Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Fides Service) - The Church should return to the courage and the intellectual strength of the early centuries and launch a new rational challenge in all fields. What attracted pagans, and not only in the first epoch of apostolic evangelisation, was certainly the announcement of a “faith, friend of intelligence”, said Pope Benedict XVI in Verona, accompanied by the practice of charity which was something quite new in the pagan world. And this method is not outmoded in today’s societies because “in a world where everything changes, the Gospel is always the same”.
In this ecclesial and global context, an absolutely singular place is occupied by the personal responsibility of the successor of Peter: a personal universal responsibility which needs to be sustained by all his collaborators, bishops and laity, from the Roman Curia, to the bishops in the dioceses, to priests and laity in parishes. On the condition that each renounces that presumed autonomy which could lead to judgement of everyone and everything in an auto-referential manner, and obeys with profound humility that personal service of love and unity that with Peter the Lord placed at the centre of the Church for the salvation of the world.
Certain journalists, after the recent journey to Turkey, said Pope Benedict’s ideas differ from those of Cardinal Ratzinger, the former entered a mosque, that latter would not have done so. This is a summary judgement.
Although the two figures are one and the same person, people forget that the functions have changed and the tasks are different: a theologian expresses what he believes he has found and proposes it for dispute by theologians and judgement by the Church; the Pope, as all prelates, must not expose his personal concepts, instead, putting them in the background, he must give space to the common word of the Church. It would be helpful if this were kept in mind by all those in the Roman Curia or in the dioceses, who have a pastoral duty. This would avoid many disillusions or scandals which undermine the “sensus fidei” of the people of God, so essential for the ‘one in mind and heart’ “proprium” to the Church. However the primacy of the Pope is there to recall and to confess every day the certainty that Christ is risen and that, despite the weakness of human beings, ecclesiastics “in primis” “no evil force can ever destroy the Church”.
In the decades after the Council we experienced the beauty and joy of communion, the “we” of the Church, we rediscovered the collegiality of Bishops. At the same time we experienced its limits, in the sense that it can be wrongly understood as a substitute for the personal responsibility of every baptised Christian, and every individual Bishop, before God who calls us.
Precisely this personal, nominative responsibility (as we learn from Scripture in the history of the great Patriarchs and Prophets, personally called by God and by name) has in the Petrine service, “Do you love me more than these?”, the fulfilment of the call and the response to the Lord which demands personal daily, ordinary, commitment, something which is already a martyrdom. The primacy of Peter, as it is commonly termed, has a martyrological structure, and always entails a personal call to martyrdom.
Likewise, with all the due differences, this is true for the bishop for his particular Church: his responsibility cannot be replaced or mediated by some collegial institution, for example the Bishops’ Conference.
It is time to rediscover and re-understand the essential function of the Petrine and Roman service to the universal Church: service which is part of the essence of the Church as she was founded by her Founder. However, as we said at the beginning, the body of the Church is nourished by God’s love and therefore the visible head of the Church is called to preside this agape, this body of love, in the famous words of Ignatius of Antioch. This is why Peter’s reply to the Love of Christ: “Lord you know that I love you” is the beginning of that Petrine service personally assumed and exercised, resounding again and again at the centre of the Church as a condition of her unity. Peter, by loving, continually unites with Christ those who are called every day by Him to faith in God the Father.
John Paul II once told the Bishops of America that the primacy of Peter is an element of ecclesial communion, it speaks from within, directly to the heart of every Catholic, truly it reveals something of the great mystery of the love of God who wanted Peter in Rome and wants his Successors to preside in charity continually. (Agenzia Fides 14/12/2006; righe 54, parole 740)
