Daily Reflection

According to Canon Law as at present in force, an ecumenical council is an assembly of bishops and other specified persons invested with jurisdiction, convoked by the Pope and presided over by him, for the purpose of formulating decisions on questions of the Christian faith or ecclesiastical discipline.  These decisions on questions, however, require papal confirmation. It is also “a solemn assembly of the bishops of the whole world, convened by the Pope and subject to his authority and guidance, for the purpose of discussing together matters that concern the whole Church and promulgating appropriate legislation.”  The persons entitled to take part in such an assembly are the cardinals (even if they have not received Episcopal consecration), the patriarchs, archbishops, and bishops, titular bishops included (the latter, however, only if they have been expressly mentioned in the convocation), the abbot primate and the abbots general of the monastic congregations, the superiors general of the exempt Orders and such abbots and prelates as exercise jurisdiction over a district of their own. The right of participation is vested in the person; delegation is permissible but does not entitle the proxy to a plural vote. With the consent of the leaders of the assembly, individual members may make proposals for the conciliar agenda. The ecumenical council wields supreme authority over the Universal Church.
Distinct from ecumenical councils are the provincial councils of the bishops of a particular ecclesiastical province and are presided over by their metropolitan and plenary councils which embrace more than one ecclesiastical province and are presided over by a papal legate. Diocesan synods convened by local bishops are not councils in the strict sense of the word because in them the bishop is the sole legislator. While provincial councils are connected with the ancient ecclesiastical institution of metropolitans, the plenary councils include the bishops of several ecclesiastical provinces of a whole country, or of a group of territories in which coordination of missionary and pastoral activities seems desirable. It is often thought that ecumenical councils are those which unite the totality of the episcopate of the inhabited world. But this condition was not even fulfilled at the Vatican Council, and there have been ecumenical councils in which by no means every ecclesiastical province was represented. It must be above all be stated that our conception of the ecumenical council has nothing in common with what today is known as “the ecumenical movement”; all that the term implies is that a substantial portion of the episcopate of the world was present at these assemblies and that their decisions were accepted by the universal Church and confirmed by the Pope.