Cardinal Ouellet on lay people in positions of authority in Roman Curia

By Cardinal Marc Ouellet

Among Pope Francis’ bold decisions was the appointment of lay people and nuns to positions of authority usually reserved for ordained ministers, bishops or cardinals in the Dicasteries of the Roman Curia. The Pope justified this innovation by the synodal principle, which calls for greater participation of the faithful in the communion and mission of the Church.

However, this initiative runs counter to the ancestral custom of entrusting positions of authority to ordained ministers. This custom can certainly be confirmed by the Second Vatican Council, which defined the sacramentality of the episcopate (LG 21). Hence the unease about a papal decision that is respected but perhaps considered temporary. So much so that, at the dawn of the new pontificate, some would like to see the close link between the ordained ministry and the function of governing the Church reaffirmed.

This is obviously not a question of calling into question the decisive doctrinal advance of the Council, which recognised that the episcopate was a specific degree of the Sacrament of Holy Orders to which the functions of teaching, sanctifying and governing (tria munera) were necessarily linked. But this does not mean that the sacrament of Holy Orders is the exclusive source of all government in the Church.

I will briefly reiterate here the reflection that this papal decision forced me to make when the Constitution Praedicate Evangelium on the reform of the Roman Curia was published. The canonical justification that was presented when this Constitution was introduced did not meet with general approval, because it seemed to resolve a centuries-old controversy in a voluntaristic or arbitrary manner, by adopting a school position that the Pope had taken to the detriment of prior dialogue with theologians and canonists.

I have proposed a theological interpretation of this decision by the Supreme Pontiff that goes beyond the canonical positions in dispute regarding the origin and distinction between the power of Order and the power of jurisdiction in the Church. It is set out in the article I published on 21 July 2022 in L’Osservatore Romano, which was further developed along the same lines in my book Word, Sacrament, Charism. The Risks and Opportunities of a Synodal Church (San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 2025). Following this reflection, I devoted a great deal of energy to meditating on the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the Church, and more specifically between the Holy Spirit, the seven sacraments and the sacramentality of the Church as a whole.

Specialists recognise that our sacramental theology suffers from a pneumatological deficit that goes hand in hand with a one-sided Christological vision. While it is true that the seven sacraments are acts of Christ, they are also acts of the Church resulting from the action of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit always accompanies the sacramental acts of the risen Christ in order to build up the Church as Sacrament, as mentioned by the Second Vatican Council in the first paragraph of the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium. Moreover, the action of the Holy Spirit goes beyond the sacraments and manifests itself freely in the charisms and ministries that the Council has happily revalued after centuries of mistrust and underdevelopment.

This conciliar orientation therefore presupposes a renewed attention to the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in the service of the communion and mission of the Church. Let us recognise, however, that we are not very skilled at discerning his presence and action, because we have learned to speak of grace in anthropological terms, without naming the divine Person who configures the effects of the Paschal mystery in souls and in the structures of the Church. This divine Person is the Holy Spirit who comes from the Father through the mediation of the risen Christ, a Gift-Communion of which the Church is the fruit and the sacrament. We are still working to think about the sacramentality of the Church as a whole, as a divine-human communion that makes present the mystery of Trinitarian communion. This communion seems difficult for us to define and specify in terms of its content. And yet the seven sacraments exist precisely to articulate this ecclesial communion so that it may be meaningful and attractive, thus making the Church more missionary and relevant in society.

Is this reference to the Holy Spirit, the architect of ecclesial communion, relevant to the ministry of government in the Church? Is it not enough to have Jesus' promises to his apostles in the Gospel, which guarantee their authority and assure them of his permanent presence? What additional meaning or effectiveness does the Holy Spirit bring to the sacramentality of the Church? Is his role not limited to that of assistant to the risen Christ, who remains the central actor in the entire sacramental order? But how, then, can we highlight the link between the Eucharist and the Church, which is the key to ecclesial communion and the driving force behind its missionary expansion? These questions show that there is still uncharted territory to explore in order to shed further light on Pope Francis’ prophetic gesture. He discerns the authority of the Holy Spirit at work beyond the link established between the ordained ministry and the government of the Church. There is no question of substituting charismatic governance for hierarchical government.

However, according to the orientation already enshrined in canon law (Can. 129, §2), ordained ministers must be able to count on people endowed with charisms, who are recognised as such and integrated without reservation into the administrative, juridical and pastoral apparatus of the Roman Curia. This does not mean entrusting them with tasks that are strictly sacramental in the Christological sense, but rather integrating their charisms into the service of the Holy Spirit, who presides over the communion of the Church in all its expressions. That the Dicasteries dedicated to communication, the general government of the Vatican City State, the promotion of integral human development, life, the family and the laity, the promotion of religious charisms or societies of apostolic life, be directed by competent persons, lay or religious, with a charism recognised by the supreme authority, does not detract from the value of their service because of a lack of holy Order.

The charisms of the Holy Spirit have their own weight of authority in areas where sacramental ordination is not necessary, where it may even be appropriate for competence to be of another order; for example, in human resource management, the administration of justice, cultural and political discernment, financial administration, and ecumenical dialogue. In all these areas, mentioned by way of example, one can imagine a collaboration between clerics, lay people and religious in which the subordinate position of the ordained minister would not be inappropriate or questionable.

The historical experience of the Church shows that the tradition of large religious orders and various forms of consecrated or apostolic life presupposes internal governance within the charism, once it has been officially recognised and approved by hierarchical authority. A chaplain to religious sisters, for example, cannot assume the right to impose his views on those in charge of the community he assists. Pastoral ministry cannot replace the authority of charism. When the Pope appoints a woman to head a Dicastery, he is not delegating his jurisdiction to any subject; he is entrusting a person recognised as competent at a certain level of ecclesial experience, by virtue of a charism, with a higher responsibility that remains framed and guaranteed by the Holy Father's overarching jurisdiction over the Roman Curia.

The canonical approach does not seem inclined to consider the Holy Spirit as anything other than the overall guarantor of the Institution; it seems to lack the means to discern the signs of the Spirit, his personal and communal motions, the particular charisms with which he endows the members of the Body of Christ, for lack of a pneumatology which has been replaced either by a certain historical positivism or by a sui generis parallel with civil law, as is the case with the 1983 Code, which ignores the word charism and speaks of it only in terms of patrimony.

Dialogue between canonists and theologians must be renewed in the light of pneumatology, so that a “law of grace” can flourish peacefully to the point of allowing charismatic lay people and religious to be freely integrated into positions of authority in the Roman Curia and in diocesan administrations. This is already the case in many places, and not only because of a shortage of clergy.

A temporary concession to be reviewed or an ecclesiological advance? I have no doubt that Pope Francis’ gesture is promising for the future, as it marks the beginning of recognition of the authority of charisms by hierarchical authority, in accordance with the guidelines of the Council, which invites pastors to “recognise in them (the laity) their ministries and charisms, so that all may cooperate to the best of their ability and with one heart in the common work”. (LG 30, 33)

This will contribute in particular to restoring the image of pastoral authority, which has been discredited by the scourge of clericalism, caste mentality, the safeguarding of privileges, the ambition to climb the hierarchy, in short, a closed mentality that conceives of governing ministry in terms of power and is reluctant to valuing charisms according to their own degree of authority.

For, as the Council affirms, it is necessary that all of us, “practice the truth in love, and so grow up in all things in Him who is head, Christ. For from Him the whole body, being closely joined and knit together through every joint of the system, according to the functioning in due measure of each single part, derives its increase to the building up of itself in love (Ep 4:15-16)”. (LG 30)