Can We Save the Catholic Church?

A detailed anamnesis will start with the historical causes of the illness and at the same time explain how things could come to such a pass. Non-historians may also observe many things on the surface, but cannot explain them. Often, behind the efficient organization stands a powerful financial machine making use of quite worldly methods. The impressive mass celebrations of Catholic unity all too often manifest only a superficial form of Christianity lacking in substance. The conformist hierarchy often consists mainly of clerical functionaries always keeping an eye on Rome for orientation, servile to those above them and autocratic towards those below. Embedded in the closed system of doctrines and dogmas is an obsolete, authoritarian, unbiblical, sterilely orthodox theology. And even those proudly acclaimed Western cultural achievements ascribed to the Church have often been accompanied by excessive worldliness and a neglect of real clerical duties.

Already I can already hear the objections of the apologists of the church establishment: Quo iure? – what right have you to sit in judgement on the institution of the Church? I can only repeat: I am not a judge but a theologian–therapist; I do not wish to sit in judgement but to provide a diagnosis and suggest remedies like a doctor, a psychotherapist or a counsellor. Admittedly, my recommendations, expounded at length in so many books and substantiated there in detail, have not been appreciated by the authorities to whom, along with a larger public, they are addressed. The authorities have found my recommendations so uncomfortable because many of these people are themselves caught up in the pathogenic structures. And they do not want to hear about necessary surgical operations and reforms in the body of the Church.

But, the apologists exclaim, surely it is not just a matter of historical changes within the institution? No indeed, it is a question of something far more permanent, a question of the truth, of the eternal truth. And the question is: what must endure in the Church, what should be the criterion for the truth?

Is Tradition or Progress the Criterion of Truth?

Two opposing attitudes to the truth can be seen not only in the concerns about the physical well-being of an individual but also in the concerns regarding the welfare of a society. For one group, it is the ‘old ways’, the things that have withstood the test of time, tried-and-true knowledge that counts; in short, it is tradition that must take precedence. For the other group, it is instead what is new, up-to-date, scientific, innovative, progressive that counts. Which of them is right?

I value tradition but I am not a traditionalist. Yet, in the Church, and not just in Rome, there are people who swear by the old ways. While the ‘good old ways’ may often be a stimulus, they should never be a model per se. Such thinking assumes that God would have been present only at certain periods in the past, for example during the time of the Church Fathers (the era of patristic Greek and Latin theology and culture) or during the Middle Ages (the era of scholasticism, Romanesque and Gothic art) but would have had nothing to do with subsequent ages, in particular with the Reformation and the Enlightenment. These modern eras, the traditionalists believe, were times of ‘decline’, which they often describe in veiled, umbrella terms like ‘de-hellenization’, ‘de-churching’ (= secularization) or ‘de-Christianization’. But this approach means surrendering to the debilitating myth of decline, which is averse to any form of progress.

Along these lines, Benedict XVI saw his task as consisting primarily in preserving rather than unfolding the truth, which, for him, meant preserving tradition. But, in asserting his supreme authority over all church teachings, he claimed to determine by himself – at best with reference to his more recent predecessors – what belongs to tradition and what does not. In this vein, his predecessor Pius IX replied to the bishops who challenged his impassioned insistence on his own particular definition of papal infallibility, which claimed to rest on the Bible and tradition, with the notorious riposte: ‘La tradizione sono io’ (‘I am the tradition!’) In reality, this papal dictum represents an absolutistic understanding of truth not unlike the absolutistic understanding of the state expressed by Louis XIV’s dictum: ‘l’État – c’est moi!’

And so, in the Catholic Church of the nineteenth and twentieth century a typical Roman Catholic traditionalism or fundamentalism developed, which believed that everything should and could be left as it was – or must be restored to what it once was. That the Church continually needs to be renewed, they understand, at best, only as a moralizing truism used to discipline individual believers, for instance, in calling them to adhere more closely to papal doctrines on sexual morality and to defend the privileges of the Church. This kind of traditionalism survives into our own day. Moralizing papal platitudes are given a cheering reception by the young people at the huge youth rallies with the pope, even as these same young people continue using the pill and condoms, leaving the vestiges behind on the very grounds where the day before they had so enthusiastically cheered the pope.

