“For you I am a ; With You I am a Christian”

The Office of Bishop in a Global

Richard R. Gaillardetz, Ph.D Murray/Bacik Professor of Studies University of Toledo

Approximately thirteen centuries ago, the Venerable Bede wrote: “Every day the church gives birth to the church.”1 Whether you welcome it or lament it, there can be no doubt that over the last few decades a new church is being born. Consider John Allen’s recent account of some of the demographic shifts in Catholicism that took place over the past century:

In 1900, there were 459 million Catholics in the world, 392 million of whom lived in Europe and North America. 100 years ago remained an overwhelmingly white, first world phenomenon. By 2000, there were 1.1 billion Catholics, with just 380 million in Europe and North America, and the rest, 720 million, in the global South. Africa alone went from 1.9 million Catholics in 1900 to 130 million in 2000, a growth rate of almost 7,000 percent. This is the most rapid and sweeping demographic transformation of Catholicism in its 2,000 year history.2 This tectonic shift is creating eruptions of new ecclesial vitality in unanticipated places and unexpected forms. It suggests that today, there may be more to learn from the churches of Sao

Paolo, Manila and Kinshasa than from the churches of Paris, Munich and Rome. Its impact is being felt in the church’s liturgy and theology, in its missionary activity and in its leadership structures. The office of the bishop has not been exempt from the influence of these global developments. It is the future of that office that I wish to consider in my lecture this afternoon.

1 PL 93:166d. 2 See, “Ten Mega-Trends Shaping the ,” All Things Catholic (December 22nd, 2006) http://ncrcafe.org/node/782. The Bishop in a Global Church -- 2

I. Historical Shifts in the Office of the Bishop

Roman Catholicism has long viewed the historical episcopate as a permanent and divinely willed structure of the church. Yet the episcopal office has undergone often dramatic changes over the last two millennia.3 It is worth recalling some of these shifts, if only briefly.

The first shift came in the second century when many churches moved from a collegial model of local church leadership, one where communities were led by groups of ministers often referred to interchangeably as presbyteroi or episkopoi, to one in which each eucharistic community was presided over by a single episkopos. In this new setting, however, the bishop more closely resembled a modern day parish pastor than what we think of as a bishop today.

The second shift occurred in the fourth and fifth centuries when of urban

Christian communities had to determine how to deal with the ministerial needs of various satellite or mission communities. One solution involved the appointment of another bishop, known as a chorbishop, to these communities, usually functioning under the authority of the main bishop. Eventually this solution gave way to the practice of assigning a presbyter to preside over the in these communities. Bishops soon had leadership responsibilities for multiple eucharistic communities within their jurisdiction.

A third shift occurred near the end of the first millennium as the office of the bishop became gradually entangled in feudal structures that placed the very autonomy of the church at risk. The buying and selling of episcopal benefices and the involvement of the nobility in episcopal appointment led to the Gregorian reforms of the eleventh century. These reforms had as their goal the preservation of the distinction between the civil and spiritual authority of the

3 Kenan Osborne, “Envisioning a Theology of Ordained and Lay Ministry,” in Ordering the Baptismal Priesthood, edited by Susan K. Wood (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2003), 195-227, especially 211-15. The Bishop in a Global Church -- 3 bishop. These reforms also set in motion an ecclesiastical trajectory that would define the bishop as a priest with more expansive jurisdiction and make his authority at least theoretically dependent on the pope. In sacramental theology the presbyterate was viewed as the summit of ordained ministry. This theology further fueled the gradual transition from bishop-centered to priest-centered pastoral leadership of many local communities.

A fourth shift transpired in the late sixteenth century as the required that bishops reside in the diocese to which they were assigned. The dominant theological view still held that the bishop received the power of jurisdiction from the papacy. Again, many of the bishops at Trent objected to this theory. They held that while the pope may assign a particular jurisdiction to a bishop, the source of the power of jurisdiction, the power to pastor a flock, came from episcopal itself. In spite of the vigorous debate at the council, these matters were left unresolved.

