Papal primacy in a reunited church

Despite substantial agreements between Rome and several major faiths, the role of the Pope remains a formidable obstacle on the ecumenical pathway.

Raoul Dederen is professor of theology at Andrews University Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary, Berrien Springs, Michigan, and an associate editor of MINISTRY.

 

Following election by the shortest conclave in modern times, Venice-based Cardinal Albino Luciani was installed on September 4 as John Paul I, 263rd Pope of Roman Catholicism's 732 million adherents worldwide. On September 28—only 25 days later—the pontiff died after one of the shortest papal reigns in church history. News reports around the world had stressed his upbeat warmth, sunny disposition, and informality. Analysts had predicted a papal rule of prudent changes combining the zest of John XXIII with the caution of Paul VI.

John Paul's successor will inherit what many leading churchmen see as the Papacy's real strength—the Pope's moral leadership as the world's most visible religious figure and the one with the largest following. Not only Roman Catholics but the entire Christian community attach significance to the role the new Pope will play in a number of major issues facing the church. Several Protestant bodies (most notably Anglicans and Lutherans) indicate a continuing interest in closer ties with Catholicism. John Paul had listed as one of his priorities the continuation of ecumenical moves initiated by Paul VI; his address to the Sacred College of Cardinals the day after his election (the only major statement of his brief rule) referred to ecumenism as a "final directive."

In the past both Roman Catholic and Protestant church leaders have found movement toward each other to be a far from simple journey. The new pontiff may find the ecumenical pathway a bit rocky too.

Papal primacy, as promulgated at the First Vatican Council in 1870, has been one of the major obstacles in the path to Christian reunion. Roman Catholics have feared that some surrendering of papal authority would be involved in any final agreement, and most non-Catholics, Protestants in particular, wonder whether the historic connotations of the Papacy are not so negative that it is unrealistic to suppose it could ever be come for them a positive symbol of unity in faithfulness to the gospel.

In recent years, though, substantial agreements have been reached on the question of papal primacy by several bilateral consultations sponsored by the Catholic Church and other churches. In 1974, for instance, the U.S. Lutheran- Roman Catholic Dialog in the United States published its Papal Primacy and the Universal Church. 1 Despite the evident care with which the consultation stated its findings, its language could not escape being striking: "The Bishop of Rome . . . who has exercised his ministry in forms that have changed significantly over the centuries . . . can in the future function in ways which are better adapted to meet both the universal and regional needs of the church in the complex environment of modern times." The report then proceeds to ask Lutherans to consider whether they are prepared to acknowledge the possibility and desirability of a papal ministry, "renewed under the gospel," in a reunited church that would include the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches. 2

A Roman Catholic-Anglican Statement

This report did not long stand alone. In 1977 the Anglican-Roman Catholic Internation Commission (ARCIC) issued a document, "Authority in the Church," which stated: "It seems appropriate that in any future union a universal primacy such as has been described should be held by that [the Roman] see." 3 The result of three years' intensive study, the document is usually referred to as the "Venice Statement" because it was at Venice, Italy, that the commission completed the final draft in late summer, 1976. As an agreed-upon statement referred by the commission to officials of their respective churches for consideration, the "Venice Statement" complements two other ARCIC documents, the "Windsor Statement" on the eucharist, and the "Canterbury Statement" on ministry. 4

This new era in Roman Catholic-Anglican relationships was inaugurated in 1960 by the visit of the Archbishop of Canterbury, then Geoffrey Fisher, to Pope John XXIII. Six years later, Arch bishop Michael Ramsey visited Pope Paul VI, and a tradition was established. Last year, Donald Coggan, Archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual leader of the world's forty-six million Anglicans, went to Rome to visit Paul VI.

During all these years the work of furthering mutual understanding has been carried on largely through the regular meetings of ARCIC, appointed in 1969 to consider major doctrinal issues on which the two communions were divided. 5 Substantial agreement has been reached by this officially appointed joint theological commission on the key doctrines of the eucharist and the ministry, as mentioned earlier. The 1977 document, "Authority in the Church," dealt with one of the most sensitive disputed questions, namely the exclusive position attributed to the pope by traditional Catholic theology.

