I am often amused by my Protestant friends when they, with great excitement and intrigue, say, “Have you heard what the Pope said?” to which, after hearing them out, respond, “I think you care more about the papacy than I do.” Upon hearing this, their faces betray a kind of perplexed, vacant, slack-jawed bewilderment, as though they had been struck by a sudden and incomprehensible revelation, to which they were struggling valiantly to make sense of without much success. For a Catholic papal primacy is vital, but not absolute.
Biblical Basis
The biblical basis for papal primacy is grounded in the Davidic kingdom. King David and his successors ruled with the assistance of twelve other ministers (cf. 1 Kings 4:1ff). One of the twelve was a prime minister who would rule in the absence of the king (cf. Isaiah 22:19–23) and held the king’s authority, symbolized by the keys of the kingdom of David. He was to be called the father of the people of Judah and would become like a peg driven into a firm place; a throne upon which the honor of the house would rest (cf. Is 22:23). This is the Old Testament context for understanding the office of St. Peter found in Matthew 16:18–19, where Jesus builds his Church upon the rock, which is Peter, giving him the keys of the kingdom of heaven to bind and loose. However, in a few verses Peter rebukes Jesus for proclaiming the necessity of the Paschal mystery. Jesus, rather than referring to Peter as the rock upon which the Church has been built, now calls him a stumbling block and satan (cf. Matt 16:23). It is of interest that the Petrine stumbling block in Greek is σκάνδαλον (skandalon). Peter the rock is ambiguous and has the potential of being scandalous.
This grounds our understanding of the scandal of Peter in that he has a unique and singular participation in Jesus’ own authority, which bears with it the responsibility to suffer in service as a witness to Christ. To the extent that this does not happen, it becomes particularly scandalous because the corruption of the highest is the worst (corruptio optimi pessimi). However, even though Peter may become proud or corrupt, it does not mean that he is not the pope. The potential problem that the rock may become a stumbling block does not undermine the fact that there is a rock, upon which Christ builds his Church. Yes, one may be scandalized when one reflects upon the papacy in the history of the Church and how it has been abused, but the papacy is scandalous precisely because it is a divinely instituted office built upon human frailty. This is an office, divinely instituted, and occupied by a person who is sinful and fallible. George Weigel sums up Hans Urs Von Balthasar’s distinction between office and person in the following manner:
To be pope is to take on a task that is, by precise theological definition, impossible. Like every other office in the Church, the papacy exists for the sake of holiness. The office, though, is a creature of time and space, and holiness is eternal. No one, not even a pope who is a saint, can fully satisfy the office’s demands. Yet the office, according to the Church’s faith, is of the will of God, and the office cannot fail, although the officeholder will always fall short of the mark. That distinction between the office and the man who holds it is a consolation to any pope. According to Balthasar, it is also “unutterably terrible.” The office reflects the unity of person and mission in Jesus Christ, of whom the pope is vicar. Every pope, the saints as well as the scoundrels, “stands at an utterly tragic place,” because he cannot be fully what the office demands. If he tries to be that, he arrogantly makes himself the equal of the Lord. If he consoles himself too easily with the thought that he must, necessarily, fail, he betrays the demand that the office makes of him, the demand of radical love. The Office of Peter always reflects Christ’s words to Peter “that, because of the depth of his love, he will be led where he does not want to go” (John 21:18).1
And so we come upon a tension-filled polarity, as opposed to an abstruse contradiction, between the person and the office. However, the question remains as to what papal primacy looks like. How ought this “impossible task” be played out?
