Vicars General and Auxiliary Bishops

[chevalier]

From canon law, it looks like vicars general have superior authority to episcopal vicars. Vicars general can be priests. A diocese can have vicars general who are priests and episcopal vicars who are auxiliary bishops. Then, it looks like the priest who’s vicar general has more authority than the auxiliary bishop. To complicate matters, I’m not sure if that doesn’t mean that in some situations, the vicar general who’s a simple priest could have some authority over the auxiliary bishop, who is, after all, in a higher degree of holy orders. I’m a bit at a loss here.

 

[otjm]

I never really gave it any thought. It may be in jurisdictional matters that the vicar has authority over the auxilliary bishop; however, a bishop is a bishop and has the fullness of Ordination and the priest doesn’t, so in other matters, the bishop woulod have precedence.

 

[Andreas_Hofer]

Without consulting the canons to know if your reading is totally precise, I would simply submit that the conclusion you reached - of a priest having greater authority in some matters than a bishop - is not all that absurd. As otjm pointed out, we are dealing with matters of jurisdiction, and bishops do not have jurisdiction everywhere. I don’t think too many hackles would be raised by the idea that the vicar general of Kansas City-St. Joseph has more authority over certain matters within the diocese than would a visiting bishop from halfway across the world. It has to do not with authority in general but authority over a particular church. A vicar general might have authority to grant dispensations to parishes in Fall River that the metropolitan archbishop does not have the authority to grant because Fall River owes its direct obedience to a different structure.

Remember also, though, that a vicar general properly understood does not operate on his own authority but on that of the bishop. He participates in the authority of the bishop in order to lighten the load of government. Compare this to how the officials of the Roman Curia issue their official documents with papal authority. Understood in this fuller sense, the vicar general having authority over an auxiliary bishop is really just the quite obvious principle that the ordinary has authority over his auxiliaries.

 

[Brendan]

Without consulting the canons to know if your reading is totally precise, I would simply submit that the conclusion you reached - of a priest having greater authority in some matters than a bishop - is not all that absurd…

Exactly, a great example is that a priest in a Dycastery, such as the CDWDS, can issue liturgical instructions that are binding on Ordinaries.

What matters is Authority and to whom it is delegated.

If the Ordinary of a Diocese delegates specific authority to a priest, such as his Vicar, that priest acts in the name of the Bishop and with the same authority of the bishop.

In fact, that is the entire basis of Holy Orders, that the Authority of Christ, the High Priest has been delegated to others.