We are in the midst of a fifth shift that was inaugurated at Vatican II but has not yet been fully realized. It would be natural for us to locate this final shift in the council’s explicit teaching on the bishop’s office. Recall that the council settled affirmatively the question of the sacramentality of episcopal consecration. It taught that the bishop was the vicar of within his local church and not a papal delegate. It also formalized the doctrine of episcopal collegiality, teaching that the whole college of bishops shared with the bishop of Rome supreme authority over the whole church. However, I believe that the conciliar teachings that have the greatest potential for re-shaping the ministry of the bishop are found elsewhere. Later in my presentation I will sketch out a possible future for the office of the bishop, but first we need to lay some groundwork by looking at two further contributions of the council: first, the council developed a global theology of mission that reinvigorated our understanding of the church’s The Bishop in a Global Church -- 4

, and second, the council recovered a long neglected theology of the local church.

These two contributions, more than any thing else, led Karl Rahner to argue that with Vatican II

we were witnessing the advent of a new epoch in church history, one in which Catholicism was

becoming for the first time a true world church.4 For the balance of my presentation this afternoon I will first consider these two contributions in more detail, then tease out their implications for episcopal ministry, and then conclude with some brief reflections on what all of this has to say to the church of North America.

II. Conciliar Developments Influencing the Office of the Bishop

When Pope Benedict XVI gave his Regensburg address last year, I was interviewed by

some members of the media regarding my reaction to both the address itself and the controversy

that it raised. I said at the time that I thought the derogatory reference to Islam was regrettable,

not only on its own merits, but because it distracted attention from what might be an even more

provocative part of his address, namely his description of the link between Christianity and

Hellenistic thought. In a recent article in Commonweal Peter Phan has also called our attention

to Pope Benedict’s argument.5 At Regensburg the pope made a case for the inseparable

relationship between faith and reason. In the midst of that argument, however, he made a rather

bold claim:

This inner rapprochement between biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry was an event of decisive importance not only from the standpoint of the history of religions, but also from that of world history—it is an event that concerns us even today. Given this convergence, it is not surprising that Christianity, despite its

4 Karl Rahner, “Basic Theological Interpretation of the ,” in Concern for the Church [Theological Investigations, vol. 20] (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 78. 5 Peter Phan, “Speaking in Many Tongues: Why the Church Must be More Catholic,” Commonweal (January 12, 2007): 16-9. The Bishop in a Global Church -- 5

origins and some significant developments in the East, finally took on its historically decisive character in Europe.6 If one considers not only this most recent lecture but his pre-papal writings, it becomes evident that although Pope Benedict is not opposed to the process of cultural engagement per se, he has

vigorously insisted that in Europe the church achieved its own unique cultural form, and while

that European form may engage other cultural contexts, it can never lose its priority.7 In an address he first delivered 1993, then Cardinal Ratzinger had argued for the notion of inter- culturality in which the proper form of such dialogue is between the church’s own universal culture of the faith and other local cultures. Aylward Shorter refers to this as the “two culture theory.”8

At Regensburg, Pope Benedict also challenged contemporary theological interest in

cultural pluralism, which he appeared to equate with cultural relativism, seeing it as the latest

stage in a troubling attempt to de-Hellenize the church. The pope believes it was providential

that the Christian faith was so decisively influenced by Hellenistic culture, first by way of the

Septuagint and then the authorship of the texts in the Greek language.

The pope developed his argument with his customary clarity, eloquence and erudition. It

is important for us to remember, however, that the Regensburg address was an academic lecture.

In my view, we are not dealing here with an exercise of the pope’s papal magisterium but rather

with the reflections of the pope speaking as theologian. The argument that he made at

Regensburg, in other words, is not exempt form criticism.

6 Pope Benedict XVI, “The Regensburg Academic Lecture,” Origins 36 (September 28, 2006): 250. 7 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger with Vittorio Messori, The Ratzinger Report (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985), 103; idem, “In the Encounter of Christianity and Religions, Syncretism is not the Goal,” L’Osservatore Romano [English edition] (April 26th, 1995), 5-8. 8 Aylward Shorter, “Faith, Culture and the Global Village,” South Pacific Journal of Mission Studies (March 1996): 31-8. The Bishop in a Global Church -- 6

A. A New Catholicity: Christianity as a “Translated Religion” In the past twenty years or so, there has been a growing body of historiographical

literature that appears to contradict key elements of Benedict’s argument. In particular, it is

possible to give a quite different interpretation to the significance of a Greek New Testament.