Collegiality
The First Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ, Pastor Aeternus, from Vatican I, asserts the primacy of Peter and his successors visible in the Bishop of Rome.2 Joseph Ratzinger comments that
First, it is the certain teaching of the Church that the pope has immediate, ordinary, truly episcopal power of jurisdiction over the whole Church.… The [First] Vatican Council calls the primacy of the pope the apostolic primacy, and the Roman See the apostolic see.… Thus in the realm of doctrine the pope, in his official capacity, is infallible, his ex-cathedra decisions being irreformably ex sese and not in virtue of the Church’s subsequent confirmation.… So far as communio is concerned, the other pillar of the Church, it follows that only he who is in communion with the pope lives in the true communio of the body of the Lord, i.e., in the true Church.3
According to Vatican I, the pope enjoys primacy, but this primacy is not absolute for it is shaped by the communioof the Church. This becomes the ground upon which the relationship between the papacy and the episcopacy is played out. If the papacy has supreme, ordinary, and immediate power over the whole church, what role remains for the rest of the episcopacy? Do all the other bishops simply act as loyal subjects of the pope? Pastor Aeternusfocuses on the issues of primacy and infallibility but does not use the language of collegiality. The Council Fathers were unable to engage in a discussion of the episcopacy because of the invasion of the papal states and the subsequent suspension of the Council. However, it is interesting to note that there is a statement which speaks of the relationship between the papacy and the episcopacy in the following pericope:
This power of the Supreme Pontiff by no means detracts from that ordinary and immediate power of episcopal jurisdiction, by which bishops, who have succeeded to the place of the apostles by appointment of the Holy Spirit (emphasis mine), tend and govern individually the particular flocks which have been assigned to them.4
It is the Holy Spirit who appoints bishops, implying that the episcopacy is not the result of a papal delegation but sacramentally instituted. The Second Vatican Council in its Decree concerning the Pastoral Office of Bishops, Christus Dominus, examined the role of the episcopacy in union with the papacy. According to the decree, the episcopal college is the successor of the Apostolic college, expresses its authority “with the supreme pontiff and under his authority,”5 and each bishop “should manifest a concern for all the churches,”6 for whom each bishop is responsible. The Decree encourages a more “catholic” approach in governance and recognizes the divinely instituted legitimacy of each individual bishop who has “all the ordinary, proper, and immediate authority which is required for the exercise of their pastoral office”7 in their given diocese.
Ratzinger comments that the phrase “‘Roman Catholic,’ expresses the dialectic of primacy and episcopacy, comprehending a wealth of relationships, in which one cannot exist without the other.”8 Put metaphorically, rather than a circle, where the pope is the absolute center with everyone oriented around him, Ratzinger proposes the image of an ellipse within which are situated the two principles of the primacy and the episcopacy. He states, “The church appears (to use Heribert Schauf’s words), not as a circle with a single center, but as an ellipse with two foci: Primacy and episcopacy.”9 These two principles come together in the person of the pope, who is the bishop of Rome. There is however, not a strict equality between the pope and the other bishops since the supreme pontiff is described as the “head of the college.”10 However, the authority of bishops is not in competition with the bishop of Rome either. Their authority is not dependent and mediated by the pope but is also divinely instituted. This is played out in the biblical witness: Jesus did not call Peter, who then called the other apostles. Jesus called each of the apostles personally and bestowed upon them his own authority.
But do the bishops then provide checks and balances upon the papacy? Can the bishops correct the pope? Collegial episcopacy qualifies papal primacy, and is intrinsically related to it, since one of the episcopoi is the pope himself. To put it more particularly, Ratzinger proposes seven limits to papal primacy:
- The pope cannot arrogate to himself the episcopal rights, nor substitute his power for that of the bishops;
- The episcopal jurisdiction has not been absorbed in the papal jurisdiction;
- The pope was not given the entire fullness of the bishops’ powers by the decrees of the [First] Vatican Council;
- The pope has not virtually taken the place of each individual bishop;
- The pope cannot put himself in the place of a bishop in each single instance, vis-à-vis governments;
- The bishops have not become instruments of the pope;
- The bishops are not officials of a foreign sovereign in their relations with their own governments.11
Another way to look at the question of papacy is to see how the alternative has played out in Protestant churches. Johann Adam Möhler states that
Protestantism is papism carried to the extreme, that is, complete egoism in principle. In Papism each gives himself unconditionally to one person: in Protestantism, each one is in a position to oppose all others (in so far as he makes of himself the principle of interpretation of revelation).12
The Code of Canon Law of 1983 expresses the theological basis of collegiality in the following manner: “Just as, by the decree of the Lord, Saint Peter and the rest of the Apostles form one College, so for a like reason the Roman Pontiff, the successor of Peter, and the bishops, the successors of the Apostles, are united together in one.”13 Thus there are two subjects of the same universal power.14 In this understanding the episcopacy is divinely instituted and thus constitutive of the Church.
