Watch and pray!
By Reverend Peter M. J. Stravinskas, Ph.D., S.T.D.
In these days, we unite in watchfulness and prayer with the Cardinal-electors as they prepare to give the Church a new occupant for the Chair of Peter, heeding Our Lord’s counsel to Peter, James, and John as He entered into His bitter agony (see Matthew 26:41).
The Papacy in Sacred Scripture
In ancient times, the chair was the sign of authority to teach authoritatively. Hence, in Matthew’s Gospel we are reminded by Our Lord that “the scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; so practice and observe whatever they tell you” (23:2). Unfortunately, Jesus has to go on to admonish His disciples not to follow the example of these official teachers within the Judaism of His day. In the Early Church this symbolism was so connected to the chair, cathedra in both Greek and Latin, that the magisterial chair in the bishop’s church gave the name to the entire edifice—cathedral.
Our consideration is even more specific, in that it is grounded in the teaching authority of the Prince of the Apostles, St. Peter, and invites us to reflect on the Petrine office in the Church today. It is fair to say that the ministry of Peter’s successor is intended to be, first and foremost, a work of preserving unity. Yet, ironically enough, the only issue on which all non-Catholic Christians agree is their rejection of the Pope, with many of them arguing that Peter never held any venerable position within the Church of the apostolic age and thus, no would-be successor can lay claim to any special role in the Church. If we examine the place of Peter in the New Testament, however, we find significant evidence which directly contradicts that assertion.
We Catholics believe that the Bishop of Rome has unique authority and unique responsibilities conferred on Peter and passed on to all his successors down the centuries. We know the scriptural basis of these claims very well. In Matthew 16, Jesus accepts with gladness Simon’s acknowledgment of Him as Messiah and Son of God and declares that this understanding of Simon’s is not of human origin but from Divine Revelation. Then Jesus renames Simon, making him the Kepha/Petra/Rock on which He would build His Church. Luke 22 records Christ’s directive that Peter “strengthen” his brethren in the faith—once he recuperates from his own failure in courage and fidelity. John 21 likewise contains a painful reminder to Peter of his triple denial of his Lord, undone by his threefold affirmation of love, thus causing the Risen Christ to commission Simon Peter as the “substitute shepherd” of His flock.
Would we be irreverent, however, in suggesting that Peter—my very lovable but weak patron—was really nothing much to write home about. Yes, the “Rock” on which Christ willed to build His Church crumbled in fear into a denier. Fortunately, the converting look of Jesus during His kangaroo court trial led Simon Peter on to tears of repentance (see Luke 22:62), an event memorialized on the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica. And, yes, the Risen Lord completed the rehabilitation of “the Rock” by gently and lovingly coaxing him to undo his three-fold denial by a three-fold affirmation of love.
If legend is accurate, Peter was a “recidivist,” for we read that while in Rome and being apprised of his imminent execution, he beat a trail for the Via Appia to hightail it out of town. En route, he encounters the Lord Jesus heading into Rome. Pope Peter asks: Quo vadis, Domine? (Where are you going, Lord?) The response: “To Rome, to be crucified again since you refuse.” Peter gets the grace, once again, to do the right thing, finally. (The site of that apparition is marked by a charming little chapel to this day—the Quo Vadis church.) Peter began a long line of martyr-popes; in fact, it was not until the fourth century that a pope died in his bed!
No pope in history has ever fulfilled his tasks perfectly, for no human being is perfect. Some came very close to doing so, while others fell considerably short of the mark, about which, more in a moment. That said, the Petrine office provides us with the assurance of the truth. Even the most unworthy occupants of the Chair of Peter have never taught heresy explicitly. While their personal lives may have been less than stellar, their teaching charism was never compromised.
The Papacy Lived in the Church
Having demonstrated the special role of Peter in the New Testament, one must now move a step further.