Unquestioning devotion to the past results in enfeebled creativity, mental impotence and anaemic scholasticism. No, traditionalism cannot be the Church’s top priority. Rather than an unreserved commitment to some version of the past, the Church needs freedom, a freedom that also manifests itself in a critical sifting of the Church’s own history. And such a critical attitude will therefore dissociate itself from the equally extreme alternative of fanatical Modernism.

I love what is new but I am not addicted to novelty as such. In modern society, many people swear by everything that is new. They demand an unconditional orientation towards the future, setting their sights on Utopia. In the twentieth century there were those who proclaimed the advent of a 1,000-year Reich (which perished in 1945 after only 12 years); others who proclaimed the emergence of a classless society (it had run its course and collapsed by 1989). But even in the twenty-first century, many still dream of a new shape that humanity could take as a result of technological or ecological evolution, or political and social revolution. But neither black, nor brown, nor red, nor green Utopian visionaries have succeeded in bringing forth the ideal ‘new humanity’ of which they dream.

The Catholic Church has also had its share of individuals, groups and movements who were so fascinated by modern Utopias that they demanded a modernization of the Church by conforming to the spirit of the age. Alongside such modernizers, there also exists an odd Catholic mystical fanaticism paired with an apocalyptic belief in the future. The adherents of this type of apocalyptic thinking invoke higher revelations, mostly of more recent date, which go beyond those given by the historical Jesus Christ: precise prophecies about when and how the world will end, about a coming great war, about the conversion of Russia and the like, and they often underpin these prophecies with intricate numerological calculations. In his latest book, Benedict XVI himself gives an example of this kind of apocalyptic mysticism in referring to the strange ‘Secret of Fatima’. In short, these modern-day mystical prophets offer a medley of superstition and obscurantism – widely disseminated by the modern media – to satisfy the craving for miracles and religious sensationalism of people both educated and uneducated in religious teachings. But is this true Christianity? Surely not!

Christian Churches Need to Be More Christian

Catholicism, as it evolved historically, and particularly modern Catholicism in its current form, cannot be the yardstick by which the Church measures itself. Many within the Vatican and many external ‘supporters of the Vatican’ want to commit the Catholic Church to a status quo which is both comfortable and profitable to them. And so they reject – always with reference to a ‘higher’ (i.e. papal) authority – any proposals for change in the pathogenic course they have adopted for the Church, and they rule out any serious reforms to the Church’s teachings and practice: if it is not Roman (i.e. does not toe the Vatican line), it is not Catholic.

But more and more Catholics are seeing through the knee-jerk reactions that have brought Rome more and more power and only worsened the Church’s pathological condition. No one who has even the slightest idea of the real history of the Church can either ignore its flaws, ruptures and cracks, deny the many contradictions and inconsistencies in its history, or gloss over and excuse them.

Conversely, however, the question arises: can such things really be reformed and transcended? I admit that I have become increasingly sceptical, not just in view of the current, lamentable situation in the Catholic Church, but also in view of the epic upheavals and paradigm changes that mark the history of all three Abrahamic religions, and particularly the history of Christianity, which I have analysed in two decades of laborious research. Neither Catholic leaders nor church historians have taken seriously the consequences of such shifts for our present-day Church.

I will return later to the topic of paradigm change, those epochal changes in the overall mindset and way of doing things that, in the history of the Church, have led to the formation of separate confessional traditions and churches. But here, I want to highlight at least briefly some of the problems facing the Church as a result of such changes.

Anyone who knows the Church’s history will ask themselves: can one seriously expect a Church so deeply rooted in a Medieval paradigm (‘P III’ in my terminology – see Editor’s Note (#litres_trial_promo)) to embark on a new course in the future? Can one expect this of a Church which has largely forgotten the original Jewish–Christian paradigm of the Apostolic Church (‘P I’) and which only selectively accepts the early Christian–Hellenist paradigm of the first millennium (‘P II’)? Can one expect an adequate response to the current problems facing the Church from a Church that sees both the paradigm of the Protestant Reformation (‘P IV’) and the paradigm of Enlightenment and Modernity (‘P V’) only as a falling away from the true path of Christianity? How can such a Medieval, Counter-Reformation, anti-modernist Church manage the transition to a new, more peaceful, more just, ecumenical paradigm (‘P VI’) appropriate to the twenty-first century? Given the fact that, at the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church only partly managed to integrate the Reformation and modern paradigms and that currently a restoration of the pre-Vatican II paradigm is well under way, is such a Church at all capable of steering a path into the future that allows it both to preserve the original message of Christianity and express it anew?