Where Pope Benedict sees this as evidence that Greek thought has a permanent and decisive

place in Christianity, the African scholar Lamin Sanneh, in his book, Whose Religion is

Christianity? takes a strikingly different view. For him, what is most noteworthy about the

Greek New Testament is that it was not written in Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Sanneh sees

the Greek New Testament as evidence that Christianity has always been fundamentally a

“translated religion.”9

I would like to explore this insight further. Christianity is often characterized, along with

the religions of Judaism and Islam, as a “religion of the book.” But this is true of Christianity

only in a secondary sense. Christians assert that the fullness of divine revelation came not in a

text but in a person. Consequently, if one wishes to compare Islam to Christianity, one must not

look for a correspondence between the Qur’an and the , but rather between the Qur’an and the living Word of God incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth.

I often invite my students to consider the full implications of the fact that Jesus did not leave us a written text. He did not write any memoirs or leave behind a manual of instruction.

Christianity was born out of the communal encounter with the risen Christ. The first Christian texts that would eventually become Scripture were written decades after Jesus’ death and resurrection. Jesus left behind, not a sacred text, but a community of believers who kept alive his

9 Lamin Sanneh, Whose Religion is Christianity? The Beyond the West (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003). The Bishop in a Global Church -- 7 message and mission through communal worship, storytelling and distinctive moral conduct.

Sanneh writes:

Being the original Scripture of the Christian movement, the New Testament are a translated version of the message of Jesus, and that means Christianity is a translated religion without a revealed language. The issue is not whether Christians translated their Scripture well or willingly, but that without translation there would be no Christianity or Christians. Translation is the church’s birthmark as well as its missionary benchmark: the church would be unrecognizable or unsustainable without it.10 The African theologian sees linguistic translation as an apt metaphor for the church’s catholicity.

He continues:

The fact of Christianity being a translated, and translating, religion places God at the center of the universe of cultures, implying free coequality among cultures and a necessary relativizing of languages vis-à-vis the truth of God. No culture is so advanced and so superior that it can claim exclusive access or advantage to the truth of God, and none so marginal or inferior that it can be excluded.11 What Sanneh has in mind here, if I understand him correctly, is the catholicity of the incarnation itself. Recall that when Vatican II reflected on the church’s mission in Ad Gentes 22, it appealed to the analogy of the incarnation. It noted that just as the Word became flesh in Jesus of

Nazareth, so too in the mission of the church of Christ becomes enfleshed in the culture of the people who receive that gospel. Sanneh locates the distinctive missionary dynamism of Christianity in the capacity of the gospel to be incarnated in virtually any culture.

Well known is early Christianity’s westward growth through Asia Minor, modern day

Greece and Italy and then up through Gaul to England. Less well known is the fact that

Christianity grew as fast or faster eastward. In the third century St. Gregory the Illuminator accompanied merchants to bring Christianity to Armenia, creating an Armenian church that has

10 Ibid., 97. 11 Ibid., 105-6. The Bishop in a Global Church -- 8

kept alive to this day a distinctive form of Christian witness. The gospel would continue to

spread through Persia, interacting with Zoroastrian religion. Some missionaries apparently reached India. Legend has it that the apostle Thomas was one of them. Today, descendents of this Eastern missionary imperative are found in the Assyrian , the Syrian

Orthodox church and others.12 In the seventh century, an East Syrian missionary named Alopen

reached China during the reign of the T’ang dynasty.13 He arrived during a period of religious

tolerance and the Chinese emperor ordered him to translate the Christian scriptures into Chinese.

And I have not made any mention of the development of Christianity in Egypt, other parts of

Northern Africa, or the spread of the gospel southward along the Nile River to Ethiopia. As

Philip Jenkins has observed, “founded in the Near East, Christianity for its first thousand years was stronger in Asia and North Africa than in Europe, and only after about 1400 did Europe (and

Europeanized North America) decisively become the Christian heartland.”14

Many associate the global character of Christianity today with the morally ambiguous

missionary impulse of the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries in which the church cooperated

with the often brutal excesses of Western colonialism. Yet, in Africa, for example, Christianity

has grown more rapidly in the post-colonial period than it ever did in the centuries of colonial

rule. Sanneh suggests that the story of world Christianity needs to be told from a new

perspective. Instead of reading world Christianity from the perspective of the Christian

discovery and conquest of indigenous cultures, this story needs to be told as the indigenous

12 See Roberson for a history of these churches. 13 Dale T. Irvin and Scott W. Sunquist, History of the World Christian Movement, Volume 1 (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2001), 314-22. 14 Philip Jenkins, The Next : The Coming of Global Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 15. The Bishop in a Global Church -- 9 discovery of the Christian gospel.15 This indigenous discovery of the gospel of Jesus Christ is producing dramatically non-Western forms of Christian life.