St. Luke, author of the Acts of the Apostles, ends the work in chapter 28 by reporting that the Gospel message had reached the city of Rome through the preaching of St. Paul. He took that as the fulfillment of Christ’s mandate to preach the Gospel to the very ends of the earth for Rome, if not physically the center of the earth, was surely the very hub of culture and civilization. From that time until the present, the Church of Rome has served as the primatial see of Christianity—the center and source of the Church’s unity.
St. Irenaeus of Lyons, in 202 A.D., would speak of the Church of Rome in these powerful terms:
. . . the greatest and most ancient church known to all, founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul, that church which has the tradition and the faith which comes down to us after having been announced to men by the apostles. With that church, because of its superior origin, all the churches must agree, that is, all the faithful in the whole world, and it is in her that the faithful everywhere have maintained the apostolic tradition (Adversus Haereses 3:3:2).
Rome is thus the guarantor of orthodoxy for the Universal Church.
Where does the neuralgic question of papal infallibility fit into the picture? The First Vatican Council, occurring at the time not only of the so-called Enlightenment but also of the various civil revolutions attacking immutable truth and any institution proposing such a concept, proclaimed the doctrine of papal infallibility. To be more precise, its 1870 conciliar document, Pastor Aeternus, situates papal infallibility within the overall infallibility of the whole Church. Thus, we read:
We teach and define that it is a dogma divinely revealed that the Roman Pontiff when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when in discharge of the office of pastor and doctor of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme Apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church, by the divine assistance promised to him in Blessed Peter, is possessed of that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed that his Church should be endowed in defining doctrine regarding faith or morals, and that therefore such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are of themselves and not from the consent of the Church irreformable.
As can be seen from the text itself, the dogmatic definition is very circumspect. In the aftermath of Vatican I, however, the role and the very person of the pope took on a quasi-divine status in many circles, so that every word of a pope was deemed sacrosanct and any criticism of him was deemed proximate to heresy or schism. That mentality has been dubbed “Ultramontanism.” We find one of the finest (or worst) examples of it in a line attributed to W. G. Ward (an Anglican convert of the nineteenth century): “I should like a new Papal Bull every morning with my Times at breakfast.” That approach to ecclesial life has not been helpful to popes or to the Church-at-large.
Much more helpful was the attitude of Cardinal Newman—ever a faithful son of the Church and most loyal to the See of Rome. In controversy with Lord Gladstone, who alleged that loyalty to the pope would indeed look a lot like that of Ward, Newman replied in his “Letter to the Duke of Norfolk” thus:
Would it not be well for Mr. Gladstone to bring passages from our recognized authors as confirmatory of his view of our teaching, as those which I have quoted are destructive of it? and they must be passages declaring, not only that the Pope is ever to be obeyed, but that there are no exceptions to the rule, for exceptions there must be in all concrete matters.
I add one remark. Certainly, if I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts, (which indeed does not seem quite the thing) I shall drink – to the Pope, if you please, – still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.
To be sure, Newman was speaking of a properly formed conscience, about which he had written extensively. His fundamental argument, however, is that while Catholics will exhibit filial devotion to a pope, they do not exhibit a mindless modus operandi et vivendi. A healthy corrective to any kind of Ultramontanism comes from the Vatican II Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, where we are reminded:
. . . the task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. This teaching office is not above the Word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission. . . . (n. 10, emphasis added)
The doctrine of infallibility, then, is derived from the principle of apostolic succession and from the fact that Jesus Christ promised His assistance to His apostles when He sent them forth to teach all the nations (see Matthew 28:20). The Pope and the bishops in union with him are the heirs to the first teaching commission of the Lord and, on that very score, also heirs to the promise of divine protection. The Church has always taken her Lord at His word when He says that the Holy Spirit “will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13), believing that the Holy Spirit will work through fallible men to ensure that the members of the Body of Christ are taught the infallible truth of Christ.
