendix A of his article, Professor Watt provides a representative list of legislative texts of Pope Innocent III in which he uses the term, fullness of power, while in Appendix B of his article, he provides a list of all 71 usages of the term, fullness of power, by Hostiensis.
Hostiensis introduced a distinction of two uses of the fullness of power: the Pope’s “ordinary power,” “potestas ordinaria” or “ordinate” when by virtue of his plenitudo officii [“fullness of office”], he acted “according to the law already established,” and “his absolute power, ‘potestas absoluta’ when by virtue of his plenitudo potestatis [‘fullness of power’], he passed over or transcended existing law.” The adjective, absolute, must be understood in the context of Roman Law and its service to the development of canonical discipline, not according to the secular understanding of Machiavelli or of a totalitarian dictators.
In Roman Law, it signified a dispensation from a law and supply of a defect in a law. In the words of Professor Watt:
“Dispensation was a use of the absolute power to set aside existing law; suppletio was an act of absolute power to remedy defects that had arisen either through the non-observance of existing law or because existing law was inadequate to meet the particular circumstances. In both cases the absolute power, the plenitudo potestatis, stands revealed as a discretionary power over the established legal order, a prerogative power to act for the common welfare outside that order, if, in the pope’s judgment, circumstances made this necessary.”
In other words, the fullness of power was not understood as an authority over the very constitution of the Church or her Magisterium but as a necessity for the governance of the Church in accord with her constitution and Magisterium. Hostiensis describes it as a necessary tool so that “curia business could be expedited, delays shortened, litigation curtailed,” while, at the same time, “he considered that it was a power to be used with great caution, as a power in the Pauline phrase ‘unto edification and not for destruction,’ a discretionary power to maintain the constitution of the Church, not to undermine it.”
It is clear that the fullness of power is given by Christ Himself and not by some human authority or popular constitution, and that, therefore, it can only be rightly exercised in obedience to Christ. Professor Watt observes:
“It was axiomatic that any power which had been given by Christ to His Church was for the purpose of fulfilling the end of the society which He had founded, not to thwart it. Therefore the prerogative power could only be exercised within these terms. Therefore ‘absolutism’ (solutus a legibus) was not license for arbitrary government. If it was true that the will of the prince made the law, in the sense that there was no other authority which could make it; it was also true as a corollary that, where this will threatened the foundations of the society whose good the will existed to promote, it was no law. The Church was a society to save souls. Heresy and sin impeded salvation. Any act of the pope in quantum homo which was heretical or sinful in itself or might foster heresy or sin threatened the foundations of society and was therefore void.”
In other words, the notion of fullness of power was carefully qualified.
It was understood that it did not permit the Roman Pontiff to do certain things. For example, he could not act against the Apostolic Faith. Also, for the sake of the good order of the Church, it was a power to be used sparingly and with the greatest prudence. Watt observes:
“It was unfitting to depart from the ius commune too frequently or to do so sine causa. The Pope could do so, but he should not, for the exercise of the plenitudo potestatis was to further the utilitas ecclesie et salus animarum and not the self-interest of individuals. The setting aside of the ius commune must therefore always be an exceptional act impelled by grave reasons. If the pope did so act sine causa or arbitrarily, he put his salvation in danger.”
Since the notion of fullness of powers contains the just-described limitations, how is the violation of the limitations judged and corrected?
What is to be done if the Roman Pontiff so acts? Hostiensis is clear that the Pope is not subject to human judgment. “He should be warned of the error of his ways and even publicly admonished, but he could not be put on trial if he persisted in his line of conduct.” For Hostiensis, the College of Cardinals, even though they do not share in the fullness of power, “should act as a de facto check against papal error.”
Hostiensis recognized the need of the exercise of the fullness of power at certain times, in order to “rectify the imperfections of the established order or thwart those who were manipulating it for private ends,” but he also “thought as a general rule the pope should be slow to depart from the common law and he also thought that he should take the fraternal advice of his appointed advisers before doing so.”
Apart from public admonition and prayer for divine intervention, he does not offer a remedy for the abuse of the fullness of power. If, a member of the faithful believes in conscience that a particular exercise of the fullness of power is sinful and cannot bring his conscience to peace in the matter, “the pope must, as a duty, be disobeyed, and the consequences of disobedience be suffered in Christian patience.”
Time has not permitted me to examine the question of the correction of the Pope who abuses the fullness of power inherent to the primacy of the See of Peter. As many will know, there is an abundant literature on the question. Certainly the treatise, De Romano Pontifice of Saint Robert Bellarmine, and other classical canonical studies must be examined. Suffice it to say that, as history shows, it is possible that the Roman Pontiff, exercising the fullness of power, can fall either into heresy or into the dereliction of his primary duty to safeguard and promote the unity of faith, worship, and practice. Since he is not subject to a judicial process, according to the first canon on the competent forum in the Code of Canon Law (“Prima Sedes a nemine iudicatur”), how is the matter to be addressed?
A brief preliminary response, based upon the natural law, the Gospels and canonical tradition, would indicate a twofold process: first, the correction of a supposed error or dereliction made directly to the Roman Pontiff himself; and, then, if he fails to respond, a public declaration. According to natural law, right reason demands that subjects be governed according to the rule of law and, in the contrary case, provides that they have recourse against actions in violation of the rule of law.
Christ Himself teaches the way of fraternal correction which applies to all members of His Mystical Body. We see His teaching embodied in the fraternal correction of St. Peter by St. Paul, when St. Peter dissembled regarding the freedom of Christians from certain ritual laws of the Jewish faith.
Finally, the canonical tradition is summarized in the norm of canon 212 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law. While the first section of the canon in question makes clear that “the Christian faithful are bound to follow with Christian obedience those things which the sacred pastors, inasmuch as they represent Christ, declare as teachers of the faith or establish as rulers of the Church,” the third section declares the right and duty of the faithful “to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful, without prejudice to the integrity of faith and morals, with reverence toward their pastors, and attentive to common advantage and the dignity of persons.”