EXPANDING HORIZONS 150 YEARS AFTER VATICAN I: TOWARD A RENEWED RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SYNODALITY AND PRIMACY

 

 Kristin Colberg,  Αssociate Professor at Saint John’s University and School of Theology and the College of Saint Benedict. Theological Studies, Volume 83, Issue 1, March 2022, Pages 70-83.

Abstract

Pope Francis calls the church to greater synodality to build up practices of communion, participation, and mission at every level of the church’s life. Proponents of synodality often interpret Vatican I’s definition of papal primacy as an obstacle to the synodal path. Recent scholarship, however, suggests ways that Vatican I need not present a stumbling block; rather, when properly contextualized and interpreted, Pastor Aeternus has the potential to illumine the inherent dynamism between primacy and synodality. This study explores how fresh approaches to Vatican I and synodality can direct us to more responsive ecclesial structures in the diverse and changing church of today.

Pope Francis has consistently promoted the language and practices of synodality in the pastoral, theological, and administrative life of the church throughout his pontificate, and this ecclesiological vision reaches a new point of emphasis with his calling a Synod of Bishops on this topic. The synod’s work involves a multiyear, global process of intra-ecclesial listening aimed at a spiritual conversion of the church through renewed practices of communion, participation, and mission at every level of its life. The papacy and its exercise of authority naturally belong to this synodal work; pointedly, Francis’s exercise of authority is the condition under which synodal renewal has become possible. Nevertheless, understandings and expressions of robust papal authority, particularly those grounded in Vatican I’s Pastor Aeternus, can seem to resist or oppose movements toward greater synodality. Successful progress along the synodal path, which includes a “conversion of the papacy” in service to a synodal church, cannot detour around Vatican I’s voice.¹ This study advocates a re-reception of Vatican I that offers a nuanced and historically contextualized understanding of the council, including elements of its reception at Vatican II, which illumine its potential utility for the work of synodality. Rather than seeing primacy and synodality as competing interests, this essay reenvisions their relationship by broadening three horizons: the meaning of “synodality,” interpretations of Vatican I’s teaching on papal primacy, and the exercise of primacy in a synodal church.

Horizon 1: The Meaning of Synodality

Pope Francis’s vision of synodality is rooted in the theology of the Second Vatican Council, yet what Francis means by this term is significantly more expansive than its typical use in the conciliar texts. Vatican II most often uses the word “synod” self-referentially, speaking of itself as a “sacred synod” (synodos), a term which it understands as interchangeable with the word “council” (concilium).² Accordingly, Vatican II generally references synods as gatherings where all bishops come together with the Bishop of Rome to teach and govern the whole church. The term less frequently denotes smaller gatherings at the national, regional, and global levels as instruments of governing and teaching by the bishops. Both usages underscore episcopal collegiality and reflect Vatican II’s effort to balance papal primacy and episcopal collegiality by calling for greater collaboration and dialogue.³ Nevertheless, the council’s presentation of synods generally envisions decision making that flows unidirectionally from the bishops, in communion with the pope, to the faithful.⁴ While Francis recognizes these types of meetings among members of the hierarchy as important “points of convergence” in synodal processes, they do not in themselves capture his idea of synodality.⁵

Francis’s vision of synodality “crosses a threshold” from the discrete language of Vatican II’s documents to a more capacious vision emanating from the council itself.⁶ This enriched notion of synodality draws from the council’s emphasis on the church as animated by the Holy Spirit and constituted through baptism rather than hierarchy. Two examples illustrate this pattern: (1) the choice to invert the material in draft chapters of Lumen Gentium to consider the dignity and coresponsibility of all the baptized prior to the hierarchy that serves them, and (2) the decision to foreground the church as the communion of the faithful (communio fidelium) as the basis and context for communion within the college of bishops (communio hierarchica) and among local churches (communio ecclesiarum).⁷ These shifts locate ecclesial authority as service to the people of God under the direction of the Holy Spirit. Ultimately, Vatican II’s theology of the people of God serves, for Francis, as “the normative criterion” that determines and evaluates the relationships, modes of communication, and structures in a synodal church.⁸

Vatican II’s overarching purpose and style further expands and informs Francis’s idea of synodality, especially in the ways that the council’s aims differ from those of its predecessors.⁹ More than articulating new dogma, Vatican II sought to deepen ecclesial self-understanding and “awaken in the church a more lively and active faith” through a dual program of ressourcement (“return to the sources”) and aggiornamento (“updating”).¹⁰ These shifts positioned the council to ask new questions—questions not only about the “what” of the church but also and ultimately about “how” the church should be.¹¹ Similarly, Francis does not approach synodality primarily as a series of meetings oriented to the production of texts. Rather, synodality cultivates a particular way of being church. Francis and his theological advisors consistently favor the adjective “synodal” over the noun “synod” because it aptly reflects that synodality is “first and foremost . . . the particular style that qualifies the life and mission of the Church, expressing her nature as the people of God journeying together and gathering in assembly, summoned by the Lord Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit to proclaim the Gospel.”¹² This journey does not conclude in 2023 with the general assembly of the Synod of Bishops in Rome, nor is it manifest in one particular end. The synodal path constitutes an ongoing style or practice of walking together in which all the faithful, through processes of listening and communal discernment, strive to understand God’s desires for the church in particular times and places. Francis seeks a permanent and radical conversion of how the church walks together to realize a more authentic version of it.

