Of the many contested reforms of Vatican II, one of the most incendiary was collegiality. This was how the Church had governed itself in the early centuries.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Church mapped itself onto the existing administrative structures of the Empire, including the imperial red shoes, and not only arrogated to itself the imperial modus operandi but eventually, over time, dispensed with collegial governance.

Not only that, but the first preparatory document on Church of Vatican II equated ecclesial authority with divine authority. To resist Church authority was to resist God’s authority.

A document hidden

Justice in the World is a document that was promulgated in 1971 by the second world Synod of Bishops acting collegially. The document clearly states in the introduction that “action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of preaching of the Gospel.”

This wording was voted upon and accepted without query by the Synod.

However, by the time of the Synod of Bishops in 1974, the word “constitutive” was being disputed and explained away as actually meaning “integral,” but this meaning was not accepted by many of those involved in the drafting of the document.

The vanishing word

In subsequent documents various forms of words were used to describe the Church’s relationship to justice, highlighting its importance, but the word “constitutive” was never again applied to the Church in the context of justice. It was applied in various documents to evangelisation, to charity, to canon law and even to the male-only diaconate, but never to justice.

Did the word “constitutive,” and what it called the Church magisterium to be, cause this document to fade away into almost complete obscurity and become difficult to find, even on the internet?

It is now on the Vatican website, but only since 2023/24 and only in Portuguese. I know of only one other document that has been kept off the Vatican website: the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s report on women’s ordination, which stated that there are no arguments for or against women’s ordination to the priesthood to be made from scripture.

Justice begins at home

Justice in the World is also the only document that states that the Church “recognises that anyone who ventures to speak to people about justice must first be just in their eyes. Hence, we must undertake an examination of the modes of acting and of possessions and life style found within the Church itself.”

Defeat from victory

Yes, just imagine the kind of Church we could have had by now if this objective had been taken to heart. But, as the catalogue of lost opportunities shows, our Church leadership has an unerring ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

• Angela Hanley studied theology as a mature student, graduating in 2010. In 2015 she completed a research MA on Catholic same-sex relationships. She is currently undertaking PhD studies. She has published many articles and two books, Whose a la Carte Menu?: Exploring Catholic Themes in Context and What happened to Fr Sean Fagan?