Christological Constellations
To put it in more political terms, the papacy is more akin to a constitutional monarchy than an absolute monarchy. Ratzinger himself comments that “the primacy cannot be patterned on the model of an absolute monarchy as if the pope were the unrestricted monarch of a centrally constituted, supernatural State called Church.”15 This analogy, however, raises the question as to what the constitution is in an ecclesial context? What provides a scaffold to shape papal primacy? What Ratzinger calls communio, Balthasar calls Christological Constellations, which are grounded in Scripture and Tradition. Balthasar comments,
As shepherd who has to pasture the whole flock, he [the pope] has a right to claim authority (in doctrine and leadership) and to demand unity. This prerogative is his alone. But it does not isolate him from the others who have founding missions and who, in their own way, have no less a continuing life and representation in the Church.16
What Balthasar is hinting at is that various missions within the Church go on to make up a tension-filled unity… a communion. He refers to the Church as a “multi-dimensional reality”17 and refers to the “force-fields that bear upon the Church”18 as well as the “network of tensions in the Church.”19 His vision of the Church is based upon the relationships that Jesus Christ formed with different people, endowing them with different missions that are constitutive of the Church. The problem for us with the papacy today is that we, with our postmodern lenses, tend to view the Church through the prism of power, and thus relegate all other ministries as unimportant or see them as conflicting with the Petrine principle or primacy. However, for Balthasar, it is not the Petrine principle (primacy-governance) which is fundamental but the Marian principle (lay holiness), which is the orienting goal for primacy. Primacy exists for the sake of ecclesial unity, authority for the sake of service. Balthasar states that “what Peter will receive as ‘infallibility’ for his office of governing will be a partial share in the total flawlessness of the feminine, Marian Church.”20
In 1988, in an essay to honor Pope John Paul II, Hans Urs Von Balthasar said the following:
The Successor of Peter, who as the Bishop of Rome has to care for the unity of the visible Church, intrinsically refers to this Marian principle of Church unity as Bride of Christ; the two ecclesial principles—both of them expressly assigned to their role by Christ himself—are inseparable and can be divided from each other only with very great harm to the organic unity of the Church. Mary as Mother and model of the Church cannot usurp ministerial functions any more than the papacy and any other ministerial office can perform its duties without regard for the womanliness and motherliness of the Church.21
What we need now is to remove our postmodern lenses, so as to see the whole episcopacy, along with the primacy of the papacy, as oriented toward holiness—our holiness. We need to spend more time in prayer, beseeching God that we may be granted some share and fellowship in the communion of saints. Even though it is fascinating to try to ascertain who the next pope will be (I certainly will be following the intrigue when it occurs!), from the perspective of eternal life, the most important thing is holiness. And since it helps if the pope is personally holy as well, let us pray for his holiness and ours.
(Editor’s note: This essay was published originally on the “What We Need Now” Substack and is republished here with kind permission.)
Endnotes:
1 George Weigel, “The Unique Impossibility of the Papacy,” First Things, March 6, 2013, accessed January 11, 2025.
2 Vatican Council I, Pastor Aeternus, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ, 1–3.
3 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, God’s Word (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2014), 15.
4 Vatican Council I, Pastor Aeternus, 5.
5 Vatican II Council, Christus Dominus, Decree concerning the Pastoral Office of Bishops, in Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, ed. A. Flannery (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1975), 2.
6 Ibid., 6.
7 Ibid., 8.
8 Ratzinger, God’s Word, 38.
9 Ibid., 19.
10 Catholic Church, Code of Canon Law Annotated, n. 330.
11 Ratzinger, God’s Word, 17.
12 Johann Adam Möhler, Symbolik, Volume 2 (Cologne and Olten: Hegner, 1958), 698, quoted and translated in von Balthasar, The Office of Peter and the Structure of the Church, 172.
13 Catholic Church, Code of Canon Law Annotated, n. 330.
14 Ibid., n. 336.
15 Joseph Ratzinger, “The Pastoral Implications of Episcopal Collegiality,” in Concilium, vol. 1: The Church and Mankind (Glen Rock, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1965), 51.