And this brings us to the crucial point; the challenge to reform is addressed not only to the Catholic Church but to every church that considers itself Christian: the Protestant and the Orthodox churches are likewise not sanctuaries immune to similar criticism. The crucial question is always the same: Does one’s church faithfully incorporate and reflect the original Christian message, the Gospel, which to all intents and purposes is Jesus Christ himself, to whom each church appeals as its ultimate authority? Or is it mainly a church system with a Christian label, be it Early Christian/Orthodox, Medieval/Roman, Protestant/Reformed or Modernist/Enlightened?

Without a concrete and consequent return to the historical Jesus Christ, to his message, his behaviour and his fate (as I described it in my book On Being a Christian [1977]), a Christian church – whatever its name – will have neither true Christian identity nor relevance for modern human beings and society. For Catholics, that means that all the many Roman Catholic institutions, dogmas, doctrines, ceremonies and activities must be measured according to the criterion of whether they are ‘Christian’ in the strict sense of the word or, at the very least, not ‘anti-Christian’, in short, whether or not they are in agreement with the Gospel.

This is what so many people in the Church are hoping for when they say to themselves: our Church must become more Christian again, must once again model itself on the Gospel, on Jesus Christ himself. And to ensure that such hopes are not dismissed as an unrealistic theological agenda, I want to illustrate this point so crucial for the survival of the Church with an – admittedly drastic – image.

An Ominous Snapshot

Few scenes in the recent history of the Catholic Church have troubled me as much as the one that took place on 8 April 2005 in St Peter’s Square in Rome. The occasion was the opulent funeral for Pope John Paul II, staged with a degree of pomp and circumstance that would have befitted a Roman emperor. As always, the camera work had been pre-arranged between the Vatican and Italian television, ensuring that the ceremony was impressively broadcast to an audience of many millions all over the globe. During the ceremony, Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and Dean of the College of Cardinals, and vested in festive crimson, came down the steps and took his place next to the deliberately chosen plain wooden coffin. Next to the coffin – placed there equally deliberately – stood a huge crucifix realistically representing the cruelly tortured body of the suffering and crucified Christ. I could not imagine a greater contrast. On the one side, one saw the opulently clad head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the modern name for the notorious, former Sanctum Officium of the Inquisition, which, with its authoritarian teachings and secret inquisitorial proceedings, has for centuries been responsible for the suffering of innumerable people within the Church and which to this day, more than any other papal institution, embodies the concentrated power of the new Imperium Romanum – a point underscored by the presence of 200 guests of state from all over the world, including, in the first row, the family of the war-mongering president of the United States, George W. Bush. On the other side, one saw the Man of Sorrows from Nazareth, who in his life had preached peace, non-violence and love, and who represents a last court of appeal for all those unjustly persecuted, tortured or suffering innocently.

Involuntarily, one is reminded of the figure of Christ in the famous chapter on the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky. According to the tale, Jesus Christ has returned to sixteenth-century Spain and has been incarcerated by the Grand Inquisitor of Seville with the intention of burning him at the stake as a heretic because he dared to bring freedom to humankind, a freedom that, in the mind of the Grand Inquisitor, human beings are utterly incapable of living. Confronting Jesus, the Inquisitor demands to know: ‘Why have you come to get in our way?’ In response, the prisoner answers not a single word; instead, at the end of the Inquisitor’s reproaches, he gently kisses the wizened old man on his bloodless, ninety-year-old lips. Touched by this incomprehensible gesture, the Grand Inquisitor, instead of pronouncing sentence, shows him the door, opens it and sends him away, saying: ‘Go and do not come back … do not come back at all … ever, ever!’

