News •
Doctrinal basis
The nature of the church
In 1965 the Dominican theologian Marie-Joseph Le Guillou defined the church in these terms:
The Church is recognized as a society of fellowship with God, the sacrament of salvation, the people of God established as the body of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit.
The progress of Roman Catholic theology can be seen in the contrast between this statement and the definition still current as late as 1960, which was substantially the one formulated by the Jesuit controversialist Robert Cardinal Bellarmine in 1621:
The society of Christian believers united in the profession of the one Christian faith and the participation in the one sacramental system under the government of the Roman Pontiff.
The older definition, created in response to the claims of Protestantism, defines the church in external and juridical terms. The more recent definition is an attempt to describe the church in terms of its inner and spiritual reality.
From its origins the church has thought of itself as the one and only worshipping community that could trace itself back to the group established by Jesus Christ. The ancient adage, “There is no salvation outside the church,” was understood as applying to those who had withdrawn from the church as well as to those who had never belonged. When this adage was combined with the notions contained in Bellarmine’s definition, lines between those inside the church and those outside it were clearly drawn. These lines were maintained in the breakup of Western Christendom in the Reformation.
There were, however, other factors determining the idea of the one true church. The Roman Catholic Church had never excluded the Orthodox Church from the community of Christian believers, even though the two churches fell into schism in 1054. Furthermore, the juridical definition of the church did not include traditional themes such as the communion of saints and the body of Christ. The theme of the communion of saints refers to the church as a whole, including both the living and the dead (the souls in purgatory—a place or condition for those who must be cleansed from lesser sins—and in heaven). The idea of communion appears in early church literature as an indication of the mutual recognition of union in the one church and the notion of mutual service.
The theme of the body of Christ appears in the letters of Paul (Romans 12; 1 Corinthians 12; Ephesians 4–5; Colossians 1). In modern Roman Catholic theology, the term mystical has been added to body, doubtless with the intention of distinguishing the church as body from the juridical society. Pius XII, in the encyclical Mystici corporis Christi (1943; “Mystical Body of Christ”), identified the mystical body with the Roman Catholic Church. Most Roman Catholic theologians now take a less rigorous view, trying to find some way of affirming membership in the body for those who are not members of the Roman Catholic Church. The documents of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) described the church as the “People of God” and as a “pilgrim church,” but no generally accepted statement of membership in this church has yet emerged. Vatican II also departed from established Roman Catholic theology since the Reformation by using the word church in connection with Protestant churches. This use has caused some confusion, but the trend now is to think of one church divided rather than of one true church and other false churches.
Apostolic succession
The claim of the Roman Catholic Church to be the one legitimate continuation of the community established by Jesus Christ is based on apostolic succession. The idea of apostolic succession first appears in 95 ce in a letter of Clement, bishop of Rome, who maintained that the bishops succeeded the Apostles. The teaching on apostolic succession received fuller expression in the works of the 2nd-century Church Father Irenaeus, whose writings against the Gnostics (dualistic sects that maintained that salvation is not from faith but from esoteric knowledge) urged that Catholic teaching was verified because a continuous succession of teachers, beginning with the Apostles, could be demonstrated. In the 3rd and 4th centuries, problems of schism within churches were resolved by appealing to the power of orders (i.e., the power a person has by reason of his ordination as deacon, priest, or bishop) transmitted by the imposition of hands through a chain from the Apostles. Orders in turn enabled the subject to receive the power of jurisdiction (i.e., the power an ordained person has by reason of his office). In disputes between Rome and the Eastern churches, the idea of apostolic succession was centered in the Roman pontiff, the successor of Peter. Apostolic authority is defined as the power to teach, to administer the sacraments, and to rule the church. Apostolic succession in the Roman Catholic understanding is validated only through recognition by the Roman pontiff, and the Roman Catholic Church understands the designation “apostolic” in the creed as referring to this threefold power under the primacy of the Roman pontiff.