Many regard the twenty-six article document as a milestone in the journey toward unity between the two communions. It lays out substantial areas of agreement regarding the origin of Christian authority, the role and function of bishops in general, and the historical importance of the Bishop of Rome in particular (Articles 5, 10, 11, 12). Universal primacy conceived as a service to the church and carried out in co-responsibility with all the other bishops is seen as most logically belonging to the Bishop of Rome, especially since "the only see which makes any claim to universal primacy and which has exercised such episcope is the see of Rome, the city where Peter and Paul died," remarks the document (Article 23). The pope would exercise this oversight "in order to guard and promote the faithfulness of all the churches to Christ and one another" (Article 12).

Difficulties Remain

Though the "Venice Statement" depicts a substantial area of agreement be tween Roman Catholics and Anglicans, fundamental difficulties remain. The document, for instance, concentrates on bishops. This is unavoidable since, to many Christians, Petrine functions and offices are an inevitable part of the structure of the ministry of the church. Particular offices and persons, with their unifying roles, have come to play important roles in preserving and enabling unity. One can therefore expect that to the degree the church is visibly unified, one, or at least a few, offices and persons (if not locations) will be given a preeminent role.

It is quite possible to accept this argument for primacy and yet ask "Why Rome?" in light of the often sorry history of the Papacy. True, consensus regarding authority has been reached by those who prepared the "Venice Statement," but when one moves from this principle to the particular claims of papal primacy and its exercise, additional problems arise. These difficulties can be seen in the way each side has answered four questions: 6

1. Is the New Testament basis for the primacy of the Roman see as warranted as has generally been thought in Catholic circles?7

2. Is the Papacy an institution of divine right, i.e., so very much a part of God's design for the church that a church not in communion with the Roman see is for this very reason to be regarded as less than fully a church?

3. Are the pope's dogmatic definitions to be regarded as infallible, as, for in stance, the definitions of Mary's immaculate conception and assumption?8

4. Can the structures of the local churches continue unthreatened in light of the claim that the pope possesses universal, immediate jurisdiction?9

Roman Catholic doctrine and practice have given affirmative answers. Anglicans, though not opposed to papal primacy on either historic or pragmatic grounds, have found grave difficulties in these affirmations. They prefer to see a universal primate as a primus inter pares (first among equals), more like a chair man of the board that, as the document specifies, "precludes the idea that the pope is an inspired oracle communicating fresh revelation or that he can speak independently of his fellow bishops and the church." 10

An Alarming Gap

In fact, the future of the papacy in non-Catholic thought and life depends to a great extent on its becoming positively attractive. Yet little effort has been made in the Venice document to spell out concretely what such a new vision or renewal of the Papacy 11 would involve, and how much the Papacy would have to change for the Catholic and non-Catholic sides to regard the renewal as realized.

Long before one reaches the conclusion of the document, attention is fixed on the possibility of a dangerous gap between this "renewed style" of papal primacy and current Roman practice.

The recognition that all Christians—not just the bishops—somehow share in the perception of God 'swill and the exercise of the church's authority, 12 as well as the description given of the pope's function, reads more like a pious hope than a sober account of what happens in the Catholic Church.

The statement says, for instance, that "primacy" fulfills its purpose by helping the churches "to listen to one another, to grow in love and unity, and to strive together toward the fullness of Christian life and witness; it respects and pro motes Christian freedom and spontaneity; it does not seek uniformity where diversity is legitimate, or centralize ad ministration to the detriment of local churches."13

But how about Rome's preventing Eastern-rite Catholic churches from having married priests in North America, despite the fact that insistence on this point earlier pushed thousands of Ukrainian Catholics into schism? How about the jaundiced relations between Rome and the Catholic Church in the Netherlands over the past ten years? The paper's recognition of the involvement of the whole people of God in the discovery of truth hardly fits with the way Rome has actually behaved during the dispute over the morality of birth control both before and after Humanae vitae.