Expanding the horizon of how the church journeys together as the people of God includes questions about what structures best support institutional expressions of the synodal way. Pope Francis speaks of a desire to invert prevailing hierarchical models and create a church where “as in an inverted pyramid, the top is located beneath the base . . . [with the] faithful people, the college of bishops, the Bishop of Rome: all listening to each other, and all listening to the Holy Spirit, the ‘Spirit of truth,’ in order to know what [the Spirit] says to the Churches.”¹³ Francis’s inverted pyramid does not eliminate structural differences in the church. It subordinates them to the powerful reality that all the fideles are united in a common baptism and so share in the universal priesthood of Christ as well as the offices of prophet and king.¹⁴ Concomitantly, Francis’s call for a synodal conversion of the church resists the opposition of either synodality or primacy—the choice between either embracing a habit of listening to the whole church or maintaining a robust vision of the papacy. Synodal structures must integrate all levels of authority in the work of listening and communal discernment; this necessarily includes the Bishop of Rome. In fact, the Bishop of Rome plays a vital role in modeling this style and coordinating discernment, dialogue, and listening at all levels, even as his office moves from the top of the pyramid to a position beneath its base. This sense of synodality as a conversion of the whole church requires a re-reception of Vatican I to discern ways that papal primacy supports and sustains synodal structures.

Horizon 2: Vatican I and Papal Primacy

Misinterpretations have plagued Vatican I’s reception since the gathering’s premature prorogation in 1870.¹⁵ Noncontextual readings of the documents have often distorted them, rendering the impression that the council’s position on papal authority is severe and unyielding.¹⁶ However, Vatican I’s texts stand open to a considerably more flexible interpretation when framed (1) in relation to the council’s historical and theological setting and (2) within the larger textual settings of the council’s teachings. To the first point, advances by John O’Malley and Stephen Schloesser in interpreting Vatican II yield comparable value for reading Vatican I. O’Malley argues that one must recognize how Vatican II expresses its teaching, giving attention to its form or style, to understand what it teaches.¹⁷ Stephen Schloesser recommends a further perspectival step to attend to the council’s historical context: readers must consider why Vatican II taught in addition to how it taught.¹⁸ Regarding Vatican I, all of these questions—why it taught, how it taught, and what it taught—are often answered incorrectly. Understanding the why, how, and what of Vatican I begins with observing the radically defensive posture that dominated the Vatican’s self-understanding in the decades preceding the council.

During much of the long nineteenth century, the papacy understood itself as threatened by a myriad of political, social, and philosophical developments, famously termed “the three traumas of Rome.”¹⁹ In response to these traumas and uncertainties, Pius IX announced his intention to convene the twentieth ecumenical council that would “provide in this extraordinary way for the extraordinary needs of the Christian flock.”²⁰ The plan for this gathering called for a comprehensive decree on the church that would demonstrate its ability to withstand the challenges of the day. To this end, the Theological-Dogmatic Preparatory Commission produced an elaborated schema on the church entitled Primum schema constitutionis de ecclesia Christi (generally known as Supremi Pastoris).²¹ The original draft did not specifically address the issue of papal infallibility; however, one chapter treated ecclesial indefectibility and a subsequent chapter focused on papal primacy. Not long after the schema was distributed to the council fathers, the looming specter of military conflict in Italy—with Italian national troops advancing on Rome—convinced many council fathers of the need to rearrange the council’s agenda and focus its discussions on the question of papal authority. A majority of the council fathers reasoned that doing so would provide the church with a powerful tool before the council’s premature suspension; a minority of bishops disagreed, worrying that disconnecting the papacy from its rightful place within a wider consideration of the church distorted an already sensitive topic.²² Eventually, Pius accepted the majority’s recommendation for a reordering of the agenda, and on April 29, 1870, it was announced that the discussion on the Roman pontiff’s primacy and infallibility would be moved to the beginning of the debate. Vatican I’s choice to focus on papal authority and its teachings on this topic cannot be understood apart from the context of distress and anxiety wrought by traumas emanating from the ecclesial, political, and philosophical spheres or the acute threat of military intervention in the moment of the council (why it taught). This, in turn, shaped the style the council employed in responding to these pressures (how it taught, as we will see below).

