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“For You I Am a Bishop; with You I Am a Christian”

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“For You I Am a Bishop; with You I Am a Christian” “For you I am a Bishop; With You I am a Christian” The Office of Bishop in a Global Church Richard R. Gaillardetz, Ph.D Murray/Bacik Professor of Catholic 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. Christianity 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 Catholic Church,” 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 bishops 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 eucharist 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 Council of Trent 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 consecration 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 Christ 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 catholicity, 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 Second Vatican Council,” 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 New Testament 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.
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