The voice of the papacy

Popes come and go. When they do, the Church’s focus is on the person, the particular man who has worn the Fisherman’s Ring and the man who will soon be wearing it.

During the past weeks, and to the surprise of many, the world’s media also turned their fascinated attention to the historic changes taking place in the Vatican. The pope as an influential person of world stature was the big attraction.

Little attention has been paid to the papacy, the unique position of the bishop of Rome as the successor of the Apostle Peter in the Church’s basic structure. The person of the pope is inseparable from the office that he exercises.

This needs emphasising because of the ill-informed perception that the Holy Father rules the Church more or less like a benign dictator, and that its members must follow his personal preferences about doctrine and morality without question.

As successor of the Apostle Peter, the pope takes on the burden of Peter’s specific task to be the principle and centre of the Church’s unity. He must strengthen his brothers (Luke 22:31).

The foundation of the papacy is the concept that the Church’s bishops taken as a whole are the direct successors of Christ’s twelve apostles taken as a whole. The college of bishops is traceable in a direct line from the college of the Twelve.

These men, chosen by Christ, were together given the authority to preach the Gospel to all nations, but one among them, neither more nor less a bishop than they, was to be their reference point, the one who was to hold them in unity of purpose, action and teaching. When ambiguities or errors arose about right doctrine and conduct, Peter was to play the central role of ensuring that the Church remained in unity. He was to feed Christ’s flock (John 21:15-17).

Pope John Paul was strongly conscious of this role. Yet he clearly saw its implication that Christ’s flock was not confined to the members of the Catholic Church; it was all the baptised.

In 1995 he issued his encyclical letter Ut unum sint (“May they be one”), a comprehensive setting out of the Church’s irrevocable commitment to ecumenism, the search for a sure path to Christian unity. He discussed the pope’s function as a bishop among bishops yet also the supreme pastor of the faithful. Recalling Christ’s ardent desire for the full and visible communion of all the baptised among whom the Holy Spirit dwells, he said he was convinced that he had the particular responsibility to draw all together.

“This is an immense task,” he wrote, “which we cannot refuse and which I cannot carry out by myself”. He invited leaders and theologians of other churches to engage with him in patient and fraternal dialogue in which “leaving useless controversies behind, we could listen to one another, keeping before us only the will of Christ for his Church”.

A way must be found, he insisted, for him to exercise his ministry in an atmosphere that is open to a new situation.

There are positive signs. Among them, the World Council of Churches has acknowledged the need for a universal ministry of Christian unity. The Anglican church has also indicated that the pope could provide some sort of central ministry among Christians.

After the wide media coverage given to Pope Benedict as a person, he will know the importance of the papacy for not only the Church but all who would like Christians to speak with one clear voice.