Conciliarism and Other Dormant Traditions

Abstract

Abstract This chapter reviews the development of lesser-known traditions in Catholicism. One is conciliarism, a movement promoting collegiality between the papacy and bishops, that virtually disappeared with the Counter-Reformation. Another goes under the label “corporatism” or “trusteeism.” This is a system of low-key collaboration between laity and priests in the management of the finances and other “temporalities.” In modern times the practice shows up prominently in the administration and fund-raising operations for the church's ministries in health care and higher education. Still another tradition, common though all but nameless, is a culture that prizes discretion, deception, and behind-the-scenes wheeling-and-dealing in the everyday activities of the church. This practice, crystallized by the seventeenth-century Spanish Jesuit Baltasar Gracián, has bequeathed a legacy of surreptitious individualism that discourages collective action in the internal politics of the church.