January 29, 2012               This article has links to the famous debate between Cardinal Kasper and Cardinal Ratzinger 

The Local Church – its continuity in the Tradition

By David Timbs

In the authentic letters of Paul he always begins by greeting ‘the saints in …’ He was very conscious that he was relating to Christian communities in distinct places with their own particular issues and struggles as they established themselves and their identity. These first century communities were bound together by a common Baptism and the essential and very few teachings of the Apostles.

The Jesus Movement began in rural Palestine and was made up mostly of wandering charismatics led by Jesus himself. The Way (Come, follow me, …and if he asks you to walk one mile, walk another….) became a key descriptor of its identity in Mark’s Gospel and Luke made it emblematic in the Gospel/Acts. The way-farers were protesters against religious stagnation and oppressive legalism. They were prophets of the New Israel and the nearness of the Reign/Kingdom of God. Essential to their way of life were dispossession and dependence (the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head…and there were women, Mary called Magdalene..., Johanna.., Susanna, and many others who provide for them out of their means. Lk 8: 2-3). After Pentecost the largest part of this group spread out into the urban melting pot cities of the Greco-Roman world. They became the urban Christians and began to call themselves, ecclesiai, assemblies, Churches.

Despite their urban identity and relative stability these established communities depended upon the few remaining wandering prophets for inspiration, encouragement, confirmation and authority. They needed the wandering visitors to monitor their growth in the faith and to provide a living connection with the other ecclesiai. The Didache speaks in detail about these prophets and the agreed rules for receiving them. They were to be given hospitality for one night, two in cases of necessity but if they asked for third night, they were to be dismissed as ‘false prophets’ (Didache 11, 5). They were to be sent off with one day’s ration of bread (Give us this day our daily bread) but if they asked for money, they were to be regarded as ‘false prophets’ (Take nothing for your journey -  no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra tunic…).

Even in the immediate post-Apostolic period, the travelling prophetic leader was highly valued and warmly welcomed even when in the early second century some of these were now regarded as having an ‘ordained’ position in the Church. In the year or so leading up to his martyrdom in Rome around 109, Ignatios, the episkopos of Antioch, visited a number of local communities and confirmed them in the common faith. Ignatios was the first Christian to refer to the union of the local communities as ‘e ekklesia katholike – the ‘catholic’ or universal Church (Letter to the Christians at Smyrna 8: 2).

One of the great fruits of Vatican II was the reawakening among Catholics of the sense of the essential ‘localness’ in the way they live and express the faith they share with their brothers and sisters in those other communities which together constitute catholicity. But the tensions between stresses on the Church as local and the Church as universal have not disappeared. Some years ago, two influential Cardinals had a rather passionate and robust debate on this very issue. It was not a conversation in isolation from other things. They were talking about ideas of Church that were points of some contention at Vatican II and afterwards. Cardinal Walter Kasper, then Prefect of the Congregation for Christian Unity, and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith engaged in a frank and transparent public debate which would be almost inconceivable now. Indeed, Benedict (Ratzinger) would probably declare the matter closed and resolved in his favour.

As we have documented on this website, it is evident that this contest has not subsided but is now reaching critical mass as it is obvious that Cardinal Ratzinger’s scholarly opinion has now becoming the official policy of Benedict XVI’s pontificate.

One of the principal impacts of this policy on the local Church, its governance and life is the almost total control that the Vatican exercises. During the long pontificate of John Paul II, Card. Ratzinger promoted the papalisation of the Church. Two important features of this policy were to stress the strange notion, not in the Tradition, that the Pope is by divine mandate, Bishop of the world, consequently subverting a key affirmation in Vat II of the Conciliar role of the College of Bishops and that subsidiarity which lies at its heart.

The authority given to all the apostles has been stripped from them and placed solely in the hands of Peter.

In effect, with a few exceptions in some jurisdictions, it is the Pope who appoints bishops and so communio is established when the Bishop-elect confirms by an oath his personal loyalty to the person of the Pope. This centralisation grates against the Tradition, even resists its reception. It was Jesus, not Peter who chose the Apostles. When one was lost, it was the gathered one hundred and twenty who prayed together before an election was held for another (Acts 1: 15-26). When a decision had to be made about the admission of Gentiles to the Jesus Movement it was not Peter who made the ruling. He was one among equals who supported the move. It in fact the Community who did the discerning and cast the ballots, it seemed good to the apostles and to the elders, with the whole church… (Acts 15: 22). 

‘The Universal Church’ of Cardinal Ratzinger/Benedict strongly resembles Augustine’s highly idealised and somewhat disembodied City of God.  Kasper, on the other hand, insists that the Universal Church only derives authentic identity, credibility and effectiveness insofar as the local churches incarnate them.

29/01/12