Religion Universe: ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH

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ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH

Where one begins the history of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) is itself a matter of theological judgment, fraught with serious ecumenical implications. Is Roman Catholicism (RC) a post-Reformation phenomenon, or is it the original form of the church?* Is “early Catholicism” to be found already in the New Testament, or is it an entirely post-biblical development? Catholic scholars, even very liberal ones such as Hans Küng, insist that Catholicism is present from the beginning, that the history of the RCC has its starting point within the NT rather than in the post-Reformation period.

If, indeed, one holds that RC is not simply a denomination within Christianity but its original expression, how does one deal with the historical fact that the earliest community of disciples gathered in Jerusalem, not in Rome? Indeed, the see, or diocese, of Rome did not even exist at the very beginning, nor did the Roman primacy.*

For many Catholics, the adjective “Roman” tends to obscure rather than define the reality of Catholicism. For them, the history of the Catholic church begins with Jesus' gathering of his disciples and with the eventual post-resurrection commissioning of Peter to be the chief shepherd and foundation of the church. Accordingly, it is not the Roman primacy that gives Catholicism its distinctive identity within the family of Christian churches but the Petrine primacy.

History

For the Catholic tradition, the classic primacy texts are Matt. 16:13-19, Luke 22:31-32 and John 21:15-19. Given their symbolism, the conferral of the power of the keys on Peter suggests an imposing measure of authority.* Yet this authority was not to be exercised in any absolute way, since from the beginning Peter is presented as consulting with the other apostles (see apostolicity ) and even being sent by them (Acts 8:14), and he and John act almost as a team (Acts 3:1-11, 4:1-22, 8:14). Nevertheless, the biblical images concerning Peter (fisherman, shepherd, elder, proclaimer of faith in Jesus, rock) continued in the life of the church and were enriched by additional ones: missionary preacher, great visionary, destroyer of heretics, receiver of the new law, gatekeeper of heaven, helmsman of the ship of the church, co-teacher and co-martyr with Paul.

According to tradition Peter was martyred and buried in Rome, the centre of the empire and eventually the centre of the RCC. During the first five centuries the church of Rome gradually assumed pre-eminence among all the churches. It intervened in the life of distant churches, took sides in theological controversies, offered counsel to other bishops on doctrinal and pastoral questions and sent delegates to distant councils. The see of Rome came to be regarded as a kind of final court of appeal, as well as a focus of unity* for the worldwide (“ecumenical”) communion* of churches. The correlation between Peter and the bishop of Rome became fully explicit during the pontificate of Leo I (440-61), who claimed that Peter continued to speak to the whole church through the bishop of Rome.

In the view of some other Christian communities, the RCC has its origin in the Edict of Milan (in 312, also known as the Edict of Constantine), whereby the church, now free from persecution, came to enjoy the status of an imperially protected and favoured religion. Thus we have the term “Constantinian Catholicism”.

By the beginning of the 5th century, German tribes began migrating through Europe without effective control. This movement, somewhat inaccurately called the barbarian invasions, lasted some 600 years. It changed the institutional character of Roman Catholicism from a largely Graeco-Roman religion to a broader European religion. The influence of Germanic culture on Catholicism was especially pronounced in the areas of devotion, spirituality and organizational structure. Church office became more political than pastoral, and imagery for Christ, the church and its leaders became increasingly militaristic.

When, at the beginning of the 8th century, the Eastern emperor proved incapable of aiding the papacy against the Lombards in northern Italy, the pope turned for help to the Franks. This new alliance led to the creation of the holy Roman empire, which began dramatically in 800 with the crowning of Charlemagne. The line between church and state,* already blurred by the Edict of Milan, was now practically erased.

With the collapse of the Carolingian empire, however, the papacy fell into the hands of a corrupt Italian nobility. Only with the reformist pontificate of Gregory VII (1073-85) was the papacy's reputation restored. Papal prestige was even more firmly enhanced during the pontificate of Innocent III (1198-1216), who fully exploited the Gregorian teaching that the pope has supreme, even absolute, power over the whole church.

