WASHINGTON — When Pope Francis promulgated his long-awaited reform of the Roman Curia, Praedicate Evangelium, in March of this year, a number of U.S. canonists were stunned by a passage in the apostolic constitution that appeared to dismiss the Second Vatican Council’s affirmation of the relationship between Church governance and holy orders.

Lumen Gentium, the dogmatic constitution of the Church, proclaims that “episcopal consecration, together with the office of sanctifying, also confers the office of teaching and of governing … exercised only in hierarchical communion with the head and the members of the college.” Many canonists have long understood this to mean that the law requires offices of Church governance to be led by bishops.

However, the new apostolic constitution states that “any member of the faithful” could lead a dicastery if the pope granted them that authority. This assertion is modified by additional language noting that qualifications for high Church office also depend “on the power of governance and the specific competence and function of the Dicastery or Office in question.”

Some speculated that the recent reforms’ allowance for lay Catholics to serve as prefects of dicasteries could soon give non-clergy the power to reverse the decisions of a local bishop, upending the principle of sacramental hierarchy. Others feared that such a change would challenge conciliar teachings that promoted the decentralization of Church authority with unpredictable consequences. ...