The Pope in the Church

By Fr Andrew Hamilton SJ

The death of Pope John Paul II and the election of Pope Benedict XVI filled the media. The pictures and comments about John Paul showed that he had touched the hearts of many people outside the Catholic Church.

I was struck also by the strong sense of community that Pope John Paul’s death awakened in Catholics. We found ourselves accepting the sympathy of non-Catholics on our loss. On the Sunday following the Pope’s death, too, churches were crowded. People felt their identity as Catholics in their solidarity with Pope John Paul.

When people die, we ask what their lives have meant. In discussing Pope John Paul II’s achievements, and the election of Pope Benedict XVI, commentators went on quickly to ask what we should expect of the Pope as Bishop of Rome and as world leader. They wondered where the Catholic Church is going and what it needs today. To answer these questions it is helpful to think about the role in the Church of the Pope, the Bishop of Rome.

Church teaching

We should think of the Pope first as Bishop of Rome. In churches many people are called popes. Parish priests in the Russian Orthodox Church are called Popes, as are Patriarchs of some Eastern churches. That is natural, because Pope comes from a colloquial word for ‘Father’.

It is because he is Bishop of Rome that the Pope is a world figure. Early Christians saw Rome as St Peter’s city. They then drew on the stories about Peter in the New Testament to describe the place of the Bishop of Rome in the world-wide church.

The New Testament books portray Peter in different ways. But he is always a supporting actor, whose life is caught up in the main story: the Good News of God’s love for us, shown in Jesus Christ’s life, death and resurrection. Like us, the early Christians focused on Jesus and their relationship with him.

Among Jesus’ disciples, Peter had an important role. In the gospel stories, Jesus called him, gave him a missionary role, a special place with James and John among the Twelve, and later a particular calling of his own. Jesus appeared to him after his Resurrection. Peter was also impetuous, and denied Jesus. After Jesus’ death, he and James take leading roles in the church of Jerusalem.

Peter’s role among the disciples is described in many ways. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus calls him to strengthen his brother disciples in faith. The meaning of that command to preserve the unity of the Church in faith and life has been worked out in subsequent centuries. Peter came to be associated with Rome through the tradition that he, like Paul, was martyred there, and that he was the first Bishop of Rome. So for early Christians Rome was a pilgrim city. They believed that Peter and Paul, like the other Apostles, lived on in the churches they were associated with, and in their bishops who succeeded them there So did the faith that they preached.

When disputes broke out about the meaning of the Gospel, Christians could appeal to the living presence of the Apostles in the churches they founded. They consulted the faith of churches like Rome, believing it to be guaranteed by Peter. In this way the Church at Rome encouraged the churches in their faith.

As the church grew and the relationships between different churches became more complex, the major churches began to understand in different ways the role of the Roman Church in encouraging unity in faith. These different understandings became evident during disputes about faith, when the parties often invited the Bishop of Rome to intervene.

For many centuries there was little contact between the churches of the East and the West. During that time the Roman Church’s interpretation of its role came to differ markedly from the interpretation in the East. Tensions grew, and after Western troops invaded the East, there was separation.

Later, during the Protestant Reformation, many other Christians withdrew from unity with the Roman Church, believing that it was corrupt and could not promote unity in faith between the churches.

In these long times of crisis, when the responsibility of the Roman Church to intervene in order to preserve unity in faith among the churches was denied, Catholics naturally described the Pope’s role in terms of authority. They spoke of its precedence over other churches. The First Vatican Council, held in the nineteenth century, defined the doctrines of Papal Primacy and Papal Infallibility.

Papal Primacy states that the Bishop of Rome has the commission to intervene authoritatively in other local churches where unity in faith is at stake. He does not act simply as a representative of the Church, but has a special personal responsibility in the Church.

Papal Infallibility insists that the Church is able to speak authoritatively and certainly of what is essential to Christian faith, and that under clearly defined conditions the Pope shares that gift.

The doctrines of Papal Primacy and Papal Infallibility define the authority of the Bishop of Rome in hard times. But on a day-to-day basis, the Pope encourages the local churches to be unified in living faithfully by Christ’s teaching less by the exercise of authority than by gathering bishops together, pastoral visits to the world’s churches, giving struggling churches advice and support, and making available the stored wisdom of the Church.

The Second Vatican Council described these positive aspects of the Pope’s role when it spoke of the relationship between Pope and bishops as one of collegiality. Just as the Book of Acts describes Peter with the other apostles taking responsibility as a ‘College’ for the life of the early Church, so the bishops gathered with the Pope share responsibility for the world-wide Church. The Pope is not over the Church, but within it. He is a symbol of the unity in faith that joins local churches, and he encourages unity.

Is the Pope the head of the Church?

When we describe people as heads of organisations, we often imagine them as bosses. Bosses stand above and even outside the organisations they lead. But real heads are joined to bodies. What kind of a head does the Body of Christ have?

In the Scriptures, we are the body of Christ, and he is the head. We are joined with him and with one another through our faith and our humanity. In our daily lives and in our prayer, we don’t look to any other head than Christ.

