Who is the Pope? An essay-editorial

Who is the Pope?

Editorial of Polish quarterly 

Christianitas, current issue

The year is 2013. The Catholic Church, governed by the two hundred sixty-fifth successor of St. Peter, our Pope Francis, the one Bishop of Rome.

But not so long ago - we may still measure the time in months, if not in weeks - someone else stood in Francis's place: Benedict XVI. After a pontificate of nearly eight years, he surprised us all with his decision to resign. Not only did he surprise, but provoked everyone to find out the fundamental understanding of who the Pope is and the importance of his particular person in the exercise of his ministry.

So let us enumerate these questions.

First: Who is the Pope? Answer: Jesus Christ's Vicar on earth.

Second: What does it mean to be a Pope? Answer: By being the (next) successor of St. Peter in the Episcopal See of Rome.

In these two questions, a certain mystery of the Catholic faith (briefly, but completely) is outlined: that of the papacy. These are the two issues inseparable from one another: substitution and succession.

Substitution: the Pope does not possess any power in his own name, even in the sense in which formerly anointed kings possessed a "Divine right." Rather, he is powerful in immeasurable divisions- completely different from the power of earthly autocrats - the spiritual power of the Pope in his ruling is unimaginable in secular terms.

In the world today, full of heads of state, is not the Pope a "head"? the head of the Church? The document addressing this particular issue concerning the papacy is Pius XII's Mystici Corporis. Thus, a great effort has been devoted towards accurately describing this truth of the faith: the Church does not have two heads. Her only true Head is Christ in heaven - represented on earth by the Pope, his Vicar.

The Church believes that by this substitution, Jesus empowered Peter. Peter and his successors. Consequentially, among the many bishops - modern day successors to the Apostles, a much larger number than the first twelve disciples of Jesus - only the Pope is the current successor of St. Peter. Therefore, there is always one, and only one, pope. Though, as many know, the Middle Ages occasionally saw Christianity rent by the competing claims of two or even three bishops, all aspiring to this title, successor of Peter. Even so, all the participants of those dramatic conflicts were aware that the true Pope can be only one. And because of that - regardless of his actual location - the Pope is the sole legitimate Bishop of Rome.

One may draw an instructive point from such scandalous strife: the Pope is not necessarily the man with greater understanding, nor is he even the holier man, the Pope is simply the one who legitimately emerges sequentially in the succession to the Apostle Peter.

Throughout the centuries, the logical chain of Catholic doctrine has remained the same: the Roman Pontiff is the successor of Peter, and only Peter was awarded the command of Christ to rule the "sheep and lambs", the whole flock, i.e., the Church in place of his head.

The logic of this argument, of course, does not change the fact that this is a matter of faith, a component of the Catholic creed and therefore something far beyond the sum of human reckoning and the limits of reason. In this issue, the reportage on papal encyclicals, fragments, and documents of Vatican II, certified by historical facts, make it sound credible and there is nothing irrational in this matter, but this is not so. In order to really grasp this, one has to believe that God wants to save people by entering into their history - even to the point of risking the direst consequences by investing a member of humanity with a portion of his own Divine power. One has to believe that a particular person in a specific condition vicariously receives this power, yet receives it in truth. This is the mystery of the Popes and their raison d'être: the papacy is Peter acting in place of Christ on earth.

Therefore, in an image of a pope, what is always the most important is the frame and not the portrait itself. The portrait describes the personal holiness, sinfulness, or vagueness of this Christian who became and was or is the Pope. Yes, let us admit that these aspects- especially holiness - remain a mark on his history as bishop and pope. However, a pope is given form because of the frame, not the features of the portrait. One tries to find among the characteristics of the Pope, not inherent similarities to Peter nor even poignant traits of imitating Christ. Rather, one turns back to the frame: the mission of Peter. Only the framework is truly detachable from the portrait and even continues without it. What is more, it has already served many portraits, but never more than one at a time.

Mystici Corporis at 70 - IThe true Church of Christ is the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, Roman Church

The major encyclical of Pope Pius XII on the Church, Mystici Corporis Christi, the clearest and most incisive document on the Bride of Christ in the 20th Century, was signed on June 29, 1943, Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, days before the bombing of Rome and the fall of the Fascist government. As war raged, Pope Pacelli felt the great need to clarify matters in the spiritual war being fought within the Church by the re-emerging Modernists, who wished once again to muddle the doctrine on the Church. In the upcoming weeks, we will celebrate this great anniversary with a special series.