Practical Implications
There are several practical implications we can and should draw from the scriptural and doctrinal data. First, it is not disloyal, let alone sinful, to question church authorities (including the Pope) on the performance of their solemn duties. Indeed, the Code of Canon Law is quite clear in asserting that the faithful may actually have an obligation to do so—that is, if they have both the necessary knowledge and good will (see canon 212.3). One need only think of someone like St. Paul who brags about confronting St. Peter (see Galatians 2:11). Or, St. Catherine of Siena, who harassed the Pope of her day into compliance, yet never failed to address him as “my dear sweet Christ on earth.” Catherine’s Dominican brother, St. Thomas Aquinas, is quite pointed in this regard. Thus we find this line in his Summa Theologica: “There being an imminent danger for the faith, prelates must be questioned, even publicly, by their subjects.1
Further, we must disabuse ourselves of the idea that the election of every Pope is the work of the Holy Spirit and the direct will of God. The cardinals in conclave—and indeed the whole Church—pray that the Cardinal-electors will be guided by the Holy Spirit; but there is no guarantee that they will necessarily follow that guidance—as Pope Benedict XVI himself observed in a 1997 interview some years before his own election:
I would not say so, in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the Pope. . . . I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that He dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance He offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined. . . . There are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit obviously would not have picked!2
Which leads to the next point: While Catholics are duty-bound to render filial submission to the teaching authority of the Pope, they are not required to agree with every decision he makes. Faithful Catholic living does not call for a mindless “papalotry” or mimicry. We do something because it is the right thing to do, not because the Pope does it (or the reverse). And if the Pope performs an action we find problematic, our first obligation is to attempt to understand the rationale for that action, always giving him the “edge” in such areas (as we would our own natural fathers). If, however, careful study and reflection lead a person (and perhaps many persons) to conclude that his decision lacked prudence or a reflection of the fullness of theological precision, we have another obligation—to pray that he will correct such behavior and that those in a position to influence his judgment will do so.
A corollary to that point is that “Pope-watching” can endanger your spiritual health. Monsignor Ronald Knox, with consummate British drollness warns: “He who travels in the Barque of Peter had better not look too closely into the engine room.”
We must never forget the Church is always in need of reform—Ecclesia semper reformanda. The Council of Trent boldly demanded the reform of the Church in her head and members. Many of us want a hierarchical Church of perfection, but we fail to realize that the members of the hierarchy come from the ranks of the lay faithful. If you want a reformed and holier Church, you must commit to becoming a reformed and holier member yourself. As a matter of fact, there has never been an effective reform of the Church which was a top-down movement; it has always been from the bottom up.
To be sure, the Church has produced many, many saintly popes. In the modern era, we have been especially blessed with a great number of highly intelligent, cultured, and holy popes. But the Church of Rome is also a survivor of many bad popes. Herewith but a sampling: Stephen VI (896–897), who had his predecessor (Formosus) exhumed, convoked the infamous “Cadaver Synod,” tried Formosus for heresy, mutilated his corpse, and had it thrown into the river. Benedict IX (1032–1044)(1045)(1047–1048), who reigned three times, selling the papal office twice, and leaving office a last time, probably to marry! Sergius III (897–911) murdered his two immediate predecessors and fathered an illegitimate son, who later became pope himself. John XII (955–964) raped female pilgrims and invoked pagan gods. Leo X (1513–1521) sold indulgences and killed cardinals and, unfortunately, was the pope Luther had to face.
As Napoleon threatened his hostage, Pius VII, with the total destruction of the Church, Catholic realism caused his Secretary of State, Cardinal Consalvi, to mock the little dictator by asking, “If we priests haven’t done it over the centuries, you think you will be successful?”
The Papacy in This Moment
Not a few people within the Church and without want Catholicism on their own terms, but Christ has ordained otherwise. He founded His Church to be “the pillar and bulwark of the truth,” as First Timothy puts it (3:15), and He has placed Peter within that Church as the mouthpiece of that truth. In some circles, that is a sore point, but it is the one claim by which Catholicism rises or falls.
As I just mentioned, the twentieth century was perhaps unique in papal history as the Church had a succession of talented, brilliant and even holy men sitting on the Chair of Peter. However, none of them was perfect, either.
