Seeing Schönborn standing there alone, my first impulse was to try to wrest some insight from him about the synod. As we approached, I noticed he was staring up at the windows of the papal apartments. My cynical side prevailed, so I walked up and jokingly asked: “Thinking about what kind of drapes you want when you move in?"
Schönborn was startled, then, as he placed who we were, he had the good manners to fake a sort of quiet amusement. I broke the silence that followed by asking what he was doing.
“You want to know why I’m really here?" he asked, in his polished English. I waited.
“Because Peter is here," he said.
What?
“Peter is here," he repeated. “He was crucified alongside this obelisk when it was in the Neronian circus, just over there," he said, pointing beyond the Palazzo di Sant’Ufficio. “But Peter is also up there, in the papal apartment, watching over the Church, just as he has been doing for two thousand years. It’s an awesome sensation, standing in the space that has been the focus of a tradition that goes back to Christ himself, and to the prince of the apostles. This is Peter’s house."
Schönborn was not making a speech; he spoke softly, almost not caring if we heard. The words obviously came from deep within his personal spirituality, his devotion to the papacy and the person of the Pope. The journalistic side of me realized that some Catholics might find his piety troubling, since it has the potential to shade off into an uncritical approach to papal authority. Yet it was an emotional moment, because it brought home how deep the feeling for the papal office runs among those for whom Christ’s words, “You are the rock and upon this rock I shall build my Church," remain the expression of a living spiritual ideal.
Schönborn is not, at least as of this writing, a member of the Roman Curia, but that moment of prayer before the successor of Peter, and his exposition of what it meant, offers an excellent window onto the theology of many Vatican officials. Serving the Holy Father in the Roman Curia is, through the eyes of those who do this work, in the end a spiritual experience, a vocation. This is not to say that Vatican officials float angelically through their days on wings of prayer. Office politics and the drudgery of the work get to them as much as anyone else. Still, when you press them on why they do it, what they get out of it, the bottom line is usually a theological response focusing on their share in the ministry of Peter.
Pope Paul VI, who served in the Secretariat of State for thirty-two years before becoming archbishop of Milan and eventually Pope, had a similarly exalted notion of curial service. He liked to refer to the Roman Curia as a “permanent cenacle," a reference to the “upper room" described in the gospels (Mark 14) where Jesus and the disciples celebrated the Passover seder, and where Christian tradition believes the sacrament of the Eucharist was instituted. It was a room “totally consecrated to the good of the Church," as John Paul II wrote during the Holy Year of 2000, when he announced a Jubilee of the Roman Curia on the occasion of the Feast of the Chair of Peter. Paul VI also described the Roman Curia as “an instrument of immediate adhesion and perfect obedience." He had in mind not the mindless obedience of a police state, but the heart-and-soul obedience of a group of people acting together on the basis of love.
Anyone seeking to know the mind of the Vatican cannot do so solely through the lens of political science, sociology, and the principles of organizational dynamics as worked out by Max Weber. Without appreciating the faith convictions held by the men and women of the Roman Curia about themselves, their work, and the role of the papacy in the universal Church, the picture would be seriously distorted. It would be like attempting to understand socialism without reference to Marx and Das Kapital, or insisting that one should analyze the Romantic poets exclusively from the perspective of linguistic theory. Of course, not everyone in curial service shares the same theological perspective. Nevertheless, the bulk of Vatican officials take quite seriously a few basic theological concepts about the papacy, its role of service to the universal Church, and the mission of the Roman Curia in supporting that role. Without a grasp of these concepts, observers of the Holy See are lost.
Church officials often complain that journalists try to understand the Catholic Church as if it were merely a corporation or a political society, using the models familiar to them from secular culture. In fact, these officials insist, the Church cannot be properly understood apart from a theological frame of reference. Journalists tend to be skeptical of these protests, sensing that they’re designed to mask ecclesiastical power plays. Certainly the Church has a political dimension that is open to analysis and critique. There is, nevertheless, a degree of merit to the Church officials’ point. Every organization deserves to be evaluated according to its own self-understanding. CEOs of major companies often lament that critics expect them to operate like a public trust when their mission is to maximize shareholder profit. Politicians likewise argue that their function is not to pursue a personal agenda, but to reflect the interests and desires of their constituents. If we accept such reasoning in the corporate and political realms, we ought to accept it for the Church as well.
THE PAPACY
Contemporary Roman Catholic theological discussion features a vast literature on the papacy, some of it stimulated by Pope John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical Ut Unum Sint (That they may be one). The Pope invited other members of the Christian family to join him in considering how the papacy might be reshaped in order to make it more acceptable ecumenically, without losing its essentials. Catholic theology today reflects a wide range of views, from those who argue in favor of a strong papal office to those who prefer to situate the Pope within the College of Bishops, with much real authority elsewhere—in a Synod of Bishops or with the local churches. In this section, we cannot do justice to the complexity of this discussion. Instead, we will present a traditional vision that is most prominent within the Roman Curia, without any pretense that this is the only or even the best perspective on offer. The view described here must be seen as an ideal type that individual Vatican officials will be closer to or further away from depending upon their personal outlook, training, and dispositions.
