Traditionalists question the pope, his own bishops question him, and mainstream Catholics question him.
Did we see this before VII ? No.
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Yes we did. Throughout history it has happened over and over again. The difference was that once upon a time popes were also temporal leaders with armies. Bishops were also temporal leaders with armies. They had to dance around each other very gingerly. I’ll give you one simple example, but it’s one of many.
In 1208, St. Dominic approached Pope Innocent III with a rule for his new order, the Order of Preachers. The Pope and bishops had decided that there would be no new rules for religious orders. All new religious orders had to follow one of the existing rules. They simply had to adapt the rule to their ministry. The existing rules of the time were: Benedictine, Basilian, Carmelite, and Augustinian.
Dominic’s rule was rejected. St. Dominic adopted the Rule of St. Augustine and wrote statutes to address those points that Augustine does not address. That has governed the Dominicans to this day.
In 1209, St. Francis of Assisi approached Pope Innocent III with a rule for his new order, the Order of Friars Minor. Because the law said that there were to be no new rules, St. Francis was denied. St. Francis himself declared that what he has written he had written with no human help. He asserted that his rule had been dictated to him by the Lord Jesus himself. Therefore, he could not accept one of the existing rules, because it was not the Lord’s will.
After hearing him out, Pope Innocent sent him away. That night he had a dream where he saw St. Francis rescuing the Church from collapse. The next day, he called Francis to him and he gave verbal approval to the rule. The Cardinals and bishops were furious on two grounds: 1) There are not more revelations since the death of the last Apostle. Yet, Francis of Assisi claimed that the rule had been revealed to him by Christ and the pope was allowing it to go into public usage. 2) The had already been a law thta said that no new rules were allowed. The pope was not abrogating the law, but was was making an exception that they deemed inappropriate and poor prudential judgment. To avoid conflicts, Pope Innocent III gave the rule verbal approval.
In 1221, Francis again approaches the pope. This time Honorius III was in power. Again,the Cardinals, bishops and canonists argued that they approval of the new rule was problematic on the same two grounds. The debate lasted until 1223 when Pope Honorius III issued a Papal Bull approving the rule for all eternity.
Fastforward, St. Ignatius approaches with his rule for the Society of Jesus. He is told that there is a law that forbids new rules and he must adopt an existing one or have no rule at all. Priests and bishops reminded the pope that there was a precedent. Francis had been granted permission to write his own rule just 300 years earlier. The debate and criticism continued until Ignatius agreed to retract the petition. The Society of Jesus was approved without a rule and was to be governed by a set of statutes that they would democratically write and democratically approve according to a set of criteria that Ignatius would give them. This has been how they govern themselves to this day.
This is just one area of conflicts between popes and bishops or between popes and theologians. There were other areas: Immaculate Conception, the ordination of married men in the Roman Church, the liturgy, the rights of monarchs, the rights of the laity, the rights of religious orders, the ownership of property, service in the armed forces.
That last one was an interesting one. Francis of Assisi wrote the Rule for the Brothers of Penance, which governs the Secular Franciscans. He prohibitted, under pain of mortal sin, the service in the armed forces and the pledge of alegiance to any nation or ruler. When wars arose, the Secular Franciscans refused to serve out of obedience to the Rule of their order. There were great debates between the Franciscans and the bishops, the Franciscans and the popes, the bishops and the popes over this prohibition. The answer always came back the same. There was no way to mandate that the Secular Franciscans serve in the Armed Forces unless the pope himself edited the Rule of St. Francis. The debates went on from the time of Pope Honorius to the time of Pius X who finally lifted the restriction.
It is incorrect to say that there have never been confrontations, debates, disagreements, or conflicts between papacy, bishops, clergy, religious and laity. The difference was that they did not have Internet. Most people never found out about these debates.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