But Jesus does come back – again and again. I have often thought how easy it would be to transpose this story from gloomy sixteenth-century Seville to the friendlier Vatican of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The subject of the freedom of Christians is as topical as ever. And this perhaps constitutes ‘the fundamental feature of Roman Catholicism’, as Dostoyevsky conjectured when he had the Inquisitor say to Jesus: ‘It was all told to you by the Pope and so it is now all of it in the Pope’s possession, and now we should appreciate it if you would stay away altogether and refrain from interfering, for the time being at any rate.’ But then, to many people’s astonishment and dismay, Ratzinger – the head of the Congregation that today, although no less authoritarian than its predecessor, uses more subtle methods of repression – was himself elected pope. In an initial charm offensive, he presented himself as a humane and charitable shepherd, but time and again he revealed his old face as the merciless head of the Inquisition. And after a time, many people noted how Pope Benedict XVI was following a disastrous course not unlike that pursued by George W. Bush. It was no coincidence that, at Bush’s invitation, Benedict happily celebrated his 81st birthday in the White House, together with the autocratic president: both men, Bush and Ratzinger, proved themselves over the years to be incapable of learning anything, for example in their common stance on the issue of abortion. Both have exhibited an antipathy to serious reforms and a fondness for ostentatious public appearances. Both have ruled autocratically and without administrative transparency. Both have been intent on limiting people’s rights and freedoms and justify this with the need to maintain ‘security’.

As a corrective for poor or misguided leadership, the constitutions of democratic countries provide limited terms of office and regular elections. Unfortunately, the authoritarian papal monarchy makes no provision for such democratic correctives: not even the College of Bishops is empowered to curb an autocratic pope. The result is widespread alienation of a substantial number of believers and a moral dilemma for many of today’s most actively involved Catholics. As one prominent Catholic recently put it to me, ‘Ratzinger’s Church is not my Church!’ Many have already voted with their feet. Regularly, I receive suggestions – not just from indignant conservatives! – that I should imitate the many thousands who have left the Church in the last decades. Disappointed Catholics argue that in the eyes of the hierarchy and the conservative clergy and laity who increasingly set the tone in the Church, critical theologians are merely a ‘source of irritation’ to be ignored or silenced. In place of a truly broad, ‘Catholic’ Church reflecting the full spectrum of legitimate opinion and practice, Rome and its neo-conservative allies now dream of reducing the Church to a ‘small flock’ of ‘true believers’ unconditionally loyal to the pope and willing to follow Vatican directives.

But, then, before my mind’s eye, very different images of the Catholic Church take form.

The Other Church

These are images that have little to do with the triumphal demonstrations of power in St Peter’s Square, but instead reflect what can be experienced thousands of times over around the world. Everywhere I go, I meet deeply committed people in parishes and hospitals, schools and charitable institutions, who in their practical day-to-day involvement in church life are following in the footsteps and in the spirit of the man from Nazareth. They are people who – notwithstanding their personal foibles – do much good for their neighbours and for the community, both within and beyond the boundaries of the Catholic Church. When I look at these people, it becomes impossible for me to think only of the sexual abuse cases and their cover-up or of the other scandals that have recently come to light. All over the world, I have met clergy working on the front line, wearing themselves out in the service of others. I see innumerable men and women who offer support to young and old, to poor and sick people, to those who have been given a raw deal in life, to those who suffer under their own failures.

This is not an idealistic vision of the Church or a mere Utopian projection, but an empirical fact that is confirmed by many other Catholics and Christians generally, and that explains why they, too, do not wish to leave or do away with the Church. And this is the Church with which I can still identify: the global community of committed believers, a community that extends beyond the narrow boundaries of individual denominations. This community of faith is the true Church. Of course, I do not exclude popes, cardinals, bishops or all manner of prelates from this Church, nor do I exclude the dignitaries of other churches either. But, for me, all of these officeholders, who represent the Church as a concrete visible institution, are of secondary importance, since, according to the New Testament, they should only be the servants and not the masters: ‘not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy’ (cf. 2 Corinthians 1:24). After all, it was not without reason that, in its constitution on the Church, the Second Vatican Council deliberately placed Chapter II on the ‘People of God’ in front of Chapter III on the hierarchical structure of the Church, although it could not prevent the Curia from scandalously tampering with the text of that chapter. This priority set by the Council should not merely apply in theory but also in practice. In the current reality of the Catholic Church, unfortunately, this is seldom the case.