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In the brilliant prolixity of his writings and his allocutions, the late and beloved Sovereign Pontiff, Pope Pius XII, made important contributions to many areas within the field of Catholic doctrine. Yet one theological treatise seems to have been affected and improved more effectively than any other by what he wrote and said in his capacity as the Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth. That treatise is the tractatus de ecclesia Christi.

During the early years of the twentieth century there was more confusion and misunderstanding about the Church than about any other reality studied in the science of sacred theology. Three factors were responsible for the comparatively imperfect status of popular writing about the kingdom of God on earth. First, there was the fact that the treatise on the true Church of Jesus Christ had a history quite different from that of most of the other individual treatises within the confines of dogmatic theology.¹ Second among these factors was the unfortunate misinterpretation of terminology employed in St. Robert Bellarmine's classical De ecclesia militante over the period from the sixteenth century until the nineteenth.² The last and the most important factor was the influence of popular and superficial religious writing strongly influenced by liberal Catholicism.³

These three factors, acting together, produced a condition in which religious books by some rather influential Catholic authors tended, during the first half of the twentieth century, to speak of a kind of super-Church, a Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, in some way distinct from and superior to the visible Catholic Church over which the Bishop of Rome presides as visible head and as the Vicar on earth of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Basically, it was that condition which the late and great Sovereign Pontiff was called upon to remedy. And, by the force of his most important writings and allocutions, he fulfilled this task most admirably.

Amidst the literally thousands of entries in the official Acta of Pope Pius XII there are hundreds of documents in which he set forth teaching about the nature and the dignity of the Catholic Church as the true Church of Jesus Christ. As a result any full-scale study of the effects of Pius XII in the field of ecclesiology would have to be expressed in a rather formidable volume. Yet, among the very numerous documents which would certainly have to be scrutinized in such a work, there are a very few statements of his which had particular moment for all theologians interested in the treatise on the Church. He seemed to have a special affection for these declarations. I can think of no more effective way of honoring his beloved memory in this issue of The American Ecclesiastical Review than that of bringing together his most striking teachings about the Church he loved so much and guided so well.

Mystici Corporis Christi

The Mystici Corporis Christi and the subsequent encyclical, the Humani generis, may well go down in history as the two most important doctrinal statements issued by Pope Pius XII during the course of his long and glorious reign as Christ's Vicar on earth. Both exercised an extraordinarily powerful regulatory influence within the tractatus de ecclesia Christi.

Pope Pius XII issued the Mystici Corporis Christi on June 29, 1943. The first and the most fundamental contribution it made to Catholic thought on the Church is contained in the following sentence:

If we would define and describe this true Church of Jesus Christ — which is the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Roman Church — we shall find nothing more noble, more sublime, or more divine than the expression "the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ" — an expression which springs from and is, as it were, the fair flowering of the repeated teaching of the Sacred Scriptures and the holy Fathers.⁴

After this strong and eminently clear declaration, there could be no shadow of excuse for any tactic tending to depict the Mystical Body of Our Lord as in any way distinct from or superior to the visible Catholic Church, the religious society over which the Vicar of Christ rules as the visible head. The expression "Mystical Body of Jesus Christ" appears in this ringing pronouncement of Pius XII as the description and even as the definition of the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Roman Church. The Mystici Corporis then gives the coup de grace to the teachings that the true Church of Jesus Christ is something other than a visible or truly organized society in this world by the following pronouncement:

Hence they err in a matter of divine truth, who imagine the Church to be invisible, intangible, a something merely "pneumatological" as they say, by which many Christian communities, though they differ from each other in their profession of faith, are united by an invisible bond.⁵

In the same way this great encyclical letter reproves the error and confusion inherent in the writings of those Catholics who taught the existence of a twofold Church of God in this world:

For this reason We deplore and condemn the pernicious error of those who dream of an imaginary Church, a kind of society that finds its origin and growth in charity, to which, somewhat contemptuously, they oppose another, which they call juridical. But this distinction which they introduce is false: for they fail to understand that the reason which led our Divine Redeemer to give to the community of men He founded the constitution of a Society, perfect in its kind and containing all the juridical and social elements — namely, that He might perpetuate on earth the saving work of Redemption — was also the reason why He willed it to be enriched with the heavenly gifts of the Paraclete.⁶

Finally, Pope Pius XII, writing in the Mystici Corporis Christi, set forth the truth that the visible Catholic Church is actually the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, the true Church of God spoken of in the Scriptures, when he brought out the fact that the members of the Catholic Church recognizable as such, or, in other words, the members of the visible Catholic Church, are the true and only members of the true Church. He wrote:

Actually only those are to be included (annumerandi) as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith, and who have not been so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the unity of the Body (neque a Corporis compage semet ipsos misere separarunt), or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed.⁷

There was another point magnificently clarified by the late Sovereign Pontiff in the text of the Mystici Corporis Christi. That was the teaching on the necessity of the Catholic Church for the attainment of eternal salvation. The following passage gives precious instruction on the status of those who are linked to the true Church by an unconscious or merely implicit desire or intention to enter this society.

