Plenary council

rdf:langString Plenary council

rdf:langString Phillip Wilson

rdf:langString In the system, the really important gathering for the local Church is called the plenary council. The plenary council involves not just the bishops, although they are part of it, but it involves an engagement with other clergy and laypeople and it has to have a program of consultation to prepare for its action. The plenary council has the ability to make regulations and rules, so it has a legislative power, which makes it a very important part of the way in which the life of the Church operates.

rdf:langString In the Roman Catholic Church, a plenary council is any of various kinds of ecclesiastical synods, used when those summoned represent the whole number of bishops of some given territory. The word itself, derived from the Latin plenarium (complete or full), hence concilium plenarium, also concilium plenum. Plenary councils have a legislative function that does not apply to other national synods. The ecumenical councils or synods are called plenary councils by Augustine of Hippo, as they form a complete representation of the entire Church. Thus also, in ecclesiastical documents, provincial councils are denominated plenary, because all the bishops of a certain ecclesiastical province were represented. Later usage has restricted the term plenary to those councils which are presided over by a delegate of the Apostolic See, who has received special power for that purpose, and which are attended by all the metropolitans and bishops of some commonwealth, empire, or kingdom, or by their duly accredited representatives. In this article, only those modern provincial councils where the ecclesiastical province covered a whole country or countries (for example, Baltimore for the United States of America or Sydney for Australasia up to the mid-nineteenth century) are discussed, since it is only those that had de facto plenary effect. Such plenary synods are frequently called national councils. Plenary councils should be distinguished from: * plenary assemblies such as those for Canada, India or Poland which are meetings of a number of bishops from some given territory but without the authorisation to be a council; * the Synod of Bishops in the Catholic Church being a meeting of bishops in the whole church instituted in 1965; and * Diocesan synods, meetings of church representatives convened by the bishop within one diocese.