The Roman Catholic Church has not entirely denied apostolic succession to non-Roman churches. Rome recognizes the validity of orders in the Orthodox churches; this means that it recognizes the sacramental power of the priesthood but does not recognize the government of these churches as legitimate. The orders of the Anglican and the Lutheran churches, on the contrary, are not recognized by Rome, though negotiations aimed at resolving the differences between the churches in this regard have been held since Vatican II. Eastern churches in union with Rome (Eastern Catholics) are recognized as being in full apostolic succession. Martin Luther and John Calvin affirmed that apostolic succession had been lost in the Roman Catholic Church by doctrinal and moral corruption and that the true church was found only where the gospel was rightly preached and the sacraments were rightly administered. Thus, Protestant churches generally have not accepted the necessity of apostolic succession.
John L. McKenzieThe papacy
The papal office
The word pope (Latin papa, “father”) was used as early as the 3rd century to refer to any bishop, and the word papacy (Latin papatia, derived from papa) is of medieval origin. In its primary usage, papacy denotes the office of the bishop of Rome, for whom the title of pope has been reserved in the West since the 9th century, and, hence, the system of ecclesiastical and temporal government over which he directly presides.
The multiplicity and variety of papal titles themselves indicate the complexity of the papal office. In the Annuario Pontificio, the official Vatican directory, the pope is described as bishop of Rome, vicar of Jesus Christ, successor of the prince of the Apostles, pontifex maximus (“supreme pontiff”) of the universal church, primate of Italy, archbishop and metropolitan of the Roman province, sovereign of the state of Vatican City, and servant of the servants of God. In his more circumscribed capacities as bishop of Rome, metropolitan of the Roman province, primate of Italy, and patriarch of the West, the pope is the bearer of responsibilities and the wielder of powers that have counterparts in the other episcopal, metropolitan, primatial, and patriarchal jurisdictions of the Roman Catholic Church. What differentiates his jurisdiction from these others and renders his office unique is the teaching that the bishop of Rome is also the successor to St. Peter, prince of the Apostles. As the bearer of the Petrine office, the pope is raised to a position of lonely eminence as chief bishop, or primate, of the universal church.
Basic to the claim of primacy is the Petrine theory, according to which Christ promised the primacy to Peter alone and, after the Resurrection, actually conferred that role upon him (John 1:42 and 21:15 ff. and, especially, Matthew 16:18 ff.).
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.
Feed my lambs.
…Tend my sheep.
Following an ancient tradition, Vatican I defined the Petrine primacy by citing these three texts, interpreting them to signify that Christ himself directly established St. Peter as prince of the Apostles and visible head of the church militant, bestowing on him a primacy not merely of honor but of true jurisdiction. The council maintained also that by Christ’s establishment the Petrine primacy was to pass in perpetuity to his successors and that these successors were the bishops of Rome. In stipulating further that the Roman pontiffs, as successors in the Petrine primacy, possess the authority to issue infallible pronouncements in matters of faith or morals, the council cited both Matthew 16:18 ff. and Christ’s promise to Peter at the Last Supper:
But I have prayed that your own faith may not fail; and once you have turned back, you must strengthen your brothers.
Ancient and medieval views of papal authority
Of the Petrine texts, Matthew 16:18 ff. is clearly central and has the distinction of being the first scriptural text invoked to support the primatial claims of the Roman bishops. Although the exact meaning of this passage was debated by patristic exegetes (early Church Fathers who in their interpretation of the Bible used critical techniques), the tradition of Roman preeminence developed very early in the history of the church. In the late 4th and 5th centuries there was an increasing tendency on the part of Roman bishops to justify scripturally and to formulate in theoretical terms the ill-defined preeminence in the universal church that had long been attached to the Roman church and to its bishop. Thus, Damasus I, despite the existence of other churches of apostolic foundation, began to call the Roman church “the apostolic see.” At about the same time, the categories of Roman law were borrowed to explicate and formulate the prerogatives of the Roman bishop. The process of theoretical elaboration reached a culmination in the views of Leo I and Gelasius I (reigned 492–496), the former understanding himself not simply as Peter’s successor but also as his representative, or vicar. He was Peter’s “unworthy heir,” possessing by analogy with the Roman law of inheritance the full powers Peter himself had wielded—these powers being monarchical, since Peter had been endowed with the principatus over the church.