To briefly summarize, recent historical scholarship has helped us deepen our appreciation for the catholicity of the church. The peculiar genius of Christianity’s global spread may lie in the fact that at its center we find a person and a message rather than a text. The communication of the spiritual significance of this person and his message demanded a process of inculturation that was begun at Pentecost when the inhabitants of Jerusalem heard the witness to the risen

Christ each in their own language. The inculturation of the gospel is the church’s “birthmark” and its “missionary benchmark.” It is by seeing Christianity as a “translated and translating religion” that we come to embrace the church’s full catholicity. This global catholicity, embraced at the council, is closely connected to the council’s renewed theology of the local church.

B. The Local Church and a Theology of Ecclesial Reception In chapter three of Lumen Gentium, the council considered the bishop’s relationship to his local or particular church and wrote that “it is in and from these [particular churches] that the one and unique catholic church exists” (LG 23). This passage has been much discussed in the decades since the council. It is seen as one of a number of passages in which the council recognized that the local church is not just a branch office of some universal corporation, but is where the universal church is encountered. Since the council, this theology of the local church has provided an apt starting point for considering the relationship between tradition and reception.

For much of the second millennium, theologies of tradition attended primarily to what was being handed on, namely the apostolic faith, or to the organs by which the faith was handed

15 Sanneh, 10. The Bishop in a Global Church -- 10 on, that is the church’s apostolic office. In such a theology, the local church played little role.

The faithful gathered in each place simply to accept from the bishops what was being handed on to them, the one apostolic faith. However, if one considers the local church as not merely a passive recipient of the gospel but an active ecclesial agent in the local appropriation of the faith, then more attention will need to be given to the role of reception in the life of the church, that is, how tradition grows and develops because of the way in which the faith is received from generation to generation in each local church where the gospel is preached.

Contemporary theologies of reception have been enriched by a creative conversation between theology and the fields of hermeneutics, literary theory, reader-reception theory, communications theory and anthropological studies of the role of popular religion, all of which have emphasized the active role of the receiver in events of interpretation and communication.

Let me take but one example of these contributions, the contemporary work being done in the study of popular religion. Orlando Espin, one of the more influential Latino theologians writing today, contends that theologies of tradition have focused exclusively on the decrees of ecumenical councils and papal statements.16 This focus on the means by which formal church doctrine is promulgated must be augmented, he believes, by a consideration of “the living witness and faith of the Christian people.”17 The rituals and symbols of popular religion, as they are exhibited in the life of local communities, provide an example of the distinctive cultural reception of the Christian gospel in a local church.

16 Orlando Espin, The Faith of the People: Theological Reflections on Popular Catholicism (Marhknoll: Orbis, 1997), 17. Espin, in turn, has been influenced by theories concerning the social construction of reality developed, in quite different ways, by Peter Berger and Antonio Gramsci. 17 Ibid., 65. The Bishop in a Global Church -- 11

In his book, The Faith of the People: Theological Reflections on Popular Catholicism,

Espin considers the popularity of graphic, bloody portraits of the crucified Jesus common in

Latino spirituality. Often dismissed as pious Christological distortions, Espin makes a

persuasive case that these artistic portraits present a rich theology of the vanquished Christ

honored by a people who have themselves experienced vanquishment.18 He writes:

The Christ of Latino passion symbolism is a tortured, suffering human being. The images leave no room for doubt. This dying Jesus, however, is so special because he is not just one more human who suffers unfairly at the hands of evil men. He is the divine Christ, and that makes his innocent suffering all the more dramatic….In his passion and death he has come to be in solidarity with all those throughout history who have also innocently suffered at the hands of evildoers. In other words, it seems that Latino faith intuitively sensed the true humanness of Jesus, like ours in all things except sinful guilt.19 These artistic portraits are examples of a creative reception of the apostolic faith in a particular cultural context which seeks to make Christian faith and hope meaningful to a vanquished people. Contemporary studies in popular religion offer but one example of the significance of considering the Christian faith not solely in terms of those who transmit the faith, or that which is transmitted, but also from the perspective of those who creatively receive it and make it their own.

A re-conceived episcopal office must take into account these two insights—first, that the catholicity of the church is rooted in Christianity’s distinctive status as a translated religion

hospitable to all forms of local cultural appropriation, and second, that a theology of the local

church must be attentive to the ways in which each local church receives and appropriates the

gospel message within its distinctive cultural milieu. We are now in a position to consider the office of the bishop directly.

