Who rules?

On Q. 161 of
the Catechism .

According to this, the bishop has authority, inter alia, to rule the faithful. The answer does not indicate any limits on the scope of this authority, except that it must be exercised in subjection to the Pope, and in accordance with the laws of the Church. It seems to me that this has caused a lot of trouble.

The logic behind this goes back to Q.138.

The relevant Articles of our Constitution run as follows:

Article 5.
Ireland is a sovereign, independent, democratic state.

Article 6.
1. All powers of government, legislative, executive and judicial, derive, under God, from the people, whose right it is to designate the rulers of the state and, in final appeal, to decide all questions of national policy, according to the requirements of the common good.
2. These powers of government are exercisable only by or on the authority of the organs of State established by this Constitution.

There has been some criticism lately that our constitution does not say that the state is a republic, but in fact it does better: 'republic' is only a word, but Article 6 spells it out. God's sovereignty is acknowledged, but it is quite clear that there is only one way God can influence our policy: through the people. Moreover, the bishops are not organs of state established by the constitution, so they don't get to rule, or decide on national policy, or exercise any powers of government.

Unfortunately, I'm afraid that since the days of the emperor Constantine, the clerical hierarchy has lusted after temporal power, and as a result the failure to be explicit about the limits of clerical power was deliberate, not careless. It ought to be spelled out explicitly. I note that in Pope Benedict's pastoral letter of the 19th of March, he says only one thing relevant to this concern of mine, and he says it not in the section addressed to people like me, but in section 11, addressed to the bishops. He gives a direct order:

Besides fully implementing the norms of canon law in addressing cases of child abuse, continue to cooperate with the civil authorities in their area of competence.

This certainly recognises the existence of an area of competence, but we need completely explicit recognition of the sovereign competence of civil society in the appropriate areas (those specified in Article 6). We seem to be getting this recognition from individual bishops, but it should come from the Church as a whole, and be addressed to all people, and it should be repeated on occasions like this.