Primacy in the Church from Vatican I to Vatican II

An Orthodox Perspective

Maximos Vgenopoulos

• Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781609090982
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Religioni comparate

The primacy of the bishop of Rome, the pope, as it was finally shaped in the Middle Ages and later defined by Vatican I and II has been one of the thorniest issues in the history of the Western and Eastern Churches. This issue was a primary cause of the division between the two Churches and the events that followed the schism of 1054: the sack of Constantinople by the crusaders in 1204, the appointment by Pope Innocent III of a Latin patriarch of Constantinople, and the establishment of Uniatism as a method and model of union. Always a topic in ecumenical dialogue, the issue of primacy has appeared to be an insurmountable obstacle to the realization of full unity between Roman Catholicism and the Orthodox Christianity. In this timely and comprehensive work, Maximos Vgenopoulos analyzes the response of major Orthodox thinkers to the Catholic understanding of the primary of the pope over the last two centuries, showing the strengths and weaknesses of these positions.

Covering a broad range of primary and secondary sources and thinkers, Vgenopoulos approaches the issue of primacy with an open and ecumenical manner that looks forward to a way of resolving this most divisive issue between the two Churches. For the first time here the thought of Greek and Russian Orthodox theologians regarding primacy is brought together systematically and compared to demonstrate the emergence of a coherent view of primacy in accordance with the canonical principles of the Orthodox Church. In looking at crucial Greek-language sources Vgenopoulos makes a unique contribution by providing an account of the debate on primacy within the Greek Orthodox Church. Primacy in the Church from Vatican I to Vatican II is an invaluable resource on the official dialogue taking place between the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church today. This important book will be of broad interest to historians, theologians, seminarians, and all those interested in Orthodox-Catholic relations.

Chapter One

Vatican I

In this chapter my intention is to present the teaching of Vatican I on the jurisdictional primacy of the bishop of Rome. I will present the main points of this teaching, which led to the reaction of Greek Orthodox theologians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which I will discuss in chapter 2. I will also review the historical context in which Vatican I took place and which, inevitably, had an impact on the council itself. Then I will outline the history of the redaction of Vatican I’s constitution on the Church, Pastor Aeternus, with a focus on its teaching on papal primacy. Finally, I will consider from an exegetical and historical point of view some weaknesses and defects of Vatican I’s definition of papal primacy.

The Driving Forces behind Vatican I and the Historical Situation in the Nineteenth Century

Vatican I was convoked to deal with issues of the widest importance, but its main concern was the papacy, and its outcome was a settlement of the long controversy over the position and authority of the pope in the Church.1

This controversy can be traced back to events in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, especially the Great Schism in the Western Church (1378–1417). These events led to a long-term weakness of the primacy of the pope and a debate on the constitution of the Church: which is the last and the ultimate resort in the Church—the pope or a council?2 The Council of Trent (1545–1563) discussed these issues but was not able to settle the debate over the constitution of the Church or over the relationship between the universal Church and the particular churches and between primacy and the episcopate.3

Although the papacy was strengthened in the post-Tridentine period,4 the theory of conciliarism in both its moderate and radical forms found representatives in Germany (episcopalism) and especially in France (Gallicanism).5 The four Gallican articles adopted and passed by the French clergy congress of 1682 were the “Magna Carta” of Gallicanism.6 The Gallican and episcopalist currents aimed at emphasizing, over against papal centralization, collegial realities such as consensus and reception and the autonomy of the individual churches.7 Gallicanism in its pure theological form pertinently referred back to the Ecclesia primitiva as its model.8

On the other hand, the Gallican and episcopalist movements were not politically neutral, and it is no exaggeration to say that governments and princes exercised an influence on matters related to the Church. Gallicanism was both theological and political, opposed to the papal claim of temporal and absolute, as well as religious, power over the whole world. This claim found an eloquent expression in Pope Boniface VIII (1294–1303).9 We may aptly recall here Napoleon’s success in subordinating completely the Church to the state. The four Gallican articles became law. The events following the French Revolution brought about a radical destruction of both political and ecclesiastical life as well.10 The 1790 French constitution imposed on the Church was likewise an “extraordinary radicalising of episcopalist and state church ideas.”11

French Gallicanism was divided into two parties. One party accepted the new constitution and agreed to an ideology of a state church. The other opposed the constitution, believing that the origins of Gallicanism sprang from the episcopal and collegial constitution of the ancient Church. It is noteworthy that those who refused to take an oath to the constitution were forced to accept the papal position.12 Likewise, the French church/state model became a model for other European countries in the nineteenth century, and Gallicanism would be seen as tantamount to a system of state control of the church.13

In addition to events in France, the Roman Catholic Church suffered from a certain loss of authority after the Enlightenment. The development of the sciences and the humanities led to conflict with the Church. This was reflected in the autonomy claimed both for reason and for freedom and in the development of naturalism, empiricism, relativism, the subjection of all traditions and authorities to criticism, and finally in atheism.14 Furthermore, the revolutionary movements of 1848 in most countries of Western Europe, and especially in Italy, were characterized by strong anticlerical, anticatholic, and antireligious attitudes.15

In light of the above, it comes as no surprise that Ultramontanism,16 as a movement looking beyond the Alps and supportive of papal primacy, gained in strength, becoming a mass movement in the middle of the nineteenth century.17 It was a dynamic popular movement against powerful institutions of bureaucratic state religion and the antireligious calamities and errors of the time (i.e., atheism, naturalism, rationalism, and materialism). With Pope Gregory XVI assuming leadership of the Ultramontane movement, as Hermann Pottmeyer explains, Ultramontanism was linked not only to the struggle against the state-controlled church but even more to the struggle against modern errors. The popes understood themselves and their teaching authority as a bulwark against the penetration of modern thought into the Church.18 This self-understanding found eloquent expression in the Syllabus of errors in 1864.