On a purely theoretical level, the distance between the claims advanced by Leo I and the position embodied in the primacy decree of Vatican I is not great. Medieval popes, such as Gregory VII, Innocent III, and Innocent IV, clarified in both theory and practice the precise meaning of that fullness of power (plenitudo potestatis) over the church to which, according to some scholars, Leo I himself had laid claim. In this they were aided not only by the efforts of publicists such as the 13th-century Italian theologian and philosopher Giles of Rome, also known as Aegidius Romanus, who magnified the pope’s monarchical powers in unrestrained and secular terms, but also by the massive development during the late 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries of canon law, which made increasing use of Roman law and legal practices. Gratian’s Decretum (c. 1140), the unofficial collection of canons that became the fundamental textbook for medieval students of canon law, laid great emphasis on the primacy of the Roman see, accepting as genuine certain canons that were based on long-standing tradition but were actually the work of 8th- and 9th-century forgers. Two such canons were restated by the 1917 Code of Canon Law as the principles “that there cannot be an ecumenical council which is not convoked by the Roman Pontiff” and that “the First See is under the judgment of nobody.”
The prevalence of such ideas and the absence of a formidable challenge to papal primatial claims during the High Middle Ages explain the lack of any conciliar definition of the Roman primacy at the great “papal” general councils of that period. Hence it took the (abortive) attempt at reunion with the Orthodox Church at the Council of Ferrara-Florence in 1439 to evoke the first solemn conciliar definition of the Roman primacy, which was included in the decree of union with the Greeks (Laetentur caeli) as follows:
We define that the Holy Apostolic See and the Roman Pontiff hold the primacy over the whole world, that the Roman Pontiff himself is the successor of Peter, prince of the Apostles, that he is the true vicar of Christ, head of the whole church, father and teacher of all Christians, and [we define] that to him in [the person of] Peter was given by our Lord Jesus Christ the full power of nourishing, ruling and governing the universal church; as it is also contained in the acts of the ecumenical councils and in the holy canons.
Early-modern and modern views of papal authority
Laetentur caeli was the basis for the solemn definition that Vatican I promulgated in 1870 as part of its dogmatic constitution Pastor aeternus. Having asserted as a matter of faith the primacy of Peter and the succession of the popes in that primacy and having quoted in full the Florentine definition, the constitution clarified what was to be understood by “the full power of nourishing, ruling, and governing” the church, which, according to that definition, inhered in the pope’s primacy. Unlike the conciliar definition arrived at in Florence, Pastor aeternus specified this to include the pope’s judicial supremacy, insisting that there is “no higher authority,” not even an ecumenical council, to which appeal can be made from a papal judgment.
