The Progressive Catholic Review: An Evangelical and Ecumenical Discourse Easter 2010 Vol. 1 No.1 An Electronic Publication of St. Francis Virtual House of Studies (Ecumenical Catholic Communion) ________________________________ RECOVERING AND REVISIONING THE OFFICE OF BISHOP Raphael Adams, OSF INTRODUCTION I‟ve known a good number of bishops in the course of my sojourn. I‟ve worked with them, dined with them, played cards with them, gone fishing with them, laughed with them, collaborated with them, and on occasion argued vehemently with them. Some have been dear friends; others…not. They‟ve covered the spectrum of belief and affiliation: Roman Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, and others as well. Some have been raging radicals; some have been contentious conservatives. Some have been stuffy, standoffish and officious to the point of effrontery, while others have been outgoing, friendly and fun to be around. I haven‟t courted their company. We‟ve just shown up unexpectedly in each others‟ lives. Our associations have for the most part begun as work related, accidental or serendipitous, and developed (or not) from there. We‟ve met on airplanes or in airline terminals, in hotel restaurants, at seminars or conferences, and at parties hosted by mutual friends. For example, when I first arrived at Our Lady of the Angels to begin my Franciscan candidacy in the late summer of 1964, an affable young friar showed me to my room, oriented me to the layout of the place and introduced me around. He would later become an auxiliary bishop in Cleveland, and then the Roman Catholic archbishop of Atlanta. I met the Episcopal bishop of a large American city when I bumped into him (literally) while we were both rushing in opposite directions to escape inclement weather. He was in the company of an old seminary acquaintance of mine, so introductions were cordially completed, despite the weather. In 2 a related vein, I am a direct descendent of at least two Catholic bishops (legitimate, canonized saints I will point out); and the collateral branches of the very old, very large family tree are adorned with many more. One of the more recent of these adornments was a great uncle I knew (and did not particularly like) as a child. He bore a disconcerting resemblance to a tall, purple Andrew Jackson. Twenty dollar bills still give me mild flashbacks of discomfiting catechetical interrogations (ATMs always use twenties!). All of this is to say that I‟m pretty much immune to and unruffled by “hierarchs” of any ilk. I would not, however, go so far as to agree that “familiarity breeds contempt.” What familiarity breeds is simply familiarity. Along with familiarity (if one has both a genuine sense of comfort and the strength of one‟s convictions) comes honesty and with it an inclination toward direct communication. Sometimes this is appreciated. Sometimes it‟s not; this can be a problem. Some years ago I was visiting the Cathedral of Saints Tish and Gomez (all names have been changed to protect the innocent, i.e. me). While Sts. T&G‟s resident hierarch and I were conversing in the kitchen, he frequently called to his assistant to fetch something for him, or trot off on one small errand or another. I couldn‟t help noticing that some of what His Grace wanted brought to him was almost in arm‟s reach. I finally (and perhaps foolishly) said to the bishop, “The man is obviously busy working on something in the office. Why do you keep interrupting him to have him do something you could readily - and more quickly - get up and do for yourself?” The bishop responded by saying that his assistant‟s vocation was to serve the church, and when he served (waited on) his bishop, he was serving the church. I (perhaps more foolishly than before) asked, “Where did you get that crazy idea?” He huffed and puffed for a moment, then responded with absolute certainty, “Saint Ignatius said „where there is the bishop, there is the church,‟ so when he serves me, he serves the church!” I was speechless - completely dumbfounded! It was not that I was at a loss for words - that rarely happens. There were just so many things wrong with what he had said that I didn‟t know exactly where to begin. To start with, Ignatius never said that. Cyprian of Carthage said something very much like that, but a century and a half later within a very specific context. Quite frankly, apart from that one line, nobody in the western church seems to care much about what Cyprian had to say, anyway. If they did, there would be no papacy (or at least no “primatial,” “infallible” one). What Ignatius did say was, “Where the bishop is, the congregation 3 [i.e., “the many,” “the multitude,” “assembly,” “coming together,” “ingathering”] should be” (or “let them be”). Context is important here, but before one can address the meaning of the phrase, “should be” in the unique context of the Letter to the Smyrneans which contains the statement (cir. 115AD), one has to deal wit h a couple of other confusing terms, like “church” and “bishop.” Ignatius and his early second century audience certainly did not mean what we mean when we use these terms today. CONTEXT: WHAT IT MEANT TO BE A “BISHOP” IN THE “CHURCH” IN EARLY SECOND CENTURY SYRIAN ANTIOCH. The word we translate as “church” - ekklesia - was not a building, or an institution, or organization or even a clearly defined and easily labeled group of people (at least not as we define denominational membership today). It would be another two centuries before the term “church” would begin its long metamorphosis in that direction. The term originally meant “assembly” and referred to the public assembly of free citizens of a city. Over time, it acquired additional meanings as well. Various civic and religious associations adopted it, giving it a specific meaning within their particular groups. To Ignatius and his contemporaries, church was primarily “event” rather than place or thing. People were part of the church by implication, and referred to as church by way of their being people who took part in communal “churching.” Primarily, church (ekklesia) was, in the vocabulary of that time, the “gathering together” of those “called” into one place to participate in a very special activity - the Eucharist. In the New Testament kahal-ekklesia means both the process of assembling and the assembled community itself. That means that without assembling, there is no community, no church….That provides the norm once and for all: ekklesia originally in no way meant an abstract and remote hyper-organization of functionaries set above the concrete assembly, but in origin a community gathered at a particular place at a particular time engaged in a particular action. (Kung, p.79) Until the third century the word „church‟ (ecclesia) means invariably not the building for Christian worship but the solemn assembly for the liturgy, and by extension those who have a right to take part in this…The phrase is constant from S. Paul onwards that the ecclesia is a „coming together epi to auto, (or eis to hen) not merely „in one place‟, but almost in a technical sense, of the „general assembly.‟ (Dix, pp. 19, 20) 4 In I Corinthians 12, Paul stated that God placed in the ecclesia first apostles, second prophets, then teachers. Apostles (not to be equated with “the twelve”) and prophets presided at Eucharist. Jewish Christian communities very likely inherited intact the presbyteral organization of the synagogue. As the generation of apostles passed away, communities without prophets (according to the Didache) chose presbyters (elders) to take the place of prophets to lead the Eucharistic celebration. In Ignatius‟ time believers still gathered in private homes rather than church buildings. Every congregation generally had its own deacons, and its own “presbytery,” or college of presbyters, which presided within the community and at its Eucharist. (In the Pastoral Epistles and Acts, the terms presbyter and bishop were used interchangeably, hence reference in the literature to “presbyter/bishops.” Some scholars believe that, because of the sentence structure, the terms “bishops” and “deacons” refer to the same persons in the opening salutation of Philippians. “Episcopacy” and “deaconate” were essentially functions within the community. In some communities, presbyters probably performed both functions prior to the development of a two tier system of ministry (Brown, Meier). Sometime in the first half of the second century, some congregations (notably in Syrian Antioch and Asia Minor) began to draw a functional distinction between “presbyters” and “bishops,” developing a three tier ecclesial structure composed of a single bishop, a college of presbyters, and deacons. Ignatius was bishop of the church in Antioch in Syria. His letters provide the first reference to what we now consider the “traditional” tripartite structure of bishop, presbyters and deacons. To understand how and why this transition from apostolic/prophetic to presbyteral to episcopal leadership took place when and where it did, some familiarity with context would be helpful. In the early second century, Antioch was the third largest city in the Roman Empire, and the capitol of the Roman province of Syria. It had a population of roughly 250,000 people. About 24,000 of these were Roman troops, a “peace keeping” force positioned for rapid deployment anywhere in the troublesome province (including Palestine). The city also hosted one of the largest Jewish populations in the Diaspora, and the oldest Christian community outside Palestine. Paul, Barnabas and Peter had all taught in the Antiochene ekklesia. But it does not necessarily follow that the city‟s population included hordes of “Christians.” We have no way of knowing their actual number, but one thing is certain: Ignatius‟ own community was large enough 5 to have a diverse (even factionalized) membership, and small enough that everyone could come together at one time for the one celebration of Eucharist which took place each Sunday.