Pope Paul VI was, to say the least, an enigmatic figure; the Italians (who have a way with nick-names, often brutally accurate) called him “Amleto” (Hamlet), due to his propensity for vacillation. His name will always be associated with his watershed encyclical, Humanae Vitae. Against all odds and counter to his proclivity to avoid conflict, Paul VI did the right thing, for which he suffered immeasurably—although he failed tragically in not enforcing the document, thus setting in motion a whole trajectory of dissent and disunity.
How many of us long for the halcyon days of the John Paul II years as he sought to right the course of the Bark of Peter, causing not a few of us to revive that very triumphalistic hymn of our youth, “Long Live the Pope!” His magisterium was incalculable, and his persona was magnetic. Yet he had flaws, too, particularly in regard to issues of governance. The appreciation for his long-time first associate, Cardinal Ratzinger, who became Benedict XVI, was more measured but also real and deserved, although he shocked and disappointed us with his resignation.
Now we find ourselves at the conclusion of the Francis era, which even the most objective assessment would have to call “confusing.” So, remember: Being “critical” of the Pope—if done in sincerity and charity—is not wrong. Francis himself indicated on several occasions that he welcomed such criticism (even as he often punished those who took him at his word!). Let me reflect on this presently.
I have lived through seven pontificates and must say that I have never seen the Church (or even the world-at-large) so fixated on the personality of a pope. And this for a man who famously urged his first audience not to focus on him but on Jesus! Let’s be clear about this: The Pope is not the Church; he is a member of the Church and her premier servant (servus servorum Dei, as Gregory the Great put it), whose task is to safeguard ecclesial unity and, minimally, never to teach heresy.
Note well, the via negativa in the second charge: He need not constantly teach Catholic doctrine, but he may never teach the opposite. Because of Francis’ less-than-precise mode of writing and speaking, his lack of philosophical and theological depth, and his penchant for off-the-cuff remarks, we found ourselves awash in confusion. As a result, conversations about his theology had the effect of sucking all the oxygen out of the Church. Interestingly, to use the political categories, the hard-left and the hard-right in the Church used Francis to perpetuate their perceptions or agendas: The Left ignored his orthodox statements on the ordination of women, abortion, gay marriage, birth control, and gender theory, while getting onboard his “mercy train”; the Right gave currency to his questionable or silly statements and failed to highlight his orthodox ones.
Every papal burp was reported in the blogosphere, leaving us all with indigestion. In the Middle Ages, the Church advanced the cause of tranquility in a bellicose era by establishing the Truce of God and the Peace of God. Going forward, what we need now is a moratorium on reporting on “every word that proceeds from the mouth” (Matthew 4:4), not of God, but of the Pope!
One final point for reflection: Popes—good and bad, brilliant, and less so—come and go. The Church—and specifically the Catholic Church, the Church of Rome—remains.
These days, as we watch and pray, we are focused on Peter—the shepherd, the holder of the keys, the occupant of the Chair of true doctrine. In particular, we commit ourselves to pray that the coming occupant of that Chair will feel himself buoyed by the prayers of the faithful, so that he would always respond with courage and fidelity to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, remembering that the Lord’s promise to Peter the Apostle is renewed daily to him as Peter’s successor: Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram, ædificabo ecclesiam meam (“You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church,” [Matthew 16:18]).
Finally, let us make our own the very poignant Collect for the feast of the Chair of St. Peter: “Grant, we pray, almighty God, that no tempests may disturb us, for you have set us fast on the rock of the Apostle Peter’s confession of faith. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.”
Mary, Seat of Wisdom and Mother of the Church, intercede for the College of Cardinals, and pray for all your children in your Son’s one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.
Reverend Peter M. J. Stravinskas, Ph.D., S.T.D., is founder and superior of the Priestly Society of Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman, a clerical association dedicated to holiness through the renewal of priestly life, the sacred liturgy, and Catholic education. He has authored or edited more than 50 books and 600 articles.
ST II.II, q. 33, a. 4.
Joseph Ratzinger, interview with Bavarian Radio, 1997.