In a video recorded before his death but shown the day after he died (18 June), Cardinal Hume addressed the bishops of the United States on the responsibility of being a bishop today. The video was played in Tucson, Arizona, during a retreat-style assembly of the bishops. It showed the Cardinal expressing his characteristic balance between left and right in the Church, though he is surprisingly frank about his feelings of annoyance, particularly in dealing with the Roman Curia.

Hume vividly described a typical morning’s postbag, which might include a "vitriolic attack on a parish priest because he has reordered the sanctuary", and an "equally angry" letter from a woman who wants to be a priest. ("I ask myself whether it is ever sensible to stifle debate in the Church", but "I have no problem with what the Holy Father has said about the ordination of women, I accept his authority obediently".) There might also be a letter objecting strongly to the eucharistic norms in the One Bread One Body document of the British and Irish bishops, and a five-page epistle accusing him of not being sufficiently docile to the directives of the Holy See and ending, "Copied to Cardinal Ratzinger".

Then there might be a Vatican summons to a plenary session of one of the Vatican congregations, which caused him "considerable irritation, to say the least", and a letter from the nuncio enclosing a complaint from one of the same congregations. This made Hume feel "I was a naughty schoolboy caught doing something unacceptable".

Besieged by letters of this sort, a bishop was constantly urged, said Hume, to "drive out of the Church this lot or that lot". But "if you drive a person out of the Church, you have taken a very grave responsibility on yourself". The Gospel teaches that "the wheat and the tares must grow together".

Hume referred frequently to John Paul II’s letter on episcopal conferences (see The Tablet, 1 August 1998), interpreting what many saw as a negative and restricting document rather as a positive charter for bishops’ responsibility. The document "seems to indicate, to me at any rate, that the conference of bishops is more than the sum total of the individual bishops and something less than the college of bishops". He put a positive spin on the instruction that "doctrinal declarations by episcopal conferences can be published without any intervention from the authorities in Rome, if they are approved unanimously".

He expressed some strong criticisms of the Roman Curia, though he also said they had often given "help and support": "Some of us would have been surprised by the form and tone of some letters from curial offices. There are concerns about the manner of some episcopal appointments and the length of time taken to make them. Not all appointments have been satisfactory. There is often unease about the way in which theologians and their writings have been investigated. There can be a sense of frustration at not having been consulted on issues which are important to us as local bishops."

Cardinal Hume expressed great "esteem for and dedication to" John Paul, and said that "his personal interest and support of us as individual bishops have been an outstanding feature of his pontificate". But he asked if the Curia always acted "with his acknowledgement and agreement". To overcome the danger of an imbalance of power, he advocated a suggestion also made by Cardinal König: "It would be good if the Pope were to call together all the presidents of the conferences of the world every two years or so, so that he could hear directly their collective advice."

Hume also suggested: "Would it not be sensible to lower the age when we are expected to retire? And would there not be merit in standing down after, say, 15 years as a diocesan bishop?"

Hume gave a boost to the concept of "subsidiarity" (which, incidentally, a recent Synod of Bishops was told not to use because it was allegedly not a theological term). Hume said "we have authority" to use the term "in the context of ecclesiology", because Pius XII had done so in 1946, and the 1983 Code of Canon Law had also done so. "The principle of subsidiarity", he said, "is a warning against a centralising tendency."

 The Tablet

London