A Global Moment of Christian Reflection: The New Roman Pontif
The election of a new Roman Pontif is a happy event upon which it is right to dwell with the warmest sentiments of felicity and good will. It affords the opportunity for a profoundly ecumenical moment when all Christians can join in prayer for a successful ministry in furtherance of the Gospel we share. The ceremonies to inaugurate the new ministry of Pope Leo will give powerful expression to this in the breadth and depth of supportive ecumenical representation which they will display.
Such a “global moment” is welcome for the further reason that it should invite reflection upon the complex place in which Christianity finds itself in our present world. It is experiencing at the same time, both unparalleled global growth on the one hand, and an alarming interior crisis on the other – something we see as a painful hollowing out and decline in some of its historic heartlands.
Grand displays of public Christianity in Europe and the wider West can invite neglect of the steady erosion of the Christian voice in the public square and educational institutions, together with its delegitimization as a source of moral insight and cultural critique. There is a seemingly relentless pressure to view Christianity as part of a wider Western culture we should forsake, no matter how impoverished the alternatives now being promoted.
This context, together with the modern urge to personalize otherwise faceless institutions — which we see illustrated in the way that Bill Gates, Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg somehow embody their corporations to the media — gives a powerful PR advantage to hierarchical churches with highly identifiable leaders, such as archbishops, patriarchs and indeed popes.
Yet, there is a further if less expected parallel impulse between the contesting Christian and secular worldviews. This lies in the quest for some form of unassailable, not to say foundational authority, mysteriously transcendent of mere prevailing convention. We see this in the secular world in the quasi-religious mystique vested in human rights, along with the attendant desire to create a cast of infallible oracles in a priestly cast of lawyers and judges charged with unveiling, expanding and enforcing them — all the while claiming to stand above the popular will and sovereignty as foundational authority.
The underlying impulse is one familiar within Christianity where the location of an infallible source or, deposit of truth and understanding, has long been both claimed and contested.
In this regard, a defining historical note for Anglicans has been, since the Reformation, a rejection of the claims to juridical authority of the Roman papacy. This position endures despite an ecumenical willingness to afford a primacy of honor to the Roman pontiff even if the office has sometimes been felt a tad overbearing to Anglican eyes. Pius XII dedicated the entire universe to the Virgin Mary – thus presupposing, as a later Cardinal pointed out with some puzzlement that the Universe was within his gift. Then again, it was only recently that one of the pontifical titles, namely that of “Patriarch of the West” was dropped on the basis that it was “too limiting”….
Related to this is the specific yet complex Roman claim to infallibility, not just for the church itself as a teaching institution, which dates back a very long way in the history of the Church, but more narrowly for the Roman Pope in particular – a claim only made of obligation on pain of damnation on July 18th, 1870, a day replete with the drama of a great thunderstorm “which darkened the basilica of St Peter’s at noon!” Nonetheless, in the opinion of the noted Newman scholar, Fergus Kerr, the day actually “marked the beginning of the end of the history of papal infallibility.” That perspective makes quite ironic and premature Cardinal Newman’s original fear that a required doctrine of Papal infallibility would entail no less than “a climax of tyranny” (Letters, XXV. 231).
In fact, what emerged subsequently in the Roman church has been the result of a complex process of what theologians call “reception” regarding this doctrine. This has shown it to be susceptible of highly varied interpretations, with a remarkable ebb and flow in the scale of what is claimed for it.
The number of instances where papal infallibility has been exercised has proved strikingly hard to define, though overall the claimed scale seems to have shrunk remarkably since the doctrine was first promulgated. Then again, in more recent times, those Roman Catholics most inclined to invoke papal infallibility, as a vital personal charism of the papal office under John Paul II and Benedict XVI, when they claimed it was needed to protect the church from error, tended to see it as entirely marginal under Pope Francis.
All of this points to what the liberal in Newman foresaw, namely a church in which seemingly rigid declarations over time become re-understood. As he put it, “We cannot force things. The Council cannot force things – the voice of the Schola Theologorum, of the whole Church diffusive, will in time make itself heard, and Catholic instincts and ideas will assimilate and harmonize into the credenda of Christendom, and the living tradition of the faithful what at present many would impose upon us, and many are startled at, as a momentous addition to the faith.” And as he later added in regard to the dogma of papal infallibility, “other definitions are necessary, and were intended. and will be added, if we are patient, to reduce the dogma to its proper proportions and place in the Catholic system” (Letters, XXV. 415).
The importance of understanding ourselves and our place in the history of the church is indeed profound and should entail a certain humility. A very good way of reminding ourselves of this is therefore this concept and process of theological reception – a lengthy process to which all new thinking in theology must be subject if we are to avoid the dangers of presumption.
It is a commonplace in one sense to say that theological revision is taking place all the time. In an important way, theology is inherently an exercise in revision, in the sense that “the faith which was once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) is constantly re-appropriated by each new generation in new circumstances. Every fresh appropriation is inevitably in this sense a revision. Here again, a certain humility is important — wherein each generation must submit itself to the wider judgement of the church over time.
This is to take seriously the fact that there is no way of telling in advance of that process whether we are currently seeing things in a new perspective which is to say, seeing (and saying) things differently, while still in fact seeing (and saying) the same things — or whether we are instead simply saying something completely different from what previous generations have believed!
As Anglicans we are faced with an array of major issues for which the process of reception is very much underway and remains highly contested, so we should expect that process to have a long way yet to run. But it is important therefore to note, that despite often invoking the motto semper idem, the Church of Rome is enmeshed in the complexities of reception too.
Let us all pray that Pope Leo XIV enjoys a fruitful and unifying ministry in the years ahead. His first words from the balcony of St Peter’s after his election are ones upon which we can all most certainly unite and affirm, knowing that “We are disciples of Christ. Christ goes before us. The world needs His light.”
The Rev. Canon Alistair Macdonald-Radcliff
Rector