As you know, Venerable Brethren, from the very beginning of Our Pontificate, We have committed to the protection and guidance of heaven those who do not belong to the visible Body of the Catholic Church (qui ad adspectabilem, non pertinent Catholicae Ecclesiae compagem), solemnly declaring that after the example of the Good Shepherd We desire nothing more ardently than that they may have life and have it more abundantly. Imploring the prayers of the whole Church We wish to repeat this solemn declaration in this Encyclical Letter in which We have proclaimed the praises of the "great and glorious Body of Christ," and from a heart overflowing with love We ask each and every one of them to correspond to the interior movements of grace, and to seek to withdraw from that state in which they cannot be sure of their salvation (in quo de sempiterna cuiusque propria salute securi esse non possunt). For even though by an unconscious desire and longing (inscio quodam desiderio ac voto) they have a certain relationship (ordinentur) with the Mystical Body of the Redeemer, they still remain deprived of those many heavenly gifts and helps which can only be enjoyed in the Catholic Church. Therefore may they enter into Catholic unity and, joined with Us in the one, organic Body of Jesus Christ (in una Iesu Christi Corporis compagine coniuncti), may they together with us run on to the one Head in the Society of glorious love. Persevering in prayer to the Spirit of love and truth, We wait for them with open and outstretched arms to come not to a stranger's house, but to their own, their father's home.⁸

There is another important item on which the Mystici Corporis Christi issues a doctrinal decision. Prior to the issuance of this encyclical Catholic theologians had debated as to whether the residential bishops of the Catholic Church derived their power of jurisdiction immediately from Our Lord or from Him through the Roman Pontiff. In this document, Pope Pius XII took occasion to speak of the Bishops' power of jurisdiction and he described it as something "which they receive directly (immediate) from the same Supreme Pontiff."⁹ In the edition of his Institutiones Iuris Publici Ecclesiastici which came out after the issuance of the Mystici Corporis Christi, Cardinal Ottaviani took occasion to state that this teaching, which had hitherto been considered up until this time as more probable, and even as common doctrine, must now be accepted as entirely certain by reason of the words of the Sovereign Pontiff Pius XII.¹⁰

^{Msgr. Joseph  Clifford Fenton 
Pope Pius XII and the Theological Treatise on the Church
(American Ecclesiastical Review, Dec. 1958 - excerpt)}

Notes:

Philippians, chapter 2: There is so much going on!

Yet, at times such as Holy Week, in particular this Holy Week, there is not much to be written that would be useful and good, and an occasion of spiritual growth, and not deleterious - for our readers, and also for our own souls. The words of the Apostle to the Philippians, also repeated on Palm Sunday, keep coming back: semetipsum exinanivit, "He emptied himself", "he made himself nothing". He was born for this, he took our mortal form to be obedient, "obedient unto death", "mortem autem crucis"...

Luis Salvador Carmona
Jesús recogiendo sus vestiduras (Jesús flagelado)
Church of the Holy Spirit (Clerecía), Salamanca

How beautiful to say that He emptied himself, for the empty is opposed to the full! For the divine nature is sufficiently full, because every perfection of goodness is there. But human nature and the soul are not full, but capable of fulness, because it was made as a slate not written upon. Therefore, human nature is empty. Hence he says, He emptied himself, because He assumed a human nature. (St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Philippians) 

"If the Word emptied himself taking the form of a servant," it was that He might make His brothers according to the flesh partakers of the divine nature, through sanctifying grace in this earthly exile, in heaven through the joys of eternal bliss. For the reason why the only-begotten Son of the Eternal Father willed to be a son of man was that we might be made conformed to the image of the Son of God and be renewed according to the image of Him who created us. (Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi)

There is so much that is disturbing going on, including in ecclesiastical environments, but we must not get distracted. With the graces made available by the Lord through His Church, especially the Sacraments, it is each one of us - and not anyone else - who must "work out" our "own salvation", with "fear and trembling", without "grumbling and hesitation", "in the midst of" this "crooked and perverse generation": "he that shall persevere to the end shall be saved” (Mt. xxiv, 13).