The Roman Curia at and after Vatican II: Legal-Rational or Theological Reform?

Surely technical issues advance the need to rethink the structures of the Catholic Church’s central government in Rome. But the real macro issue is the role of Vatican II and its ecclesiology for the reform of church structures. Francis’s pontificate seems to be, on many levels, a return to the intent of Vatican II. The challenge is to choose the inspiring criterion that should inform the reform. In the first post-Vatican II period the criterion had been mostly a Weberian “legal-rational” rearrangement of the dicasteries and their procedures, leaving the ecclesiology of Vatican II as an ex-post-justification of the new architecture.