For the time being, we must wait and see if Pope Francis will prove to be a pope in the tradition of Pope John XXIII, who better fitted St Gregory the Great’s description of the papal office as ‘Servant of the Servants of God’ than the concept behind the customary titles of more recent origin, ‘Holy Father’ and ‘Your Holiness’, that set the pope above his episcopal confreres and give him a quasi-divine status. At the moment, Pope Francis is giving mixed signals. Although he has introduced a new, more simple and humble style into the Vatican, there are also indications that he will take the same hard line on dogmatic, moral and disciplinary issues that his immediate predecessors have taken. And, in the same vein, there are currently relatively few bishops who convincingly demonstrate that they are independent servants of their dioceses rather than compliant servants of the Roman Curia. In any case, I speak for myself and many others of like mind in saying that we are not Christians because of the church hierarchy and we are not Catholics because of the pope in Rome.

I give thanks to another and higher authority (and to many helpful fellow men and women) that my belief has remained unshaken: not my belief in the Church as an institution, but my belief in Jesus Christ, in his person and cause, which remain as the original core of the good traditions of the Church, of its liturgy and theology, and which, despite all of the undeniable decadence and corruption in the Church, have never disappeared and never will. The name of Jesus Christ is like a golden thread in the often torn and besmirched (and, therefore, constantly cleaned and rewoven) fabric of the Church in the course of its history.

And, therefore, at the end of this first chapter I will return to my initial question: ‘Can we save the Catholic Church?’ Yes we can, but only if the spirit of Jesus Christ moves our whole community of faith anew and endows the leadership of the Church with new credibility, understanding and acceptance. That, in turn, depends on those of us who together constitute this community of believers and who are open to the breath of the Holy Spirit, which moves where and as it wills.

Much of what prevents people from being open to the Spirit will be described in the next chapters. I will show how the church community is suffering under the Roman system of power. This system developed gradually, beginning in the first century AD, and was being claimed, theoretically at least, in Rome by the middle of the first millennium. Outside of Rome, however, it found little acceptance until around the end of the first millennium and the first centuries of the second millennium, and then only in the West – with fatal consequences for all of Christianity. It is necessary to soberly and precisely analyse this Roman system to discover whether the Catholic Church could not, perhaps, be saved if it ceased to be enslaved to this system.

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Whether academic or popular, criticism of the Church often lacks historical depth. Some things are described as ‘fundamentally Catholic’, even if they developed during a later stage of Catholicism, and, conversely, other things are dismissed as being utterly ‘non-Catholic’ even though they had been present from the beginning and existed for centuries. What is urgently required, therefore, is a well-founded historical analysis that can shed more light on the matter.

To make an accurate diagnosis of an illness, one must not merely look at the symptoms; one must get to the causes. A diagnosis of the Church’s illness, therefore, must take into account the most recent scientific research: Catholic and non-Catholic historians alike now agree on many points that were once debated between Catholic apologists and non-Catholic critics. The no-longer-contested findings of modern historians make uncomfortable reading for the Roman Curia and their supporters, and so they continue to ignore them, not just in theory but also in practice, a fact eloquently documented by the many unheard, historically well-founded demands for reform. Hence, a comprehensive anamnesis – a re-membering – of the Church’s history, seeking to understand the origins and development of the Church’s illness, is imperative. Without such an anamnesis there is no question of a cure.

During my years as a student in Rome, I dutifully listened as a tame, domesticated history of the Roman Catholic Church was recounted, and this left me unsatisfied. Since my early days as a young professor, I have repeatedly turned my attention to historical studies. My long project of anamnesis is reflected and documented, with abundant references and concrete details, in many of my books.

Many conservative readers, after reading this highly critical book, will no doubt object that I have not dealt with the positive sides of the Church, but the positive aspects of the Catholic Church have all been set forth at length in my previous books. To repeat them here would only distract from the problem at hand. In particular, my book The Church, published over forty-five years ago, is still considered topical and relevant and, translated into many different languages, is still used as a classic textbook in universities today. My books Christianity: Its Essence and History (1995) and The Catholic Church: A Short History (2001) present detailed, systematic accounts of the Catholic Church’s overall historical development. The present book, therefore, does not deal with the history of the Church in general, but with the Church’s specific medical history, and the causes of the illness of the Church. As already discussed, I will concentrate here on problems with the Church’s constitution and with the central Roman institution of power, the papacy.

