Plenary council

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^[1] 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,^[2] 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 a 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^[3] 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.