An important step in the development of the definition of papal infallibility occurred in 519, when Pope Hormisdas (reigned 514–23) decreed that the Roman see had always preserved the true Catholic faith. This assertion of the teaching authority of the papacy was included in Pastor aeternus. Despite challenges to papal claims from both the Eastern and Western churches throughout the Middle Ages, many popes, canonists, and theologians, including St. Thomas Aquinas, upheld the belief that the institution of the papacy possessed a privileged teaching authority. In the later Middle Ages, the Spiritual Franciscan Peter John Olivi developed a theory of papal inerrancy, and other Franciscan theologians cited papal infallibility in their debate over poverty. During the era of the Great Schism and the conciliar movement, the idea of papal infallibility was further developed. An even more dramatic step was taken following the turmoil of the Protestant Reformation by the Roman, or ultramontane, theological school, whose distinguished representatives included Cardinal Bellarmine. Prominent during the 16th and 17th centuries, this school identified the supreme teaching authority of the universal church with the teaching authority of the pope and claimed that the infallibility promised to the church was also possessed by the pope acting as its head, thus guaranteeing the inerrancy even of the pope’s individual doctrinal pronouncements. Although it drew from earlier materials—notably from the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals (a 9th-century collection of canon laws, authentic and forged, attributed to the popes and councils of the first seven centuries) and from the writings of medieval theologians such as Aquinas, Giles of Rome, and Augustinus Triumphus—the ultramontane school derived much of its initial strength from the papalist reaction to the conciliar movement, and it was shaped very much by its opposition to the claims of the conciliarists and their Gallican successors on behalf of the general council. This is evident in the solemn definition of the doctrine promulgated by Vatican I, which insisted that the ex cathedra definitions of the pope (literally, those made from the papal “chair” or throne) “are irreformable of themselves and not by virtue of the consent of the Church.” The conciliar debates indicate that this sentence was intended to exclude the Gallican notion that a papal definition could not claim infallibility unless, subsequently or concomitantly, it received episcopal assent. Despite the maximalist (extremist) tendencies both of subsequent Catholic apologists and of their Protestant critics, the sentence apparently was not intended to restrict the church’s infallible teaching authority to the pope alone or to suggest that the pope was free to define doctrine without making every effort to take into account the mind of the church.
In its dogmatic constitution Lumen gentium (1964; “Light of Nations”), Vatican II focused on the nature of episcopal authority while also endorsing Vatican I’s teaching on papal primacy and infallibility. It insisted that bishops “are not to be regarded as vicars of the Roman Pontiff, for they exercise an authority which is proper to them,” since “by divine institution…[they] have succeeded to the place of the apostles as shepherds of the Church” and are themselves, in fact, “the vicars and ambassadors of Christ.” Also, “just as, by the Lord’s will, St. Peter and the other apostles constituted one apostolic college, so in a similar way the Roman Pontiff as the successor of Peter and the bishops as the successors of the apostles are joined together.” This college, “together with its head, the Roman Pontiff, and never without this head” is “the subject of supreme and full power over the universal Church,” a supreme authority that it can exercise in more than one fashion but “in a solemn way through an ecumenical council.” The supreme authority in the church can be exercised not only personally by the pope himself but also in a collegial fashion by the whole episcopate, which of necessity includes the bishop of Rome as its head.
In so emphasizing the doctrine of episcopal collegiality, Vatican II was responding to the findings of modern New Testament and patristic scholarship concerning the nature of the primitive and ancient church; the council insisted that it was restoring an ecclesiological emphasis of great antiquity. Recent scholarship on the medieval church indicates that papal primacy was more limited, especially in the early Middle Ages, and that support for collegiality survived, in the writings of canonists and theologians, side by side with the more prominent concern with papal primacy. The great conciliarists active at the Council of Constance attempted unsuccessfully to balance these two emphases, and even in the modern period, despite the growing prominence of ultramontane views and their eventual triumph at Vatican I, the collegial concern was never fully displaced. Episcopal collegiality was supported by Vatican II and Pope Paul VI, who decreed in Christus Dominus (1965) the formation of national episcopal conferences. It suffered, however, as a result of the centralizing tendencies of John Paul II. Francis called for a synodal church that would allow for a global conversation among all Catholics, including laypeople, beginning with assemblies in local parishes. He also called upon his cardinals for consultation less often than had previous popes, which in some respects centralized his power even as the synodal process opened the church up to the laity.
