One Catholic, one vote?

Want to vote in this election? Every fourth year, coinciding with Leap Year, this nation has the opportunity to trot off to the polls to elect a president. Less than half of all people eligible to vote now do so. And those of us who do vote are casting ballots for electoral college delegates, not the candidate directly, an oddity of the American political process.

The hubbub of this presidential campaign season--debates about debates, positive ads, negative ads, and even the mention of God--got me thinking about days of yore when bishops were elected by the local people rather than appointed by the distant authority in the Roman Catholic church.

Historians tell us that the election of bishops was the modus operandi of Catholicism for nearly half of its now almost 2,000-year history. After a local community elected their bishop, at least one other bishop confirmed the results of elective designation by the "laying on of hands."

As clergy grew in power, the voice of the laity, manifested through elections, gradually became muted. Priests began to control the process of picking bishops. The laity's role diminished into rubber-stamping the episcopal candidate already selected by the clergy. Eventually bishops asserted the privilege of choosing their colleagues, shunting aside the priests. And finally, the bishops themselves lost their voting rights when the papacy took over all control.

What might the election of bishops by the whole People of God do for contemporary U.S. Catholicism? I doubt that ecclesial parties would start holding conventions and generating platforms like in our political sector, and I would hope that no episcopal campaigns costing megamillions would evolve. Might a prospective bishop candidate know enough not to utter an anatomical comment in front of an open mike?

These may be fun fantasies to spin, but there are serious reasons to consider having bishops elected by the people.

Raymond E. Goedert, who became a bishop in 1991, once wrote: "Having a voice in the selection of bishops will not guarantee, any more than it does in the civil order, that the best men will always be chosen. But it will release some of the sense of frustration that now prevails when Catholics--accustomed to the right to vote as a minimum means of expressing their political nature--are denied analogous rights in the church. It is to be hoped that the situation will change for the better, as more and more clergy, religious, and laity are reintegrated into the electoral process whereby their leaders are chosen."

Bishop Goedert wrote these words in 1971. Since then, unless I've missed it, nothing has been done to "release some of the sense of frustration" this bishop noted. His hope, that things would change for the better by reintegrating all the People of God into the process by which their leaders are chosen, seems even more distant 29 years later.

Want to vote in this election?

PETER GILMOUR ([e-mail]) teaches at the Institute of Pastoral Studies of Loyola University Chicago.