18 Ibid., 23. 19 Ibid., 72. The Bishop in a Global Church -- 12

III. Re-Imagining the Office of the Bishop

For centuries we have understood the bishops’ teaching office in relation to the church’s apostolicity. We have insisted, rightly, on the responsibility of the bishop to guard the integrity of the apostolic faith as it is transmitted in his local church. What I am proposing today is that in a world church, the bishop’s teaching office must be equally concerned with facilitating the catholicity of that faith.

A. The Bishop as Servant of the Catholicity of the Faith The role of the bishop in Catholic makes him uniquely suited for this ministry. Every diocesan bishop is both pastor of a local church and a member of the college of bishops. This allows the bishop to facilitate a two-way conversation in the life of the church.

First, the bishop brings the one apostolic faith to his local flock. This obligation is fulfilled in diverse ways. It is realized in episcopal preaching, in the issuance of pastoral letters and in the bishop’s oversight of the ministries of evangelization and catechesis. Yet too little attention is paid to the bishop’s responsibility to preside over the creative reception of the apostolic faith in his local church. This follows from what we have already said regarding ecclesial reception.

Each local church, in receiving the faith, makes that faith its own. We might recall the teaching of Pope John Paul II regarding the close relationship between faith and culture. In 1982 the pope wrote:

The synthesis between culture and faith is not just a demand of culture, but also of faith...A faith which does not become culture is a faith which has not been fully received, not thoroughly thought through, not faithfully lived out...20 If we believe that something genuinely new and vital can emerge as each local church appropriates the gospel in its distinct cultural context, then it is not just the universal church that

20 L'Osservatore Romano, [English language edition] (June 28, 1982), 7. The Bishop in a Global Church -- 13

has something to offer the local church, but the local church that has a precious gift to offer to

the universal communion of churches. Moreover, it is the task of the local bishop to facilitate

that “gift exchange.” As servant of the catholicity of the faith, the bishop must see as central to

his ministry the obligation to bring his local church’s unique gospel witness to the broader

communion of churches by way of his participation in the college of bishops. Consequently, the

traditional focus on the teaching office of the bishop as one of faithfully “handing on” the apostolic faith must be augmented by the episcopal responsibility to ensure the catholicity of the

faith.

This ecclesial gift exchange presupposes, of course, that the bishop has a close

relationship with the local church he was ordained to serve. Here we are confronted with a real

difficulty for the bishop of today has a much weaker relationship to his local church than was the

case in the church’s first five centuries or so. We should recall that ancient church canons

required that the local church either choose its bishop or at least approve of the appointment.

These canons also prohibited the transfer of bishops from one see to another. The consequence

of these canonical restrictions was a much more developed and secure bond between the bishop

and his local church. Let us make no mistake, there were bishops then, as now, who abused their

episcopal authority, but we also find ample testimony of bishops whose lifelong commitment to

their flock led them to appreciate the gifts and witness of their people. St. Cyprian of Carthage,

for example, wrote of the importance of consulting the clergy and the faithful. He believed that

the effectiveness and authority of the bishop as teacher depended on his ability to be a humble

learner. In Epistle 74 he wrote:

But it is unrepentant presumption and insolence that induces men to defend their own perverse errors instead of giving assent to what is right and true, but has come from another. The blessed apostle Paul foresaw this when he wrote to Timothy with the admonition that a bishop should be not wrangling or The Bishop in a Global Church -- 14

quarrelsome but gentle and teachable. Now a man is teachable if he is meek and gentle and patient in learning. It is thus a bishop’s duty not only to teach but also to learn. For he becomes a better teacher if he makes daily progress and advancement in learning what is better.21 This conviction informed the bold assertion of the early fifth century bishop, St. Paulinus of Nola

who wrote: “Let us listen to what all the faithful say, because in every one of them the Spirit of

God breathes.”22 St. Augustine would never be accused of abdicating his responsibilities as bishop, yet he did not lose sight of the close bond that existed between him and the people he served. He gave a moving expression of this bond in one of his many :

When I am frightened by what I am for you, then I am consoled by what I am with you. For you I am the bishop, with you I am a Christian. The first is an office, the second a grace; the first a danger, the second salvation.23 We must resist the temptation to romanticize the views of these ancient voices. They were men

of their times. There is much in the exercise of their office that we would not wish contemporary

bishops to emulate. Moreover, the church today is quite different from the church of the third

through fifth centuries. However, there is no denying the bond they shared with the churches

they served. Today, this bond has been progressively weakened in both canon law and theology.