By the middle of the 13th century the classic papal-hierarchical concept of the church had been securely established, and the pope's power was said to embrace both church and state alike (the so-called two-swords theory). Newly elected popes were crowned like emperors, a practice that endured until suddenly discontinued by Pope John Paul I in 1978. Emphasis on the juridical, over against the communal, aspects of the church did not significantly subside, however, until the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).

The historical bond between the church of Rome and the church of Constantinople came apart through a series of gravely unfortunate and exceedingly complex political and diplomatic manoeuvres, starting with the excommunication* of Michael Cerularius, patriarch of Constantinople in 1054, and culminating in the fourth crusade (1202-1204) and the sack of Constantinople by Western knights. Two attempts at bringing the two sides back together – at the councils of Lyons in 1274 and of Florence in 1439 – did not have lasting results. Indeed, the climate began to change for the better only with the election of Pope John XXIII in 1958, with the Second Vatican Council* and then with the historic pilgrimage of Pope Paul VI in 1964 to meet Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras in Jerusalem,* the mother church of all churches.

By the beginning of the 14th century, other events had introduced a period of further disintegration of unity, reaching a tragic climax in the Protestant Reformation* of the 16th century (see Protestantism ). The confrontation between Boniface VIII and Philip the Fair over the latter's power to tax the church opened a wide breach between the papacy and the imperial authority. Then there were the scandalous financial abuses during the subsequent Babylonian Captivity of the papacy at Avignon, France (1309-78). There followed a rise in nationalism and anti-clericalism in reaction to papal taxes, and then papal authority itself came to be challenged on theological grounds by Marsilius of Padua and others. Conciliarism rose as a challenge to the prevailing monarchical concept of the church.

The Western schism* of 1378-1417 (not to be confused with the more serious and more enduring East-West schism between Rome and Constantinople) produced at one point three different claimants to the papal throne. The council of Constance (1414) turned to the new principle of conciliarism to end the schism, by asserting that a general council, not the pope, is the highest ecclesiastical authority. One claimant was deposed, a second resigned, and a third eventually died. Martin V was elected on St Martin's Day, 11 November 1417.

There were other, more immediate causes of the Reformation of the 16th century: the corruption of the Renaissance papacy of the 15th century, the divorce of piety from theology and of theology from its biblical and patristic roots, the negative effects of the Western schism and the rise of the national state – not to mention the powerful personalities of Luther, Calvin and Zwingli. The Reformation itself took different forms, so different that one should perhaps speak more precisely of reformations in the plural. The reformers of the right (Lutherans and Anglicans) retained essential Catholic doctrine but changed certain canonical and structural forms. The reformers of the left (followers of Zwingli and the Anabaptists) repudiated much of Catholic doctrine and sacramental life. The reformers nearer to the centre (Calvinists) modified both Catholic doctrine and practice but retained much of the old.

The Roman Catholic response, belated but vigorous, was given at the council of Trent* (1545-63), which was itself part of a broader movement known as the Counter-Reformation, conducted principally under the leadership of Pope Paul III (1534-49). The council proved to be the single most important event in the history of the RCC during the four centuries between the Reformation and the Second Vatican Council. By and large, the post-Tridentine RCC emphasized the doctrines, devotions and institutions that were most directly attacked by the Protestants: veneration of the saints,* Marian piety, eucharistic adoration, the authority of the pope and the bishops (see episcopacy ) and the essential role of ordained priests in the sacramental life of the church (see priesthood, sacraments ). Other important elements tended to be downplayed precisely because of their favourable emphasis by the Protestants: the centrality of Christ in theology and spirituality; the communal participatory nature of the eucharist* (“priesthood of all believers”) and the responsibility of the laity* in the life and mission* of the church.