The two articles published by Silere non possum in recent hours have approached the same question from different perspectives. The firstexamined the basis of Petrine primacy and the understanding of vicarious power that has received particularly explicit expression in Praedicate Evangelium, including through the interpretation put forward in recent years by Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda. The second considered the diocesan bishop, who under canon 381 has ‘all ordinary, proper, and immediate power’ required for the exercise of his pastoral office, except in those cases which the law or the Roman Pontiff reserves to another authority.
The difficulty becomes apparent when those two statements are considered in practice. The bishop exercises proper and immediate power within the diocese; the institutions of the Roman Curia can intervene in the same sphere by exercising power received from the Pontiff. The question, then, is how much effective scope remains for episcopal power when more and more matters are reserved to Rome and the vicarious authority of the centre has more incisive instruments at its disposal than the local pastor. Ghislain Lafont had raised the question long before the present reform of the Curia.
