Since the Second Vatican Council, a number of popes have been rather candid in their assessment that the papacy – as presently exercised – is more of a hindrance than a help to the desired cause of Christian unity. In 1967, for example, Pope Paul VI stated that the papacy was “undoubtedly the gravest obstacle on the path of ecumenism.” In 1995, Pope Saint John Paul II issued his watershed encyclical “Ut Unum Sint” (“That they may be one”), which firmly set the course for the Roman Catholic Church that ecumenism is not just a nice outreach to separated Christians, but an intrinsic aspect of who we are in virtue of our common baptism. Embedded in the encyclical is the need to revisit the role of the Magisterium of the Church, which is entrusted to the pope and the bishops in communion with him. Pope Saint John Paul II said that in this ecumenical spirit, he was willing to discuss with the churches not in communion with him how the primacy of the Bishop of Rome can better serve a united Christian Church.
Earlier this month, the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity released a study document titled “The Bishop of Rome: Primacy and Synodality in Ecumenical Dialogue and Responses to the Encyclical Ut Unum Sint.” In it, the authors summarized more than 30 official responses to the invitation of Pope Saint John Paul II to explore how the pope could exercise his ministry in a way that would be in service to all Christians, and in a special way, preserve the unity of the Church. This document follows an earlier document published by the Dicastery in 2021, titled “Towards an Exercise of Primacy in the 21st Century.”
Central to this newest study document is the fact that the Roman Catholic Church is in the midst of the Synod on Synodality, which the Dicastery identified as an event that “sheds new light on the ministry of the Bishop of Rome [alongside] the communal aspect that includes the whole People of God and the collegial dimension of the exercise of Episcopal ministry.” Many ecumenists have romanticized a return to the exercise of Magisterium in the first millennium of Christianity. The study document finds, however, that the “first millennium of Christian history … should not be idealized nor simply recreated, because a primacy at the universal level should respond to contemporary challenges.”
It goes on to state, “Some principles for the exercise of primacy in the 21st century” must include that “a first general agreement is the mutual interdependency of primacy and synodality at each level of the Church, and the consequent requirement for a synodal exercise of primacy. A further agreement concerns the articulation between … the ‘communal’ dimension based on the sensus fidei of all the baptized; the ‘collegial’ dimension, expressed especially in episcopal collegiality; and the ‘personal’ dimension, expressed in the primatial function.”
Another important aspect is the “crucial issue of the relationship between the local Church and the universal Church, which has important consequences for the exercise of primacy. Ecumenical dialogues helped bring about agreement on the simultaneity of these dimensions, insisting that it is not possible to separate the dialectical relationship between the local Church and the universal Church.”
Cardinal Mario Grech, secretary-general of the Synod of Bishops, said that Pope Francis has affirmed “the necessity and urgency of thinking about ‘a conversion of the papacy.’” He also mentioned that Pope Francis said in 2015 that “the Pope is not, by himself, above the Church, but within it as one of the baptized, and within the College of Bishops as a Bishop among Bishops, called at the same time as Successor of Peter to lead the Church of Rome, which presides in charity over all the Churches.”
When asked about the subject of the infallibility of the pope, Cardinal Kurt Koch, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, said, “Everyone talks about the infallibility of the pope, but the Second Vatican Council spoke of the infallibility of the Church. The pope cannot have an infallibility that is not the infallibility of the faith of the Catholic Church.”
Father Joseph D. Wallace is diocesan director of Ecumenical and Inter-religious Affairs and pastor of Christ the Redeemer Parish, Atco.
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