We live as Christ’s body in our local churches. Each church is gathered around its bishop. Our unity with the bishop is an image of our unity with Christ in his body. It makes visible our unity in Christ’s body. So, we can call the bishop head of the local church. He is not our boss, but a teacher and leader whose relationship with his church reflects Christ’s relationship to his Body.

In the Body of Christ we are united with all Catholics in their many local churches around the world. Christ’s relationship to us as head of the church is reflected in the unity of the bishops of the local churches around the Bishop of Rome, just as the Apostles were gathered around Peter. He also encourages us to live in unity of faith. So, we can speak of the Pope as head of the Church, because he is a real symbol of Christ as head. But he is not a boss, not a CEO whose bishops are branch managers.

Questions people ask

People ask what is essential in what the Pope does, and what can change.

The core of the Pope’s role is to encourage unity in faith and life in the church, in times of dispute and division as well as in peaceful times. To do that he must be well-informed, and able to intervene helpfully in the life of local churches.

The main questions Catholics ask are about the relationship between the Church of Rome and the local churches. In recent centuries, government in the Catholic Church has become strongly centralised, just as it has done generally in nation states. Bishops, for example, are now appointed by the Pope. Throughout history, they have been chosen by their people, by the local clergy, by kings, and by groups of local Bishops. Similarly, much that was once the business of local churches is now regulated by Rome.

It is natural to ask whether the present balance between the local churches and the Church of Rome best serves the Church. People can support arguments for greater or less centralisation by pointing to good and disastrous appointments of church leaders and to wise and foolish decisions that have been made either centrally or at local levels.

But it is more helpful to ask what relationships in the Church will best encourage Catholics to live energetically their unity in faith. If our love of Christ is to make us feel committed and united both with our local Australian church and to Catholics in Africa and Asia, we need to feel that we belong in our church.

Belonging is always based in trust. And trust begins with relationships between people. Priests, bishops and Pope encourage lay people when they show that they trust them. Lay people encourage their priests, bishops and Pope when they trust them. But trust is always a risk.

The challenge facing the Church is not at its deepest level about power, but about trust. That was true in Peter’s day, and it is true in the days of all Peter’s successors. Trust always involves taking risks. But so does living the Gospel.

Discussion questions

    * What seem to you to be the most significant things that Pope John Paul II did?

    * What would you hope the new Pope would do?

    * How is Peter described in the New Testament? What qualities does he have?

    * What are the ways in which we strengthen one another in faith?

    * Why is it important to remember that the Pope is the Bishop of Rome?

    * Why is it important for us to see ourselves as part of a world-wide church?

    * Why is it important to define the authority of the Pope within the church?

    * What does respect for the Pope mean in practice?

    * How do we express our belonging to the universal church?

    * What gives energy to us in living out our faith?

    * What helps us find energy, and what takes away energy, in living faithfully in our local church?

Should the Pope be so prominent in the Church?

It is undeniable that many non-Catholics and some Catholics regard the Pope as the head of a multinational organisation. So people ask if it is helpful for the Bishop of Rome to be such a public figure, or whether he should more quietly exercise his role of strengthening the local churches in faith.

This is a difficult question to answer. A world in which the media are so influential looks to individuals who are symbols. And people who embody the Spirit of Jesus as notably as did John XXIII and John Paul II encourage people in and outside the Catholic Church. A Pope becomes a powerful symbol of the unity in faith, not simply of Catholics, but indeed of all human beings. He can present powerfully the call of faith. When John Paul II visited synagogues, kissed the Koran and prayed with other religious leaders, he commended Jesus’ values more strongly than any number of bishops doing the same thing.

But if we see the Pope as the successor of Peter, we should hesitate to make popes into heroes. The Scriptures present Peter as a weak, sinful and fallible human being whom Christ still called to serve him. We should expect to recognise the same frailty in his successors.

The Gospel also needs to be proclaimed locally, as Archbishop Romero did in El Salvador. Still, when the local church is supported by the Bishop of Rome, as it was by Pope John Paul in Poland, the power of the Gospel for freedom can reach more widely.

It may be better not to concentrate on reducing the public face of the Pope, but to respect the courageous and frail symbols of Christian faith in our local churches. Perhaps we should try to make more of Mary MacKillop and Dorothy Day, rather than make less of the Pope.

Should the new Pope bring the Church up to date?

Many people would like to bring the teaching of the Church into harmony with contemporary Western views of sexuality, economics, gender and human life. For some, that means changing Catholic attitudes to homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia, marriage, etc. For others, it means being more realistic in accepting war, inequality and torture.

No Pope could deliver fully on these expectations. His task is to encourage unity in faith and life in the church. He must be faithful to the faith and life of the Church. No Pope could want simply to reduce any tension between Christ’s Gospel and the attitudes of contemporary Western culture.

Each generation, however, needs to reflect afresh on how to follow Jesus’ way. New circumstances, new insights and new technologies raise new questions. These are often difficult and call on us to develop our thinking.

We need encouragement to ask how to live faithfully in our own day. The best way to encourage faith will be to encourage conversation with people of good will in our society. Good conversation means recognising the goodness of people, of their aspirations and of what they build in society, as well as the deficiencies.

We might hope that, following Peter, the Bishop of Rome will encourage the local churches to join this conversation, and to keep at its centre the invitation of Jesus to follow his way.