A global ecclesiology demands a vigorous recovery of the bishop’s relationship to his local

church.

B. Contemporary Examples of Episcopal Ministry in a Global Key This account of the bishop as servant of the catholicity of the faith is not a mere

abstraction. Though they hardly constitute the majority, there are bishops in the last few decades

who embodied this commitment to serve the catholicity of the faith. A few examples must

21 Epistle, 74, 10. 22 Epistle 23, 36. 23 340, 1. The Bishop in a Global Church -- 15

suffice. Bishop Samuel Ruiz served for forty years as bishop of the Diocese of San Cristóbal de

Las Casas from 1959 to 2000. It is one of three dioceses in Chiapas, the southernmost and

poorest state of Mexico. Almost 80% of the diocese is comprised of indigenous Mayan peoples.

The indigenous peoples belong to the lowest rung of the social ladder in Mexico and have been

the victims of over a century of economic and political repression and human rights violations.

When Bishop Ruiz was ordained to serve the Diocese of San Cristóbal on the eve of Vatican II,

his pastoral plan, such as it was, had three points: 1) teach Spanish to the indigenous peoples, 2)

provide them with clothing, 3) improve their diet.24 Religious education was a simple matter of

teaching the catechism to the people. What transpired over the following decades was the

transformation of both a diocese and its bishop.

By his own account, Bishop Ruiz was converted by his people.25 As he traveled to the

hundreds of small communities in his diocese to visit the people, he soon realized that his pastoral initiatives, although well intentioned, were contributing to the destruction of the indigenous cultures.26 As he grew into his episcopal office, Ruiz would speak with greater

frequency of his episcopal ministry as a ministry of “accompaniment” with the people. He

realized that ecclesiastical structures like the presbyteral council and diocesan pastoral council

were insufficient for establishing the kind of broad-based participation in the life of the diocese

that he thought was necessary. These canonically mandated structures could not take into

account the great regional diversity of the diocese. So he invited the various regions in his

24 Michel Andraos, Praxis of Peace: The Pastoral Work and Theology of Bishop Samuel Ruiz and the Diocese of San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico (Unpublished dissertation, University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto, 2000), 94. 25 Samuel Ruiz (with the collaboration of Carles Torner), Cómo me convirtieron los indígenas, [Colección Servidores y Testigos] (Santander: Editorial Sal Terrae, 2002). 26 Bishop Samuel Ruiz, “In This Hour of Grace,” Origins 23 (February 10, 1994): 589-602, at 599. The Bishop in a Global Church -- 16

diocese to develop their own pastoral plans as a way of “incarnating” the gospel in their local communities. In so doing the indigenous communities made use of a traditional Mayan democratic process, the convocation of local assemblies. After over a decade of preparation, a

diocesan assembly comprised of leaders from these communities met to approve a diocesan-wide

pastoral plan, remarkable for its grassroots origins. A second plan would later emerge out of a

diocesan held in 1999, just prior to Ruiz’ retirement. Ruiz also gave the lead to the local

tribal leadership in calling forth ministerial candidates to be formed as catechists and permanent deacons.

Throughout his episcopal ministry, Ruiz remained insistent that he was doing no more than applying Vatican II’s imperative to read the signs of the times and allow the gospel to take root in each culture. He never rejected the priority of the gospel and the authority of church teaching but insisted that the gospel need to be incarnated in the culture of the people. He acknowledged his own episcopal authority, but felt that this did not preclude his engagement in substantive consultation with the people he served. Not surprisingly, many of Ruiz’ pastoral initiatives were controversial, and Rome has recently ordered his successor to suspend the permanent diaconate in his diocese precisely because of the indigenous elements that were incorporated into the formation process.

Filipino Bishop Francisco Claver served in the Philippines as bishop of Malaybalay

Diocese and later as Vicar Apostolic of the church of Bontoc-Lagawe. He has often spoken eloquently of his experience of non-Christian indigenous peoples “teaching” the local Christians about gospel values from the riches of their own cultural heritage. When he first became bishop in Mindanao, he began his ministry by conducting extensive interviews with the local peoples, seeking to understand their daily concerns and the ways in which the gospel spoke to their lives. The Bishop in a Global Church -- 17

He strongly supported the development of basic ecclesial communities as a way to help the people make the Christian gospel pertinent to their daily lives.