16 Hans Urs Von Balthasar, The Office of Peter and the Structure of the Church, translated by Andrée Emery (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1986), 158.
17 Ibid., 26.
18 Ibid., 22.
19 Ibid., 24.
20 Ibid., 167.
21 Hans Urs Von Balthasar, “A Pontificate under the Banner of Mary: Hans Urs von Balthasar on Pope Saint John Paul II,” Catholic World Report, October 22, 2021, accessed January 11, 2025.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
Several years ago, shortly after the current pontiff declared in an interview that he favored civil unions, though not matrimony, for same-sex couples, I too got the question “Did you hear what your pope said?” from a non-Catholic acquaintance. I told him that a pope can’t change Church doctrine. The gentleman looked at me with a puzzled expression and asked, “What do you mean?” I told him I meant just that — a pope can’t change Church doctrine. Like everyone, he’s entitled to his opinions, but a pope’s opinions are just that: opinions. I went on to say that Francis wasn’t asking my advice, but if he did, I’d tell him that when his opinions fly in the face of 2000 years of consistent Church teaching, as well as several millennia more of Biblical teaching, he’d do well to keep them to himself. My acquaintance was apparently under the impression that anything a pope said was therby Church teaching. I trust I set him straight.
After a decade, the unavoidable conclusion of this papacy is that Pope Francis disagrees with you. Pope Francis is papism carried to the extreme, that is, complete egoism in principle. He obviously considers the Church to be a circle with himself the single center. Take Ratzinger’s 7 limits of papal primacy. He has trampled each of these, a College for one.
The only limit on Pope Francis was a living Pope Emeritus Benedict. Once he died, Pope Francis set out to completely disregard anything or anyone who dared get in the way of his ideological agenda. Virtually all of our Bishops have been reduced to compliant sycophants or silence.
How can we seek personal holiness without saying the Truth of Christ? If a member of the hierarchy cannot say the truth about the abuses of this papacy without becoming another victim, I say them here as an anonymous fool. 🤐
Well said Anonymous Fool, well said. Under Francis the power exercised by the papacy has indeed become despotic in every sense. The entire college of bishops have become his meek and frightened underlings with very few notable exceptions. He has transformed the papacy and its machinery into a ruthless clique. Look at the way he ‘disciplines’ any bishop who he deems to be his enemy. Joseph Strickland comes to mind. Look at the way he crushes and ridicules Catholics who love and value Tradition. His attempts to crush the TLM come to mind especially in this regard.
He is, very sadly, the living proof that the power of the papacy has been allowed to take to itself an authority it never had for the first thousand years of Christian history.
Indeed James. A bishop being silent for fear of the Vicar of Christ is not a bishop being obedient to Christ Himself. When Pope Peter made a mess, St. Paul, Apostle of Christ, would have none of it:
“But when Cephas (Peter) came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood self-condemned; for until certain people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction. And the other Jews joined him in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.” (Galatians 2:11-13)
Where’s Luther when you need him?
Bravo to you, Ken. You are right that far too many non-Catholics believe everything that drops out of a Pope’s mouth is a pearl. Would that it were so. In the last decade at least , far too much has gone off the rails in the church. Too much destruction of faith and tradition, too much of trying to turn the church into a caricature of itself and its past. The destruction of the careers of faithful churchmen, the blind eye turned toward the actions of “Catholics” who are in reality secularists, and prominent pro -abortion politicians who flaunt their supposed catholicism creating scandal, has been seen far too often. It is indeed unfortunate that non-catholics believe the rank and file Catholic must follow in lock-step behind such stuff. Bravo to those who make it clear we will not.
The author presents a knowledgeable position from well within the Church, the birds eye view while the test of the world enjoy the worm’s eye view of the Church (where the rubber meets the road). That his protestant friends care more about what the pope says than a priest is telling…a shepherd of the Church is telling members of the flock lost in the wilderness that he cares not. Perhaps he says the same to those within his flock then wonders why they are meandering to the edges of the wilderness. Something is terribly amiss in the Church. Where do we go from here? Only to God, only to God!
corruptio optimi pessima, not pessimi
Protestants often see fixated on the Pope. They seem to think that the Pope issues a daily “to do” list to each Bishop, proving marching orders to every Bishop, every day.