It is time to investigate a long and chequered history. Let us start at the beginning.

1. Peter – the First Pope?

Anamnesis

Rome, even papal Rome, was not built in a day. There is no doubt that, from early on, the Church located in the city of Rome, the capital of the Roman empire, and widely renowned for its efficient organization, effective charitable activities and numerous martyrs, played an important role. As a refuge of orthodoxy against Gnosticism and other heresies, it played a key role in formulating the baptismal creed, in limiting the canon of the works included in the New Testament, and, last but not least, as the city with the graves of the two chief apostles, St Peter and St Paul, in developing the tradition of apostolic succession.

But on a closer look, which of these elements can be verified historically? There is no word in the New Testament of St Peter himself ever having visited Rome. Nor is there any unequivocal reference to an immediate successor to St Peter (in Rome of all places). According to the writings of St Matthew, it was St Peter’s personal faith in Christ and not that of his successors that was and remains the ‘rock’, the eternal foundation, on which Jesus built his Church (Matthew 16:18).

On the other hand, the First Epistle of Clement, dating from AD 96, and the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, written around the transition from the first to the second century, do explicitly state that Peter stayed in Rome and they testify to his martyrdom there. This tradition is therefore very old and, significantly, there are no rival witnesses to contradict it. Even in Antioch, while there is ample evidence in the Acts of the Apostles that St Peter stayed there for a lengthy period of time, no one has ever claimed that the grave of St Peter is located there. As yet, at least, it has not been possible to verify archaeologically whether the grave of St Peter lies underneath the current Vatican basilica, although there are significant indications. More importantly, however, there are no reliable early witnesses that St Peter, an uneducated Galilean fisherman called Simon, who stands in sharp contrast to St Paul, a Roman citizen fluent in Greek, ever functioned as the ‘overseer’ or epískopos (the term from which the word ‘bishop’ derives) of the Church in Rome. He was clearly the spokesman for the circle of disciples around Jesus before Jesus’ death and resurrection, and he continued to exercise this function for some time afterwards, as long as the circle of disciples remained together in Jerusalem and later in Antioch and the surrounding regions. But there is no evidence of his exercising such a function from the city of Rome; under no circumstances can he be called ‘Prince of the Apostles’ in any modern sense of the term ‘prince’. The evidence, on the contrary, indicates that the monarchical episcopacy was introduced only at a relatively late date in the city of Rome, probably shortly after the beginning of the second century, at least thirty years after Peter’s martyrdom. However, already in around the year 160 monuments were raised to Peter and Paul, both of whom were presumably martyred during Nero’s persecution of Christians in Rome around AD 64 to 68. It was the graves of the two chief apostles that served, in the first centuries, as the principal justification for the claim to a limited primacy accorded to the church of Rome, although not yet to the bishop of the city.

But does that make Rome ‘the mother of all churches’ as is proclaimed in the pretentious inscription adorning the basilica of St John Lateran, the original cathedral church of the Diocese of Rome: ‘Caput et mater omnium ecclesiarum urbis et orbis’ (‘Head and mother of all the churches of the city and of the earth’)? By no means! The head and mother church of early Christianity was incontestably Jerusalem, not Rome. And to this day there still exist any number of churches in the East such as Antioch, Ephesus, Thessalonica, Corinth and others that were founded by apostles completely independently of Rome and its bishop. To this day, these churches insist on their apostolic origin and heritage.

There can be no question, during the first centuries, of the diocese of Rome and its bishop enjoying any jurisdictional primacy over the whole Church, or even of a biblically based claim to primacy without any jurisdictional authority. The Petrine promise of the Gospel of St Matthew (16:18), which, from the middle of the first millennium, has customarily been cited as the biblical justification for the papal claim to primacy – ‘You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church’ – and which ostentatiously adorns the interior of St Peter’s Basilica in enormous black letters on a golden background, finds no corroborating mention in any of the other Gospels. And, with one exception, these words were never quoted, in full at least, in any of the Christian writings before the middle of the third century – the exception being a text by the controversial church father Tertullian who quoted the passage not with reference to Rome and its bishop but with reference to St Peter. It was only in the middle of the third century that Bishop Stephen of Rome (254–7) cited the promise made to Peter to assert his authority in quarrels with bishops in Spain, the Province of Africa and Asia Minor. But he met with vigorous opposition led by Bishop Cyprian of Carthage, who rejected not only Stephen’s decisions and the theology behind them, but also his claims to possess the better apostolic tradition and to exercise jurisdiction over other churches. As it happens, Stephen’s positions on the readmission of lapsed Christians to the sacraments and the validity of baptism performed by heretical and excommunicated priests eventually prevailed, but not by virtue of any decisive papal authority over the other churches. On the contrary, the idea that one church could exercise authority over all the others was generally rejected by bishops and theologians outside of the Roman sphere for centuries to come.