A third example is Bishop Kevin Dowling of Rustenburg, South Africa. Dowling’s advocacy for his people began in the wake of apartheid and the dramatic displacement of populations that followed. Dowling encouraged the establishment of church-sponsored health clinics to meet the needs of the poor in his church. His close contact with his people and their needs exposed him to the full extent of the devastation of a whole society being wrought by the

HIV/AIDS epidemic. Many of the men were forced to work in mines and live in camps far from their families. These men frequently paid for sex from prostitutes, who were themselves often desperately poor women faced with the choice of prostitution or starvation for their children.

These men would return to their spouses after long absences expecting them to have conjugal relations. Dowling never wavered in his support of church teaching on the value of sexual abstinence and marital fidelity. However, his willingness to be with his people allowed him to understand their plight from a different perspective. For many married African women, the use of condoms was literally a matter of life or death. These women were faced with a choice between the greater evil of putting their own lives at risk and leaving their children parentless or the lesser one of using condoms in their conjugal relations with their spouses. Since 2001

Dowling has served the catholicity of the church by bringing to the larger church the issues and insights of his local church. He brings to the universal church his pastoral experience with his people and offers their plight as an opportunity for the church to consider from a new perspective the consequences of certain aspects of Catholic moral teaching.

Finally, let me mention Cardinal Archbishop Fumio Hamao, who for many years was the bishop of Yokohama, Japan before serving as the president of the Pontifical Council for the The Bishop in a Global Church -- 18

Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant Peoples. In his role as bishop and later as one of the few

Asians in the curia, he was tireless in bringing the particular gifts of Asian Catholicism to the

larger church. Hamao would share with his brother bishops in the West an Asian reading of

Catholic social teaching that framed that teaching within the central East Asian commitment to

social harmony. He spoke of the Christian gospel of forgiveness and reconciliation as it had

interpreted through the Japanese experience at World War II of both having been a militaristic

aggressor and a victim of the atom bomb.

Hamao was also a leading figure in the work of the Federation of Asian Bishops

Conferences which has, over the past thirty years, been exploring in their study institutes and

pastoral documents what they refer to as a “new way of being church.” In their many documents the FABC has articulated the task of as a threefold dialogue with the poor and oppressed, with local cultures, and local religions. After his resignation as president of the pontifical council was accepted in 2006, Hamao spoke honestly regarding his concern that the

Vatican was ill-disposed to truly listen to the unique insights of the Asian churches. He also

complained that many official expressions of the common faith of the church were still too

Western in form and style, particularly, he contended, the catechism:

It is all too difficult, too intellectual, too logical. We Asians are not so intellectual, but we are intelligent. We are -- how can one say it -- more intuitive, more aesthetic. We need something to touch our heart. The catechism does not convert people.27 Hamao, Dowling, Claver and Ruiz, all embodied an episcopal ministry in which the bishop is not

only a teacher but a listener and learner at the feet of the people. They faithfully preached the

gospel in their local churches but they also brought the faith of their people to the universal

27 “Cardinal Hamao Calls for Change,” an interview published on the Columban Missionaries website: http://www.columban.com/card_hamao_calls_for_change.htm. The Bishop in a Global Church -- 19 church. They exhibited a neglected aspect of the bishop’s office—they were servants of the catholicity of the church.

African theology offers a provocative metaphor for this new vision of episcopal leadership. The African theologian Elochukwu Uzukwu writes of an African tribe known as the

Manja which has as the totem for their chief a rabbit with “large ears.” This is because the chief is to be a listener; he is to listen to God, to the ancestors and to the community. Uzukwu writes:

To tune in fully to the Manja image of leadership, we fall back on the resources of our African tradition to retrieve the dynamic personality of the chief or community leader: a person living under the gaze of God, ancestors, and spirits, a person living in attentive listening to the community in order to accomplish adequately the ministry of custodianship of that Word which belongs to the community, the Word which belongs to humanity.28 In African tribal culture the communities of elders are seen as custodians of the wisdom of the ancestors; they are, if you will, keepers of the tribal memory. Another African theologian,

Bénézet Bujo, boldly re-imagines both episcopal and Petrine ministry along the lines of the role of the eldest brother in a family who is called, upon the death of the father, to play a custodial role in the handling of ancestral property. His ministry is characterized as twofold, first to care for the ancestral heritage, and second, to preserve the harmony of the family.29