Protestants often think that every thing the Pope says is ex cathedra or infallible. I remember Pope Benedict saying that we must agree on official doctrine, but not everything is official doctrine. Thus there is disagreement.
Speaking ex cathedra should be used sparingly. It was not intended to settle petty squabbles.
“The office, though, is a creature of time and space, and holiness is eternal. No one, not even a pope who is a saint, can fully satisfy the office’s demands” (von Balthasar quoted by Fr Stirrat).
Fr Stirrat is excellent on the end of the office to achieve Holiness among the faithful, the collegial dimension of bishops and Pope as one body. What is neglected in both Stirrat’s and von Balthasar’s description of the primacy is the primary office of defense of the faith, which is not found in the old testament and kingship, rather in the Word’s of Christ to Peter. That is why we have the charisma of infallibility attached exclusively to the office of supreme pontiff, which Stirrat does address.
Stirrat locates the matter historically, in transitional time referring to the Papal States and Italian Risorgimento that shelved the issue of collegiality of bishops with the Roman pontiff. Benedict VI quoted here by Stirrat defends the autonomy of bishops as successors of the Apostles rightly holding authority belonging to them rather than the Roman Pontiff. The error here as I perceive it is Stirrat’s nuance regarding authority in toto, that is, inclusive of doctrine. Stirrat adds, “Balthasar states that what Peter will receive as ‘infallibility’ for his office of governing will be a partial share in the total flawlessness of the feminine, Marian Church”. Hans von Balthasar was deeply influenced by a woman alleged to be a mystic [some say soothsayer] Adrienne von Speyr. It’s true that the Church is the bride of Christ. Nevertheless, the Church is first and foremost the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ.
When I say error here I refer rather to what is likely oversight.
In the good old days, it was easy to believe as a lay Catholic that you were in communion with the Pope and the bishops since the clergy kept to the straight path of teaching and preaching the perennial magesteruim. Those days are gone. With so many clergy stating their opinions that contradict what has always been believed, it’s no wonder so many Catholics either leave or just close their eyes and muddle through.
Hi Nick,
I agree with you in that I think the Pope/Bishops could do a better job, but I think the mindset of the laity waiting to be told what to think/do by the clerics is a far bigger problem.
Since the laity are just as much a part of the body of Christ as the clergy, they need to have the mindset that they will lead themselves and those in their charge regardless of what the Popes/Bishops are doing. There is a reason that Jesus told us that we are all brothers and to call no man master/father/rabbi. https://bible.usccb.org/bible/matthew/23 That should be part of all of our discussions about the Papacy and Church roles.
See my post below.
Hi Fred, thank you for your response. I too agree that the laity should not just sit in the pews like baby chics waiting to be fed. My concern is the lack of spiritual leadership from the senior levels of the clergy, including the pope. All one has to do is compare the clear and unambiguous language of the cathecism of Trent to the word salad that passes as magesteruim in recent years to see the problems.
Vatican II did away with The Charitable Anathema, making it appear as if it is charitable to make it appear as if one’s Catholic Faith and Morals are merely a matter of one’s opinion , making it appear as if a Catholic conscious can serve in opposition to The Word Of God Incarnate, and still be, in essence, Catholic, which is certainly a great deception, and a rupture from The Word Of Perfect Love Incarnate, Our Only Savior, Jesus The Christ.
“You cannot be My Disciples, if you do not abide in MY Word.”- Christ’s Charitable Anathema
You see it that way because you do not read VATICAN II in light of Christ whether it has to do with charitable or anathema or not.
Why would anyone of whatever stripe read VATICAN II and find complexity and contradiction in it or for overlaying it with them.
Christ, Himself, Instituted The Charitable Anathema. It is a Dogma of The Catholic Church to anathema , out of both Charity and Mercy, heresy and heretics who deny The Word Of God Is Who He Is, Our Only Savior, Jesus The Christ. The Vatican II documents serve as a source of confusion not because the subject matter is complex but because there are sentences within some of the documents that are contradictory. The Charitable Anathema and The Medicine Of Mercy are both ordered to The Word Of God , Jesus The Christ. The Church does not have the authority to deny The Charitable Anathema and The Medicine Of Mercy to heretics or anathema heresy, in fact The Catholic Church must remain Faithful to The Deposit Of Faith.
