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WALTER KASPER, serving at the time as bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart, published in a 1999 Festschrift honoring Bishop Josef Homeyer a chapter on the theology and praxis of the bishop with special reference to the relation of the local bishop to the universal Church. (1) Shortly after the publication of the Festschrift Kasper was appointed to the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, was named a cardinal, and, on the retirement of Cardinal Edward Cassidy, became Prefect of that pontifical council.
Keeping close to his text, I will summarize here Kasper's arguments, referring also to an earlier writing of his on Vatican I, and I will attempt to situate his theology in the context of ongoing theological reflection. I will look briefly at the discussion between Cardinal Kasper and Cardinal Ratzinger on the ontological priority of the universal Church, sketch Kasper's appropriation of the teaching of Thomas Aquinas, look more substantively at Kasper's understanding of Vatican II's position both on institution of the bishop's office by the will of Jesus Christ, and the pastoral, collegial, and sacramental character of that office together with its relation to the Petrine office. Finally, I will touch on the theological status of the synods of bishops and episcopal conferences, the election of bishops, and the personal responsibility of the bishop for the leadership of his local church.
THE ONTOLOGICAL PRIORITY OF THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH
In his Festschrift article, Kasper took issue with the position of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) expressed in a 1992 letter on "Some Aspects of the Church Understood as Communion." (2) The letter, intended to correct some interpretations of Vatican II's position on the Church as a communion, stated that "the universal Church is ontologically and temporally prior to the local church" (no. 9). (3) Kasper wrote that the position criticized by the CDF letter, namely, the local church as a self-sufficient subject, and the universal Church as a federation of local churches, is rightly rebuked, as it is "a position no Catholic theologian could earnestly represent." (4) But, in his view, the response of the CDF is excessive. In asserting the ontological and temporal priority of the universal Church over the local church, the CDF goes far beyond Vatican II, amounting to a "departure (Verabscheidung)" from the council's teaching, "more or less a subversion (Umkehrung)" of Vatican II's position. The position taken by CDF is to be understood as "a theological attempt to restore Roman centralism ... a process which appears to have already begun." (5) In a word, "the relationship of the local church and the universal Church has been thrown out of balance." (6)
Kasper's position is that the universal Church is not ontologically and temporally prior to the local church, but the mystery of the Church is such that the universal Church and local churches exist simultaneously. When one is in the diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart one is already in the universal Church. One does not step out of the diocese in order to enter the universal Church. When one speaks of the "one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church" one does not mean just the universal Church, as though the universal Church existed as an abstraction, apart from its realization in the local churches of the world. No. What is meant is the concrete Church which is at the same time local and universal. (7) The universal Church is not ontologically prior to the local churches. (8)
Thomas Aquinas Can Surprise Us
Although the public theological debate between the two cardinals focused on the claim of the CFD of the universal Church's ontological priority, Kasper had raised a series of issues touching the bishop's office. Of interest is not only his position but his manner of doing theology. Kasper has conservative credentials, a board member of the conservative journal Communio (together with Joseph Ratzinger, Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Karl Lehmann), a journal which emerged after Vatican II as a counterbalance to the more liberal journal Concilium.
True to his credentials as a conservative man of the center open to the future, he begins his theology of the bishop's office with a look at its source in Scripture and tradition, and then provides an extensive section on the teaching of Thomas Aquinas (amounting to one-third of his whole discussion). (9) Kasper looks to Aquinas not for the definitive statement, but as a pointer, reminding us of how frequently Aquinas surprises, showing himself free of determinations of age and culture, able to reflect the broad ancient tradition. For instance, Aquinas teaches that the bishop's office belongs "to the ecclesiastical order of beauty," a concept that seems to fascinate Aquinas. (10) The interpretation of Scripture is the bishop's "principal office carried to the highest degree (principalissimum)." (11) Only out of the need of love, that is the need of the Church, should one assume the office of bishop, and it is the need of the Church which does not allow a man to refuse the office when asked to assume it. The office belongs to the status perfectionis, meaning it is an objective ministry directed to making others holy. (12) The assumption of the bishop's office must be a sign of readiness for martyrdom. For Aquinas episcopus means superintendens, but not in the sense of watching over in the managerial sense, but of watchful care in the pastoral sense. (13) Neither fear nor panic should characterize the bishop's ministry, but a "believing deliberateness," because of the One who is in the boat whom even the wind and the rain obey. (14)
KASPER ON THE EPISCOPACY AND PRIMACY AT VATICAN I
Any theologian who writes on the theology of the bishop in the documents of Vatican II needs to be acquainted with the teaching of Vatican I. Vatican II was both completing the work of the earlier council and restoring the balance between primacy and episcopacy that was the consequence of the abrupt ending of Vatican I because of the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. In 1962, while still a young theology professor, Kasper wrote an article on primacy and episcopacy in Vatican I. (15) There he noted that in spite of the numerous publications on Vatican I, research was still "in its beginnings," partly because of the oversimplified views of the relationship between primacy and episcopacy. (16) More specifically, the tendency was to see Vatican I as resolving the dialectic that has existed over the centuries between papacy and episcopacy in a "victory for papalism." (17) Though Vatican I's preliminary schema De ecclesia, authored by Clemens Schrader, clearly represented the Ultramontanist view, it was free of the extremes of neo-papalism. (18) And even the definition of infallibility itself was not a moment of papal triumphalism. Kasper notes that Cardinal Guidi of Bologna wanted to make clear that to say that infallibility was guaranteed by the assistance of the Holy Spirit could be misunderstood, as though the person of the pope was changed. Rather the pope is free from error by virtue of an "actual grace (auxilium actuale)," "a transient illumination (lux transiens)." (19) The specific act is infallible.
Vatican I was more concerned with the relationship of the primacy to the individual bishop than to the college of bishops. (20) Because the council did not in a substantive way get to the consideration of the role of bishops, the definition of papal primacy is one-sided (though not in an exclusive sense, which would be heretical). Still the definition must be judged against the perspective of the errors against which it was directed and not in the abstract. The definition needs to be seen in the context of the whole truth which is present in Scripture and tradition. "The truth is always whole." (21) In fact, Vatican I did not present a distorted teaching either about the papacy or the episcopacy.
Both the vision and the vocabulary of Vatican I are juridical. The primacy is a primacy of jurisdiction, but again, jurisdiction seen over against privileges and investitures of other powers. This perspective must be kept in mind when evaluating the text. Within the Catholic tradition such juridical categories and language have their place, even while recognizing that the Scriptures speak a different vernacular. Indeed,... |
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