In such a situation, with the world in turmoil, a need emerged within the Catholic Church at the time of Vatican I for the strengthening of the primacy and authority of the pope. It appears that the novel concept of “sovereignty” based on Roman law, which was applied to papal primacy in the nineteenth century, had two advantages. Thus Pottmeyer explains:

Appealing to his external sovereignty, the Pope could claim his independence of princes and states; by reason of his internal authority he could claim a position of absolute independence in relation to councils and bishops within the Church. This concept was thus a suitable means of rejecting, on the one hand, conciliarism and Gallicanism, and, on the other, state control of the Church and other limitations on the primacy by the states. The success of this concept can be seen in the fact that the Pope was more and more named as “Sovereign Pontiff”. . . . Thus it was the struggle for the freedom of the church that seemed to demand an absolute primacy and a centralised government of the church. Conciliar theory and Gallicanism seemed to be necessarily disavowed as being the gateway to the system of state control of the church.19

The defenders of papal authority took the concept of sovereignty, already existing in some European countries prior to the middle of the nineteenth century, and applied it to the primacy.20 The idea of the sovereignty of the pope found its chief expression in the book by Mauro Cappellari (1764–1846), The Triumph of the Holy See and the Church over the Attacks of Innovators, Who are Rejected and Fought with Their Own Weapons,21 which was written to counter Piero Tamburini’s book The Authentic Idea of the Holy See,22 in which Tamburini combined conciliarist and Gallican concepts with the idea of popular sovereignty and democracy.23 In fact, Cappellari’s reasoning was entirely novel. It was based on the conviction that the present provides an interpretation of the Tradition and there is no need to return to the “confusion of antiquity.” What is today has always been. Accordingly, the present form of the Church is its “essential-unchangeable form.”24 His only concern was to support and secure papal sovereignty. He thus determined that the form of Church government given by Christ was that of the second millennium, putting aside the whole Tradition of the first millennium and the testimonies to this tradition.25 In Cappellari’s mind, the only way to settle all disagreements between the Ultramontanists and the Gallicans was through an understanding of papal primacy as sovereignty.26

Cappellari claimed that the episcopal college, along with the pope, has universal jurisdictional authority in the Church. However, it is to be understood that this authority is entirely dependent on the pope, and the collegial jurisdictional authority is shorn of its legal effectiveness.27 Thus, the episcopal college has no real status in his ecclesiological model. Cappellari took a specific position on this important question and did not leave it open. In his view the pope was superior to the college of the bishops, and the collegial character of the episcopate was dependent on him. It thus appears that Cappellari borrowed the idea of sovereignty from the state and applied it to the Church. His novel analogy between the Church and the state made it possible to accept the concept of sovereignty, which is not to be confused with despotism.28 According to Cappellari, God as “sovereign ruler” of the Church has given to the Church, in the person of the pope, a sovereign government.29 Pottmeyer concludes as follows:

True enough, even Cappellari rejected any papal despotism, since the pope is bound by Divine law. However, the bishops would have no way of resisting a despotic or heretical pope except by rebelling or by praying for a divine intervention since he provided no institutional way in which the bishops could regularly exercise their universal responsibility except with the permission of the pope. Cappellari’s position went a step beyond that of the thirteenth century because it claimed the pope’s infallibility was an element in his sovereignty.30

Once Cappellari became Pope Gregory XVI (1831–1846), he put his own ideas into practice.31 The modern conception of sovereignty was likewise part and parcel of the Ultramontanist movement.32 Among the main figures of this movement were the French philosopher Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) and Felicité Lamennais (1782–1854), the founder of “liberal Catholicism” and an Ultramontanist leader from 1830 to 1832. In Lamennais’s view, the sovereignty of the pope was the basis of the Church’s freedom from the state.33 De Maistre firmly located the existence of the Church in the person of the pope. As might be expected, he had no ecclesiology of the episcopate, the laity, the sacraments, or the conciliar life of the Church.34 Congar states emphatically that “thus begins the career of a theory of authority, in fact of the monarchical authority of the Pope, without a true ecclesiology.”35 Bishop Henri Maret’s book, Du concile général et de la paix religieuse, which criticized de Maistre’s absolute conception of the primacy, led to a vehement discussion three months before Vatican I.36 In order to refute de Maistre’s conception of the primacy, Maret proposed the idea of a “complex sovereignty.”37 After an investigation into the history and structure of the Church, Maret considered that Peter and the other apostles formed a “collective unity,”38 just as the pope and the bishops do in a council. Sovereignty belongs, therefore, neither to the pope alone nor to the bishops but is shared by both of them.39 Maret’s notion of “sharing sovereignty” was rejected by Vatican I in its categorical statement: “If anyone says that the Roman Pontiff has only the principal part but not the absolute fullness of this supreme powe...