NAPLES, Florida, JUNE 23, 2005 (
Zenit.org).-
When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger released his book “Called to Communion:
Understanding the Church Today,” he called it a primer of Catholic
ecclesiology.
In it, the future Benedict XVI outlined the origin and essence of the
Church, the role of the papacy and the primacy of Peter, and the Body of
Christ’s unity and “communio.”
Father Matthew Lamb, director of the graduate school of theology and professor of theology at Ave Maria
University, shared with ZENIT an overview of some of those themes as they appear in Cardinal Ratzinger’s book.
Part 2 of this interview will appear Friday.
Q: What is Cardinal Ratzinger’s understanding of the origin and essence of the Church, as outlined in his book?
Father Lamb: Reading “Called to Communion” is a feast for mind and heart.
At the time of its release, Cardinal Ratzinger called it a “primer of
Catholic ecclesiology.” As with his other theological writings, this
book beautifully recovers for our time the great Catholic tradition of
wisdom, of attunement to the “whole” of the Triune God’s creative and
redemptive presence.
“Catholic” means living out of the “whole” of this divine presence. Such
a sapiential approach shows how the New Covenant draws upon and
fulfills the covenant with Israel. Israel was chosen and led out of
Egypt in order to worship the true and only God and thus witness to all
the nations.
In his preaching, teaching and actions, Jesus Christ fulfilled the
messianic promises. At the last supper Our Lord initiated the New
Covenant in his most sacred body and blood. Ratzinger wrote in “Called
to Communion”: “Jesus announces the collapse of the old ritual and …
promises a new, higher worship whose center will be his own glorified
body.”
Jesus announces the eternal Kingdom of God as “the present action of
God” in his own divine person incarnate. As the Father sends Jesus
Christ, so Jesus in turn sends his apostles and disciples.
The origin of the Church is Jesus Christ who sends the Church forth as
the Father sent him. The Apostles and disciples, with their successors
down the ages, form the Church as the “ecclesia,” the gathering of the
“people of God.”
Drawing upon his own doctoral dissertation on the Church in the theology
of St. Augustine, Ratzinger shows that the people of God are what St.
Paul calls the “body of Christ.” The essence of the Church is the people
of God as the Body of Christ, head and members united by the Holy
Spirit in visible communion with the successors of the Apostles, united
with the Pope as successor to Peter.
Lionel:
The Apostles and the Church Fathers saw the Church as the only Ark of
Noah that saves in the flood. It was the great Door through which all
needed to enter to avoid Hell. Exclusive salvation has been taught by
the popes in the Middle Ages. This is missing in Cardinal Ratzinger's
ecclesiology.
Since
he interprets Vatican Council II with a false premise to create a
rupture with the old ecclesiology of the Church.Without his false
premise, the Council supports the Syllabus of Errors on ecumenism and
exclusive salvation in the Catholic Church.So there is schism today with
the successors of the Apostles, the popes over the centuries before
Pius XII.
___________________
The Church continues down the ages the visible and invisible missions of
the Son and the Holy Spirit through preaching and teaching, the
sanctifying sacraments and the unifying governance of her communion with
the successor of Peter.
Q: In “Called to Communion,” what were his thoughts on the role of the Pope in the Church?
Father Lamb: “You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church … I
will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.” In Matthew 16:17-19,
these true words of the Lord Jesus transcend confessional polemics. From
them Ratzinger brings out the role of the Pope.
Reflecting on the commission given to Peter he sees that he is
commissioned to forgive sins. As he writes in “Called to Communion,” it
is a commission to dispense “the grace of forgiveness. It constitutes
the Church. The Church is founded upon forgiveness. Peter himself is the
personal embodiment of this truth, for he is permitted to be the bearer
of the keys after having stumbled, confessed and received the grace of
pardon.”
Q: What did Cardinal Ratzinger note about the primacy of Peter and the unity of the Church?