“At the heart of Liberty Is Christ, “4For it is impossible for those who were once illuminated, have tasted also the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, 5Have moreover tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come…”, to not believe that Christ’s Sacrifice On The Cross will lead us to Salvation, but we must desire forgiveness for our sins, and accept Salvational Love, God’s Gift Of Grace And Mercy; believe in The Power And The Glory Of Salvation Love, and rejoice in the fact that No Greater Love Is There Than This, To Desire Salvation For One’s Beloved.
“Hail The Cross, Our Only Hope.”
“Blessed are they who are Called to The Marriage Supper Of The Lamb.”
“For where your treasure is there will your heart be also.”
“Behold your Mother.” – Christ On The Cross
That should read and refuse to anathema heresy.
I do not see where in VATICAN II the charitable anathema or the medicine of mercy, is ruled out or made as heresy or are disposed to be turned so as to contradict the Deposit or Tradition or allow that.
ND you carry your arguments forcefully but they have to make better sense. I demolished them in one sentence (albeit in a bit of a run-on style).
“The gates of hell….”
Pope Francis is one of my favorite Popes!
For decades the clergy have proven to me that they are incapable of leading the Catholic Church, now Pope Francis is proving it to the rest of you guys.
The #1, most obvious, greatest, non-spiritual problem we face in the Catholic Church is that Catholics think the clergy are supposed to do everything and the laity is supposed to just sit in the pew, tithe, “pray, and obey.” (And anybody who doesn’t believe that, of course, is a Prot.)
This mindset has truly hurt us because, a) that is not the kind of mindset Jesus intended us to have, b) most clergy are not capable of leadership – and absolutely not capable of doing “everything” and, c) truly talented laymen are not laboring in the vineyard because they think that’s not their job.
This is a good article, and the author did a really good job writing it, but you could just as easily use his theology to disprove the notion of Papal Infallibility (in any circumstance) as much as prove it.
Which is good, because far too much time is spent in some circles worrying about what the Popes/Bishops are saying instead of actually doing what Jesus commanded every Christian to do.
My favorite is the Pope and Council that will correct the messy heteropraxy of this disastrous pontificate.
Fr Stirrat citing von Balthasar makes a vital point in distinguishing the person elevated to the papacy from the exercise of the office in that his actions as a person mustn’t be confused with those within his office as supreme pontiff. That we are assured when he acts as supreme pontiff ex cathedra, when definitively pronounced to the entire Church his words are without error. This is the divine gift of the Chair of Peter.
Otherwise, in his lesser actions, words he does not possess that degree of certitude called infallibility. Such is the common error today that many, too many believe every word, statement, however presumed to be official teaching, is not necessarily free from error and mustn’t be considered infallible doctrine, even if owed a degree of recognition.
I have to believe that anybody who has ANY basic, Catholic education has heard this and understands it, whether they believe it or not. The fact that there is this much ignorance among the vast majority of Catholics just proves that there has been no religious education for decades and probably longer in most parishes. Again, I think this likely falls back on the laity not taking the initiative to do what is obviously not happening in their area.
Agreed Fred, although as a priest I’m acutely aware of my responsibility to inform the laity on the issue of infallibility. While evident to you and I I’ve found it difficult at times to convince some parishioners. Part of the problem seems to be an inability to follow logical progression, a lack of intellectual training.
Besides catechesis, that relates to an educational system in the lower grades [elementary school] that dropped courses that involve thinking beyond mathematics and algebra even there our ed system has largely failed].
Re: His vision of the Church is based upon the relationships that Jesus Christ formed with different people, endowing them with different missions that are constitutive of the Church. The problem for us with the papacy today is that we, with our postmodern lenses, tend to view the Church through the prism of power, and thus relegate all other ministries as unimportant or see them as conflicting with the Petrine principle or primacy. ” I often wonder how what was formed in the time of Jesus, in the time of the early church became the aristocracy of today. I respect the position, the work, of the pope, cardinals, bishops, priests and deacons. They are all sheppards not royalty. The term “Princes of the Church” turns off a lot of people. I can’t visualize the people chosen to guide the early church wearing a miter.