The biblical basis for the office of the papacy, its powers and its role, comes in two New Testament texts, Matthew 16:17–19 and John 21:15–17.
In Matthew, Jesus has asked the disciples who they believe he is, and Peter replies, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." Jesus says: “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." In St. Peter’s Basilica, inside the cupola that rises above the tomb of St. Peter and the main altar, these words are written in Latin letters almost two yards high. It is the very heart of how Catholics have traditionally understood Peter’s role.
In the Gospel of John, the risen Jesus notes the other disciples and asks Peter: “ ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.’ He said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’ He then said to him a second time, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.’ He said to him, ‘Tend my sheep.’ He said to him the third time, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’ Peter was distressed that he had said to him a third time, ‘Do you love me?’ and he said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’ ( Jesus) said to him, ‘Feed my sheep.’ " Several Church fathers argued that this text should always be bundled together with Matthew’s in thinking about the papal office. Over the years, in fact, this passage from John has sometimes been interpreted as the fulfillment of the promise in Matthew 16. Where the traditional interpretation of Matthew’s text emphasized the power of the office, John presents its nature as one of ser
vice. This is why among the traditional titles of the Pope is “Servant of the Servants of God." Power in this understanding is real and absolute, but it is never an end in itself. It is ordered to the service of others.
Traditional theological reflection developed the image in Matthew’s gospel of the papacy as the rock, finding three layers of significance. First, the papacy is intended to guarantee the unity of the Church, since the entire structure is erected on the basis of this one foundation. In the Creed recited each Sunday in the Catholic Mass all over the world, the marks, or distinguishing characteristics, of the Church are listed as being “one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic." The guarantor of the “oneness" of the Church is its center of authority in Rome, in the Pope. John Paul II was keenly aware of this aspect of his role. In a rare interview on the papal plane in 1989, David Willey of the BBC asked the Pope to respond to criticism that he shouldn’t travel so much. He replied: “The problem about the universal Church is how to make it more visible. There are tendencies in theology and above all in the Orthodox Church to reduce everything to the level of the local church. But the Church was born universal from the moment it began in Jerusalem. Saint Paul’s travels, Saint Peter’s coming to Rome, the Apostolic tradition, everything confirms the Petrine tradition of giving the Church its universal dimension, and making all the local churches feel this universal dimension. And it seems to me that my travels help to make it more visible."
The second sense of what it means to be the rock is that of ensuring the endurance of the Church, despite the historical storms that rage around it. This theological conviction is reinforced by the experience that a weak papacy has tended to correspond with times of crisis for the Catholic Church, while successful reforms generally unfold in periods of strong papal leadership. It has been the experience of local churches suffering persecution or harassment that a strong papal office is often the only force that sees them through. The experience of the Greek Catholics in Ukraine during the Soviet era, for example, or of underground Chinese Catholics today, is that the Pope’s capacity to rally world opinion and to mobilize resources to assist them is vital in keeping their struggling communities afloat. Members of these communities often regard Western proposals to hem in the papacy as the luxury of theologians who do not have to worry about knocks on the door in the middle of the night.
Finally, tradition sees in the papacy a guarantee of growth, since the rock is intended to be the foundation for a much larger structure. It is the Pope who impels the Church to carry the gospel message to the world, fulfilling the mandate of Christ to “make disciples of all the nations." In a time when the Catholic Church is questioning the meaning of the very concept of mission, John Paul attempted to revitalize this role of the papacy as well. He repeatedly spoke of the need for a “new springtime of evangelization" and called Catholics to boldly “set out into the deep" (duc in altum). From this point of view, it is of the nature of the papal office to prevent the Church from closing in upon itself, to keep it directed toward ceaseless proposal of the Gospel.
Implied in this brief synthesis are two core values cherished by believers in a strong papacy. The first is fidelity, the notion that Christ entrusted his revelation to Peter and asked him to keep it safe. “Will the Son of Man find the faith upon the earth when he returns?" Jesus asked rhetorically. From the point of view of traditional Catholic theology, it is ultimately up to the successor of Peter to ensure that the answer to that question will be yes. This responsibility weighs heavily in the consciousness of Vatican officials and implies first of all a duty to integrity in the transmission and presentation of the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. Thus when the Vatican intervenes against a theologian, they see such action not in terms of a corporation protecting a copyright, or a police state exercising thought control, but a doctor protecting a patient from harm.
Before he became Pope, Benedict XVI expressed this idea. “When a doctor errs and, instead of patiently accommodating himself to the laws of anatomy and life, risks a ‘creative’ idea, the consequences are readily apparent," Ratzinger said at a press conference in Menlo Park, California, in February 1999. “The patient suffers. Although the damage is not so immediately noticeable in the case of a theologian, in reality even here too much is at stake for him to trust himself simply to his momentary conviction. He is dealing with a matter which affects man and his future and in which every failed intervention has its consequences."