An Adequate Model?

Perhaps it is unrealistic to expect more of a statement that already marks a remarkable ecumenical rapprochement, but the layman reading the report can scarcely escape the conclusion that it overestimates what happened at Vatican II and the extent to which papal primacy has been modified since. Should non- Catholics formally accept the primacy of Rome, will the system they encounter answer to such a description? On the other hand, Roman Catholics may experience no less difficulty in endorsing what must seem to many a dilution of the papal office and therefore of the principle of authority within their own church.

A position agreeable to both sides is difficult to set forth at the present time. Various models have been suggested. But only the future can determine what that adequate model would be. In any event, if papal primacy is to be retained as the most adequate expression of the Petrine office, the Roman Catholic Church will have to demonstrate the credibility of the claim that a renewed Papacy will no longer make what some have seen as unchristian or idolatrous assertions for itself in the areas of jurisdictional primacy and doctrinal infallibility. On the other side, non-Catholics who are convinced that the Roman Catholic Church has to play a role in the reconstruction of Christian unity will have to be open to the possibility that, for the sake of unity, the next age of a reunited Christian church may very well belong to a "renewed papacy."

A More Appealing Approach?

If I am not mistaken, this line of reasoning is at present persuasive and appealing only to a minority of Christians. Most Anglicans and other Protestants, for instance, would prefer an ecumenically united church held together by conciliar ties in which the role of the Papacy, if possible, would be limited to the Roman Catholic communion. Most seem interested in the Papacy in order to help Catholics and to remove barriers rather than because they think that the reunited church really needs it. The majority of those convinced of the importance of a stronger common structure of government and communication generally doubt the usefulness of primacy and think more in terms of patriarchates and/or general councils. Here, if need be, a primus inter pares—first among equals—could exercise a form of pastoral primacy, a primacy of leadership and honor, but not of doctrine or power.

This kind of ecclesiastical body would also allow each participating church to maintain to a certain extent an independent doctrinal and liturgical existence of its own. The difficult questions of authority and the Petrine office with which the latest Anglican-Roman Catholic mutual statement concerned itself would then be settled within the context of a recognized diversity. Many current Protestant writings give the impression that the Papacy, even if reconstituted, would not be a positive good, but at best the lesser of two evils. Given some changes, it could under certain circumstances be tolerable, but only because disunity in the church is even worse, according to this view.

Pope John Paul I did not have time to make lasting decisions for the church. His successor, instead, will face the arduous task of removing the roadblock of papal primacy from the ecumenical pathway.

Notes:

1 Papal Primacy and the Universal Church: Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue (Minneapolis: Augsburg Press, 1974), Vol. V.

2 Ibid., pp. 22, 23.

3 The agreement was issued on January 20, 1977. The text appeared in the London Church Times, January 21, 1977, and in the March issue of Ecumenical Trends.

4 Respectively published in 1971 and 1973.

5 A preparatory commission had met in 1967 and 1968.

6 All figure in Article 24.

7 More particularly Matthew 16:18, 19; John 21:15-17.

8 The document is not ignorant of the fact that the Roman Catholic doctrine of infallibility is hedged round by rigorous conditions laid down at the First Vatican Council.

9 Article 24.

10 Ibid.

11 The now-famous phrase "a papal primacy renewed in the light of the gospel" is used in the latest report of the U.S. Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialog, Papal Primacy and the Universal Church, p. 22. Fr. Jean-Marie Tillard, O.P., the eminent French ecumenist and a member of ARCIC, speaks of a "new vision" of the function of the Bishop of Rome in the paper he presented to the members of the North American Academy of Ecumenists, meeting in Montreal on October 1, 1977.

12 See Articles 6 and 7.

13 Article 21.


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Raoul Dederen is professor of theology at Andrews University Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary, Berrien Springs, Michigan, and an associate editor of MINISTRY.

November 1978

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