A somewhat scholarly analysis of what I described, assuming you are commenting on that. I had to laugh at the miter comment, because it IS hard to imagine!
One can always find figures of the new law which abolished the old in the Old Testament. However, the analogy cited in this article is not very close. Prime Minister of Christ and Vicar of Christ are two very, very different things. To call the Pope a Prime Minister among the bishops is tantamount to regurgitating the old Primus Inter Pares mistake. The Pope is not first among equals. Bishops derived their ordinary (as opposed to sacramental) jurisdiction from the Pope, according to the traditional interpretation. Here is Pius XII in Mystici Corporis: “in exercising this office [the bishops] are not altogether independent, but are subordinate to the lawful authority of the Roman Pontiff, although enjoying the ordinary power of jurisdiction which they receive directly from the same Supreme Pontiff”.
The bishops are successors to the Apostles, but they are not the Apostles, who were uniquely inspired, and with whom Revelation closed. The Pope alone has a personal guarantee that he will not lose the faith (“I have prayed that your faith not fail”) and this was defined at Vatican I.
The confusion now surrounding ideas on the episcopate as a democratic parliament, possessing an autonomous joint jurisdiction simply regurgitates the errors of the synod of Pistoia, and the unrecognised sessions of the Council of Constance long before. Every time such ideas become popular (always under the influence of secular ideologies and forces from outside the Church), chaos ensues. Always, always, Rome, and sanity, reassert themselves. We must wait.
You have captured the essence of it, miguel cervantes.
‘ The Pope alone has a personal guarantee that he will not lose the faith (“I have prayed that your faith not fail”) and this was defined at Vatican I. ‘
Woe to the ones misinforming the Pope!
Woe to the Vicar of Christ teaching guarantees that are not in Christ!
I think most of us are displeased with aspects of the last few Popes and their pandering to secular ideologies. The answer is not for the Pope to become less Pope, but more so. The last two centuries saw the great revival of papal authority, which was used to keep at bay the ideas that are causing chaos within the Church. Paradoxically, these subversive ideas, which had always challenged Roman authority, finally got Popes who were prepared to lend them an ear, from the 1960s onwards, thereby eroding their own authority, leading to today’s situation where some conservative so-called traditionalists argue explcitely that “tradition” can be maintained in the Church only by means of Gallicanist, Conciliarist, even Jansenist frameworks. Edmond Richer, a rather awful Jansenist, first termed the Pope the “ministerial head of the Church”. I think we should avoid any such terminology.
Bear with me please miguel cervantes as I lay out what appears in the present.
It’s easy to consider and assent to those elements you outline in their abstract configuration. In some ways Pope Francis berating “religion in the abstract” is misleading since the abstract can serve as useful authentic instruction and sure guide. Whereas the situation today is far from definite and firm and in some areas constantly unfolding or changing and even reversing.
The 4 dicta in Evangelii Gaudium seem to be mixing “ministerial” and “church” and “primacy” and “papal”. Possibly making the latter 3 what they are not meant to be? These 4 notions take a “long view” and yet here we have Spadaro recommending “rapid reading and fast conclusion”. How are they reconciled?
Surely the question of primacy is not meant to dissolve all realities so that the primacy counts alone.
Presumably these things that are being floated or suggested by Spadaro are meant to be formulae for a “dicastery culture”? But if so dicasteries could be making wrong calls that affect people into positions of loss which the Pope will not be able to retrieve regardless of what was said in EG or whatever else was meant or what was overlooked; and the primacy will be ephemera. If decisions cause overrating then the Pope has to now re-score the embarrassments.
But I had already thought that the 4 EG dicta were to be the basis of the “dicastery culture”!
There isn’t even a qualifier in EG , like, the said 4 statements are conditioned by “it would depend on the particular circumstances that would need particular scrutiny”. Are we going to be heretics for not reconciling them?
The Spadaro “rapid theology” has the key to reconciling them?
Consider what Spadaro offers in his “rapid theology” as discussed here yesterday by Grondelski in his CWR essay in the link.
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2025/02/03/do-we-need-a-rapid-theology/
miguelito cervantes is a joke!
Delighted to be making you happy rather than sad.