Many theologians would argue that the danger in this image is that of ignoring creative ideas that are not mere momentary convictions, but that emerge from decades of study and thought and discussion, ideas that can be fruitful for the whole Church—medical breakthroughs, if you like. As always, the question of whether a given new idea is a wonder cure or a dangerous toxin is a subjective one, and analysts will draw divergent conclusions. The point here is to understand the psychology involved when the Curia concludes that a given theological proposal has to be corrected. They understand themselves to be acting to preserve the health of the community, because ultimately the happiness of the human person is conditional upon knowing and accepting God’s truth about human destiny. Anything that distorts or obscures that truth is ultimately harmful, so it is no act of kindness to simply let it go.
The second core value which arises from what has been said is accountability. Critics often complain about a lack of accountability in the Vatican, by which they mean that popes do not stand for reelection, are not subject to recall, and are not otherwise answerable to public opinion as expressed in modern democracies. This is correct so far as it goes, and it’s a fair matter of debate whether the undemocratic character of the Holy See leaves it too far removed from the sensibilities of the people whose spiritual welfare it is intended to serve. Yet it is a terrible misconception to believe that Vatican officials do not regard themselves as accountable. In fact, the sense of the Petrine role as described above, focusing on Christ’s mandate of fidelity, creates an almost overwhelming sense of accountability within those who take the tradition most seriously.
For Vatican officials, this accountability is first of all to Peter, in terms of how faithfully they collaborate in his threefold mission of teaching, sanctifying, and governing. Ultimately, accountability is to God. Vatican officials are accountable to the tradition, to the faith, to truth, and to Christ himself. Most of them sincerely believe they will stand before the bar of judgment someday to answer for their performance. This concept is hard for the modern mind to accept, because most of us believe with Lord John Acton that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," a remark Acton coined precisely in reference to the 1870 declaration of papal infallibility at Vatican I. Power without checks and balances is, from a democratic point of view, unaccountable, and unaccountable power is another expression for tyranny. But in the traditional Catholic theological framework being described here, power does not corrupt, it ennobles, because it flows from the sacramental grace of Holy Orders. Leaders in the Church thus do not represent the people; they represent Christ to the world. Some people will suspect that this is rhetoric designed to protect clerics from challenges to their authority, and that suspicion may sometimes have a foundation, but one will misunderstand the Holy See unless it’s appreciated how deeply this understanding of accountability shapes its culture. To call the Church undemocratic is within the realm of fair debate, but to call Church leaders unaccountable does not do justice to their theology or their psychology.
Veteran Newsweek correspondent Robert Blair Kaiser challenged Belgian Cardinal Jan Schotte at a press conference in October 2001 about what Kaiser saw as the lack of accountability during a Synod of Bishops, which Schotte heads within the Vatican. The cardinal responded, as Kaiser records the exchange, that bishops are “accountable to no one but the Holy Father, and the Holy Father is accountable to no one but Jesus." The comment came across as arrogant, and anyone who knows Schotte realizes that despite his erudition and good humor, he can in fact be rat
her imperious. At the same time, if one assumes the remark was not flippant but intended to be in earnest, it is consistent with the theological principles described here. Accountability in this rather traditional understanding runs up, not down, and, ultimately, those who serve the Church are accountable to its founder. This does not mean they are insensitive to the concerns of the faithful, but rather that they believe the range of options to satisfy those concerns is circumscribed by the deposit of faith, which must always be their principal concern.
PRIMACY
The tool Vatican officials believe Christ gave the papacy to promote fidelity and accountability, thus understood, is known as primacy. This refers to the “supreme, full, immediate and universal ordinary power" that canon 331 of the Code of Canon Law says belongs to the Pope, and to the Pope alone. He has primacy over other bishops and the entire Catholic Church. In reality, as Catholic writer Russell Shaw has noted, it is not so much papal infallibility that creates controversy within the Catholic Church as primacy. Officially decreed at the First Vatican Council in 1870, papal infallibility is the doctrine that states that when popes make a solemn pronouncement on matters of revealed faith or morals and invoke full authority as the Successor of Peter, the Holy Spirit preserves them from error. Only rarely have popes formally exercised this teaching authority. Moreover, canon 749.3 of the Code of Canon Law states clearly that, “No doctrine is understood to be infallibly defined unless this is manifestly demonstrated."
Popes, however, make constant use of primacy. They establish dioceses, name bishops, promulgate laws, and perform numerous other acts of supreme and universal jurisdiction. This is the everyday business of the papacy, and it tends to be what gets the attention of Catholics for whom one or another decision rankles. In some sense, papal primacy goes back to the era of the primitive Christian communities. Writing to Christians in the Greek city of Corinth midway through the last decade of the first century, St. Clement, according to tradition Peter’s third successor, wanted to bring the Corinthians in line. Clement complained about “impious and detestable sedition" and demanded that they obey the leaders of the local church. “But if some will not submit to them," Clement added, “let them learn what He [Christ] has spoke through us, that they will involve themselves in great sin and danger." Whether Clement was writing as a “proto-Pope" or a sort of “foreign minister" within a college of Roman Church leaders is a debated point, but the letter reflects an early exercise of primacy centered in the see of Rome.
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