Historical conceptions of the relationship of the papacy to the world
Theories concerning the relationship of the papacy to the world at large have both reflected and conflicted with the established political conceptions of the day. The pope has been conceived successively as a leading dignitary in an imperial church headed in effect by an emperor, as a majestic potentate possessed of a supreme and direct authority even in temporal matters, and as a primarily spiritual figure who in temporal matters has no more than an indirect power of intervention. With the post-Reformation fragmentation of Christendom, the growth of secularism, and the emergence of the unified modern state claiming omnicompetence within its borders, even such attenuated claims to an indirect power became increasingly anachronistic. Throughout the 20th century the pope, although affected by the conventions regulating the relations of heads of state with each other, possessed mainly a moral authority deriving from the dignity and prestige of his office. The strength of that authority, however, depended upon his moral standing as a person, upon the persuasive force of his cause, and upon the degree of enthusiasm he could arouse within the church. Despite these limitations, the pope could still exercise great influence on political affairs, as events of the late 20th and early 21st centuries demonstrated.
Contemporary teaching on papal authority
After the mid-20th century some voices in Roman Catholic circles questioned both the doctrine of papal infallibility and the exercise of papal primacy—at least as it was envisaged in the teaching of Vatican I and the Code of Canon Law. The church’s official teaching on the papal office remains that of Vatican I, solemnly reaffirmed at Vatican II. Nevertheless, the latter council’s juxtaposition of the doctrine of episcopal collegiality with the existing teaching on papal primacy and infallibility created something of a dilemma in Catholic ecclesiology. Although the text of Lumen gentium insisted that the doctrine of episcopal collegiality in no way impugned the pope’s primacy, a minority of the council fathers remained unconvinced, though they were said to have been won over by the explanatory note that the Theological Commission, by papal authority, appended to the decree. The note is framed in much more juristic terms than is the decree itself, and in discussing the possession by the college of bishops of “supreme and full power over the whole Church” it insists that “there is no distinction between the Roman Pontiff and the bishops taken collectively” and that “necessarily and always, the College carries with it the idea of its head,” so that the bishops acting independently of the pope cannot be considered to constitute a college. At the same time, the note insists that “since the Supreme Pontiff is the head of the College, he alone can perform certain acts which in no wise belong to the bishops, for example, convoking and directing the College, approving the norms of action, etc.,” norms that “must always be observed.”
Already in 1964 there were some who regarded this note with considerable unease, feeling that it withdrew from the bishops, in practical and legal terms, the supreme authority they were said, on theological grounds, to share. Subsequent events did little to dispel such misgivings. In 1968 Pope Paul VI, rejecting the recommendations of a commission he sanctioned and failing to consult the bishops, promulgated Humanae vitae (the encyclical on birth control), considered by some observers to be the most divisive papal initiative of recent times and one that amounted to a de facto negation of collegiality. Although Paul seemed less supportive of collegiality, he did encourage the exploration of the relationship between collegiality and infallibility. He also established the Synod of Bishops in 1965, which would continue to meet regularly throughout his papacy and that of his successors.
The controversy over papal primacy and episcopal collegiality continued during the papacy of John Paul II. Clearly committed to the spirit of Vatican II, John Paul reached out to the people of the world in his many travels and through his internationalization of the College of Cardinals. He maintained an almost ultramontane understanding of papal authority and sharply curtailed the authority of national episcopal conferences. The Roman Curia, a name first used for the body of papal assistants in the 11th century, became increasingly centralized and remained the administrative power in the church. John Paul also reestablished the papacy as a leading moral authority in the world. During his reign the papacy continued to be a force for international peace, justice, and human rights, as well as a focal point of controversy on matters of gender and sexuality.
The internationalization of the College of Cardinals continued under Benedict XVI and Francis. By 2023, for example, the percentage of cardinals from Europe was 39 percent, down from 52 percent a decade earlier. Francis also decentralized the church’s administrative power with his calls for an increasingly synodal church and his creation in 2013 of a privy council known as the C9 (Council of Nine Cardinals), an advisory body on church governance and the reform of the Roman Curia. This reform was legislated in 2022 in the apostolic constitution Praedicate evangelium (“Preach the Gospel”).