Father Lamb: He first shows the mission of Peter in the whole of the New
Testament tradition. The essence of apostleship is witnessing to the
resurrection of Jesus. Ratzinger shows the primacy of Peter in this
role, as attested by St. Paul who, even when confronting St. Peter,
acknowledges him in First Corinthians 15:5 as “Cephas” — the Aramaic
word for “rock” — in his witness to the risen Lord.
As such he is the guarantor of the one common Gospel. All the synoptic
Gospels agree in giving Peter the primacy in their lists of apostles.
The mission of Peter is above all to embody the unity of the apostles in
their witness to the risen Lord and the mission he entrusted to them.
Lionel: There is no unity with the apostles since Cardinal Ratzinger rejects exclusive salvation in the Catholic Church.
__________________________
As Ratzinger states in “Called to Communion,” later the sees or
bishoprics identified with apostles become pre-eminent and, as Irenaeus
testifies in the second century, these sees are to acknowledge the
decisive criterion exercised by “the Church of Rome, where Peter and
Paul suffered martyrdom. It was with this Church that every community
had to agree; Rome was the standard of the authentic apostolic tradition
as a whole.”
Lionel:
Rome, the Vatican, has compromised. It promotes heresy and schism.It
has a choice. It can interpret Vatican Council II and other magisterial
documents in harmony with Tradition but for political reasons it chooses
not to do so.
______________
Q: How does the papacy facilitate communion or “communio” in the Church?
Father Lamb: The papacy facilitates “communio” precisely by witnessing
to the transcendent reality of the risen Lord. This was evident in the
first successors to Peter. Like him, they witnessed to the commission
Peter received — many early popes were martyred.
Lionel:
They were also martyred for proclaiming Jesus and the necessity of
being a member of the Catholic Church with faith and baptism. They were
martyred for being in communion with the Apostles.
_________________________
The keys of the Kingdom are the words of forgiveness only God can truly
empower. The papacy promotes communion by fidelity to the truth of the
gospel and the redemptive sacramental mission of forgiveness. In “Called
to Communion” Ratzinger writes: “By his death Jesus has rolled the
stone over the mouth of death, which is the power of hell, so that from
his death the power of forgiveness flows without cease.”
Later Ratzinger returns to this theme of the need of the apostles and
their successors for forgiveness as they are given a mission only the
Triune God could fulfill.
His words in “Called to Communion,” then, find a echo after he was
elected Benedict XVI: “The men in question” — the apostles — “are so
glaringly, so blatantly unequal to this function” — of being rock solid
in their faith and practice — “that the very empowerment of man to be
the rock makes evident how little it is they who sustain the Church but
God alone who does so, who does so more in spite of men than through
them.”
Only through such forgiveness in total fidelity to Jesus Christ and
under the guidance of the Holy Spirit will full communion in the Body of
Christ come about.
Lionel:
There cannot be full communion within the Church with the promotion of a
vague Christology which rejects an ecclesiocentricism.This is a new
ecclesiology. It is flawed. Theologically it has no rational basis.It is
an innovation in the Church supported by Pope Paul VI and Pope
Benedict.
________________________
Ratzinger’s
“Eucharistic ecclesiology” follows the Fathers of Church in uniting the
vertical dimension of the risen body and blood, soul and divinity of
Christ in the Eucharist with the horizontal dimension of the gathering
of the followers of Christ.
“The Fathers summed up these two aspects — Eucharist and gathering — in
the word ‘communio,’ which is once more returning to favor today,”
Ratzinger wrote.
Lionel: The Eucharist is a sign of unity in the Catholic Church and it is only given to Catholics. This was the ecclesiology of Ecclesia di Eucharistia
of Pope John Paul II. It was criticized by Cardinal Kasper. Since Pope
John Paul II did not permit the Eucharist to be given to Orthodox
Christians. For him they were outside the Church.
Cardinal Kasper follows the ecclesiology of Pope Benedict. It has the hermeneutic of rupture with Tradition.
-Lionel Andrades
https://eucharistandmission.blogspot.com/2019/09/there-is-no-unity-with-apostles-since.html
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