As we finish off Reformation church history for second year, and bathe in the glory of our heritage, and wonder at the continuance of the Roman Catholic church, it's worth listening to what the current Pope has to say about his own office.
‘The pope cannot impose commandments on faithful Catholics because he wants to or finds it expedient. Such a modern, voluntaristic concept of authority can only distort the true theological meaning of the papacy. The true nature of the Petrine office has become so incomprehensible in the modern age no doubt because we think of authority only on terms that do not allow for bridges between subject and object, Accordingly, everything that does not come from the subject is thought to be externally imposed’. – Joseph Ratzinger, On Conscience: Two Essays (Philadelphia/San Francisco: The National Catholic Bioethics Center/Ignatius Press, 2007 [1984]), 34.
‘One can comprehend the primacy of the pope and its correlation to Christian conscience only in this connection. The true sense of the teaching authority of the pope consists in his being the advocate of Christian memory. The pope does not impose from without. Rather, he elucidates the Christian memory and defends it. For this reason the toast to conscience indeed must precede the toast to the pope, because without conscience there would not be a papacy. All power that the papacy has is power of conscience. It is service to the double memory on which the faith is based – and which again and again must be purified, expanded, and defended against the destruction of memory that is threatened by a subjectivity forgetful of its own foundation, as well as by the pressures of social and cultural conformity’. (p. 36)
I found this at the wonderful Per Crucem ad lucem, where Jason makes some interesting observations for protestants.
Between the testaments
6 days ago
2 comments:
Sounds wonderful, but can you imagine the reformers being reminded of this as they were being tied to stakes?
As for the continuance of the Roman Church, would it not be similar to the continuance of Judaism? Institutionally, they are memorials to the dividing, life-preserving judgment of God. They are empty cicada shells, now gold-plated by men to cover the word Ichabod engraved on their foreheads.
I am reading Jordan's Sociology of the Church. Here's a quote that struck me:
"Claims of apostolic succession by themselves, then, are not only meaningless, they can easily become idolatrous, substituting temporal continuity for the discontinuous new-creating work of the Spirit. According to the Creed, only the Spirit is the “Lord and Giver of life."
Thus, we should not be surprised when it turns out to be relatively new churches that are the true heirs of the wealth of the past. It is what we should expect, when we realize that our God “makes all things new.”
Yes, but wy the did the true nature of the Petrine office has become so incomprehensible in the first place?
The object/subject distinction arouse in opposition to the Roman church.
(And I personally would be a bit coy about drawing a link from Judaism to Roman Catholicism).
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