Democracy is a modern ideal, still fighting for acceptance in some parts of the world. It has had to be fought for by brave advocates. The church by contrast is an ancient pre-democratic institution, which shows in its hierarchical organisation and undemocratic internal processes.
Yet now Archbishop Mark Coleridge, Archbishop of Brisbane and President of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, insists that the days of monarchical and autocratic leadership in the church must be consigned to the past. Co-responsibility and synodality, alternative ideas expressed in distinctive church language, are the suggested way forward. But the democratic ideal of equal participation by all members of a society still has much to offer the church.
The hierarchical church’s aversion to democracy is shown in the way the term is used in ecclesiastical discussion. A clear example came in the recent announcement of Pope Francis’ declaration of new world-wide diocesan synods in the lead up to the 2023 Synod of Bishops on the theme of synodality. Quick as a flash this announcement was followed by an instinctive insistence by the Secretaries of the Synod of Bishops that these new processes were not to be mistaken for democracy or populism. Even by linking democracy and populism in the same breath the church betrayed its confusion of a virtuous model of community organisation with its dysfunctional abuse. The instinctive reaction against democracy treats it as a virus which the church must strenuously avoid.
This is to its own cost. Democracy has many virtues. Its principles and processes incorporate equal representation in assemblies and parliaments while guarding against both the abuse of executive power and the danger of the misuse of majority parliamentary power. The latter is done by the incorporation of democratic checks and balances.
There is already a strictly limited form of democracy within the church, though top-down appointment is the norm. Some leaders, including popes, presidents of bishops’ conferences and congregational leaders, are chosen by a vote. Even a limited number of members of the 2021 Plenary Council, including leaders of religious institutes, were chosen by their peers.
But at the basic level of democratic principles the church continues to fall short by embracing its traditional hierarchy and by failing to ensure equal representation of the People of God in the life of the church, including in its decision-making processes. The Plenary Council fails to adequately represent lay Catholics, although they make up the vast majority of church members.
'The