Thus, Rome enjoyed no jurisdictional primacy during the first centuries, and that is understandable, because jurisdictional primacy belonged to the emperor alone. As pontifex maximus, the emperor enjoyed a monopoly on legislation that extended even to church matters (ius in sacris). After the Christianization of the Roman empire in the fourth century and for many centuries to come, it was the emperor who exercised the highest legal authority in the Church as in the State. He was the highest administrative instance with supervisory authority that extended even to the Roman community and its bishops. Without previously consulting any bishops, much less the bishop of Rome, Constantine, also known as Constantine the Great, convened the First Ecumenical Council in 325 at his new residency in Nicaea, east of Byzantium/Constantinople, and he issued laws, professions of faith and other prescriptions regulating the order of the Church. He confirmed the decisions made at the Council of Nicaea and enforced them throughout the empire. He also revamped the organization of the Church to conform to that of the empire, with the bishoprics of each civil province being placed under the authority of the ‘metropolitan’ bishop ruling in the provincial capital city.

Roughly four centuries after Constantine, a document was forged based on legends invented in the fifth century, bearing the title Donation of Constantine. According to this forgery – widely accepted at face value in the West for centuries – Constantine, in 315 or 317, conferred on Pope Sylvester and his successors explicit supremacy over the ancient patriarchal sees of Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople and Jerusalem, as well as over ‘all the churches of God in the whole earth’. In addition to administrative rights over estates owned by individual churches throughout the empire, it gave the pope authority over the city of Rome and over the whole Western part of the Roman empire, implying a right to appoint and depose civil rulers there. Finally it gave him the right to various imperial insignia. Although this forgery soon found its way into collections of canon law, surprisingly, it was cited in support of papal claims only from the middle of the eleventh century on, particularly in the struggles of the popes with the Holy Roman emperors and with other secular leaders. It is the prime example of a whole series of far-reaching forgeries, which, even when they did not originate in Roman circles, were used effectively to justify and promote the ascendancy of the Roman see and its bishop to a position of monarchic primacy in the West. In the East, however, where the Eastern Roman emperor continued to rule, this process of papal self-inflation was met only with incomprehension and incredulity.

First Diagnosis

The fact that, during the course of the first Christian centuries, first the church in the city of Rome as a whole, and then only later, and gradually, its bishop came to enjoy a central position in the Church is incontestable. From the history of the rise of Rome and its bishop to leadership in the Church, we can learn to appreciate how a papal ministry of service to the unity of the Church centred in Rome and founded on the traditions of the two chief apostles, St Peter and St Paul, could still benefit Christendom in the twenty-first century, provided that the role played by this centre is exercised in the spirit of the Gospel. But there is nothing in the New Testament or in the early history of the Church that supports a claim to domination or jurisdictional primacy by either the Apostle Peter or the church in Rome, and much less by its bishop. In fact, as we shall see later, most often the exercise of this claim promoted neither unity nor harmonious interaction, but increased dissension and even led to schism. In the twenty-first century there is even less likelihood that any claim to primacy in a jurisdictional sense will find acceptance in Christendom. Nor does the constant repetition and pompous celebration of the Roman ideology of primacy and power help when the claim itself is built on sand. The only thing that might help to restore the credibility of this institution is a frank, self-critical reflection on the humble and often fallible role played by the biblical figure of Peter and on the unpretentious services performed by the early Roman church, in the form of what Ignatius of Antioch, in his Letter to the Church of Rome, written probably around AD 110, called a ‘primacy of love’. In short, the Church needs a Petrine ministry, not a Petrine primacy.