Factions, ecumenical, Papacy etc

Hans Kung bravely (for a Catholic) has a go at the whole office of the Pope in the Roman Catholic church. Perhaps, says Kung, if the Papal office were more about serving the church and less about securing power, protestants and the Orthodox would rejoice. He lists Peter three temptations as those that tempt those in the Petrine office: the temptation to pull Jesus aside and tell him better (papal infallibility), the temptation to assert unfailing devotion to Jesus, the very moment the denials come, and the temptation to look at the task and of others (in John), instead of loving Jesus and caring for his sheep.

"In this respect, it must be pointed out finally that each Church in virtue of its history has its own peculiarities which are not accepted in the same way by others: each has, so to speak, it's "speciality". These "specialities" however are of varying importance. The Catholic "speciality" of course is the Pope. But Catholics are not alone in this. The Eastern Orthodox also have their "Pope": this is the "tradition". For Protestants it is the "Bible". And finally "freedom" for the Free Churches. But as the "papacy" of the Catholics is not simply the Petrine ministry of the New Testament, neither is the "tradition" of the Orthodox simply the apostolic tradition, not the "Bible" of the Protestants simplt the Gospel, nor the "freedom" of the Free churches simply the freedom of the children of God. Even the best password is misused if it becomes a party program with which men march out to fight for power in the Church. A party program that is often linked with the name of a leader. A party program which necessarily excludes others from their own church....... If we were to permit ourselves an anachronism here, we should undoubtedly indentify the Catholics with the party of Cephas, which would any case be right as against all the rest in virtue of his primacy, his power over the keys and his pastoral power. The Eastern Orthodox would be the party of Apollos, explaining revelation in light of the great tradition of Greek thought more spiritually, more thoughtfully, more profoundly and even 'more correctly' than all the others. The Protestants would certainly be the party of Paul, who is in fact the Father of their community, the apostle par excellence, the unique preacher of the cross of Christ, who laboured more than all the apostles. Finally the Free Churches would be the party of Christ himself, free from the constraints of all the other Churches, their authorities and confessions, relying solely on Christ as the one Lord and Master and in the light of this developing the fraternal life of their congregation"
Hans Kung "On Being a Christian" pp502

What is Paul's answer in Corinthians? All things are your in Christ Jesus. All the gifts of God belong to all of God's church. To guard the gospel is not to assume that you 'own' it.

The Trinitarian basis of sacrifice

Sacrifice is not something that, in the first instance, begins as an activity of human beings directed to God and then, in the second instance, become something that reaches its goal in the response of divine acceptance and bestowal of divine blessing in the cultic community. Rather, sacrifice in the New Testament understanding- and thus in its Christian understanding- involves, so to speak, three 'moments'. The first 'moment' is the self offering of the Father in the gift,, the sending of his Son. The second 'moment' is the unique 'response' of the Son, in his humanity and in the Spirit, to the Father and for us. The third 'moment'- and only then does Christian sacrifice begin to become real in our world- consists in the self-offering of believers in union with Christ by which they share in his covenant relation with the Father. The radical self-offering of the faithful is the only spiritual response that constitutes an authentic sacrificial act according to the New Testament (Romans 12:1). In other words, Christian Sacrifice is a profoundly personal, eschatological, and trinitarian event, an event in which we Christians, in the power of the same Spirit that was in Jesus, and in our concrete humanity, begin to do in this world what we will be able to do completely only in the next: we begin, namely, to enter into that perfectly self-giving and self communicating relationship of Father and Son"
Edward J. kilmartin 'The Eucharist in the West: History and Theoloy' Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1988. Pp 381-383

I'd probably want to include the presentation of Creation to the Son and the Sons handing back of the kingdom as the bracketing 'moments' but otherwise scintillaating stuff.

The terrible horrors of the papacy

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.