This custodial understanding of leadership must be conjoined, these African theologians propose, with the tradition of African “palaver,” a multi-layered, open-ended form of communal conversation that seeks to arrive at consensus. This African palaver is not opposed to the

28 Elochukwu E. Uzukwu, A Listening Church: Autonomy and Communion in African Churches (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1996), 130. 29 Bénézet Bujo, African Theology in Its Social Context (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1992), 25-6, 100-3. The Bishop in a Global Church -- 20

participation of a community leader but would reject any exercise of leadership that did not flow out of this palaver.30 According to Uzukwu,

The chief…begins by listening: he speaks only after having recorded the discussion going on in the community, so that his speech releases the healing Word of which he is the principal custodian, a Word which makes the community stand erect.31 I offer these insights not in order to romanticize the African church. They too face serious

challenges. African tribal culture is very communitarian, but it is also patriarchal and the

solidarity it encourages often ends at tribal boundaries. Nevertheless, the insights of the African

church offer a provocative vision of a listening church leadership humbly placing itself at the

service of the conversation and inherited wisdom of the community.

IV. Conclusion: Implications for the North American Church

At the beginning of my presentation, I briefly sketched the episcopal office’s history of change and development. The historical shifts in the theology and exercise of episcopal office were generally instigated by far broader ecclesial currents. Today we see a church that is experiencing an unprecedented demographic transformation, one which, over three decades ago

Walbert Bühlmann prophetically referred to as the “coming third church,” that is, the church not of the West or the East but of the South.32 I have suggested that there is much we might learn by

casting our gaze beyond our own shores to consider what is going on in the church in other parts

of the world. This transformation is forcing us to acknowledge the full catholicity of a global

30 Bénézet Bujo, “On the Road toward an African Ecclesiology: Reflections on the Synod,” in African Synod: Documents, Reflections, Perspectives, edited by the African Faith & Justice Network (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1996), 139-51 at 148-9 and Uzukwu, 128-9. 31 Uzukwu, 129-30. 32 Walbert Bühlmann, The Coming of the Third Church: An Analysis of the Present and Future of the Church (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1977). The Bishop in a Global Church -- 21 church. As a “translated religion,” I believe that Christianity thrives wherever the process of gospel inculturation is encouraged and guided. This new catholicity is pouring fresh wine into the old wineskins of ecclesiastical office. It is calling for a new form of episcopal leadership, one which matches a commitment to the integrity of the apostolic faith with an equal commitment to serve the catholicity of a faith that finds countless cultural forms in diverse local churches throughout the world.

The renewed office of the bishop which I have explored with you today is a reality already being born in places like Chiapas, South Africa and Mindanao. Bishops who are modeling this new form of episcopal ministry are as yet a small minority, but I believe they represent a viable future for the episcopate and as such, they have something to offer even the

North American church.

The bishops whose example I offered were willing to facilitate a patient dialogue between the Christian faith and local cultures. Here in the United States many bishops, and not a few theologians, are quite comfortable in the role of cultural critic. Let’s face it; the dominant

North American culture is an easy target. We are all too aware of the negative impact of consumerism and the shallowness of our entertainment industry. We see signs of a “culture of death” all around us. But no human culture is completely demonic. It would be a very good thing if our bishops were as committed to commending positive aspects of North American culture as they are at condemning its all too obvious failings.

Second, the bishops I briefly profiled all accepted the great apostolic tradition and took seriously their role as episcopal guardians of that faith, but they also understood that apostolic tradition to be a living reality that will achieve ever new and sometimes unexpected forms as it takes shape in the lives of the people. The Bishop in a Global Church -- 22

Third, these bishops understood the importance of walking with their people. They embraced both the council’s teaching that the bishop’s primary identity was as pastor of a flock as well as the conciliar teaching that episcopal authority came from Christ through the of orders and not from Rome. Consequently, while they all were committed to serving in faithful communion with the bishop of Rome, they did not look over their shoulder to ask what Rome would think, but acted out of a concern, before all else, for the welfare of their local flock. Recall

Bishop Ruiz’ description of his ministry as one of “accompaniment.” Like St. Cyprian, these bishops understood that the best teachers are also willing learners who listen to their people with openness and humility. Does not the ecclesial crisis we have suffered in the U.S. over the last six years suggest what happens when a bishop decrees without consulting, teaches without listening, and stands in judgment of others without accepting culpability for his own failings?

Perhaps all of us would benefit from the witness of our fellow Christians in the global south who are in many parts of the world quietly offering us “a new way of being church.”