A second line of misinterpretation stems from noncontextual readings of Pastor Aeternus’s decrees, especially the tendency to exposit the final lines of its final chapter with no reference to the overarching framework of the decree.²³ This constitutes an interpretive mistake because the constitution’s prologue provides vital “hermeneutic rules” that set the interpretive horizon for the definitions that follow.²⁴ The prologue begins with the assertion that Christ, the “eternal shepherd (Pastor Aeternus) and guardian of our souls,” determined to build a church where all the faithful should be united by the bond of “one faith and charity.”²⁵ This initial line introduces the document’s key theme: ecclesial unity for the sake of salvation. It also serves as both the condition for the possibility of and the normative rule for the exercise of papal authority. Stressing that the council’s presentation of the papacy does not represent an innovation, the prologue concludes that the teachings that follow should be “believed and held by the faithful” in accordance with “the ancient and unchanging faith of the whole church.”²⁶ Thus, the prologue indicates that what Pastor Aeternus teaches is a “theology of salvation within the context of the church”; in that context the text addresses the special role of the pope in this redeeming work.²⁷ This introduction frames the purpose of papal authority, sets its limits, and gives shape to its expressions as means to these ends.²⁸ Ultimately, the prologue offers three interpretive rules governing the text’s teachings: (1) the papacy should be seen in light of God’s desire for ecclesial unity; (2) the context for understanding the papacy is ecclesiological and soteriological; and (3) what is proposed affirms, and is not intended to conflict with, the church’s tradition.²⁹ These rules serve as the backdrop for the succeeding chapters.

The two chapters following the prologue intentionally draw on scriptural and theological traditions to situate their presentation of papal authority within the context of a soteriological ecclesiology. For example, chapter 2 underscores that the gifts given to Peter are “for the continual and permanent benefit of the church” and that they must, of necessity, “remain forever by Christ’s authority in the church which as it is upon a rock, will stand firm until the end of time.”³⁰ The origins of this belief in the church’s indestructibility, known as the doctrine of indefectibility, are grounded in New Testament testimonies that convey the earliest Christian communities’ conviction that Christ will never abandon them and that Christ assures the church not only of its continuing existence but also of its ongoing fidelity to the Gospel (Eph 5:25–29). Francis Sullivan, for example, argues that faith in the church’s indestructibility is “a corollary of the far more basic Christian belief that ‘Jesus is Lord.’”³¹ Believing that Jesus is Lord includes the belief that he “is risen and glorified at the right hand of the Father, that he has won a decisive, ‘eschatological’ victory over the powers that are hostile to God in this world, and that no enemy will ever be able to snatch from him the fruits of this glorious victory.”³² Therefore, while the church may fail in certain concrete instances, as a whole, it can never totally cleave away from the truth of the Gospel or cease to exist as Christ’s church.³³ Ecclesial indefectibility is thoroughly pneumatological as well. These early Christian accounts regularly observe that the Holy Spirit is indissolubly united to the church and preserves it in unity, holiness, and catholicity while leading it to all truth (Jn 16:13). The belief that God guides the church as an essential part of the work of redemption includes a belief that God provides means for the church to know and express its identity in ways that the community recognizes as authentic. Christian traditions do not generally dispute the need for authoritative expressions of divine guidance. Their affirmation of the church’s ability to determine the norms of faith and maintain unity in the apostolic tradition follows as a necessary consequence of Christ’s promises and the Spirit’s guidance.³⁴ At issue is precisely which instruments or authorities concretize this gift and express it authoritatively. Pastor Aeternus addresses this question, framing it within the context of ecclesial indefectibility: God sends teachers inspired by the Spirit to make permanently present the saving work of redemption and to preserve ecclesial unity. This is realized, in part, through the Petrine ministry.

Chapter 3 of Pastor Aeternus establishes the definition of papal primacy, but as it does so, it adopts a different style from the ecclesiological and soteriological framework provided in the prologue and first two chapters. Chapter 3 adopts a markedly juridical tone. The substance of what Vatican I teaches is as follows: “the Roman Church possesses a pre-eminence of ordinary power over every other Church, and that this jurisdictional power of the Roman Pontiff is both episcopal and immediate.”³⁵ The clergy and the faithful must submit to this authority in matters of faith and morals as well as in matters of ecclesial discipline and governance. After ascribing these powers, the text states that primacy does not detract from the divinely given authority of episcopal jurisdiction, which is also ordinary and immediate. In fact, it affirms that a purpose of the pope’s power is to “assert, support and defend” the offices and authority of his brother bishops.³⁶ Notably, Pastor Aeternus does not define these episcopal rights and powers. The decree gives theological affirmation to episcopal dignity without juridical specification.

Vatican I’s historical setting (why it taught) adds vital context for Pastor Aeternus’s shift to juridical language for its presentation of papal authority (how it taught). It deploys precise definitions when describing the power to teach infallibly so as to capacitate the pope to act with efficient and ultimate authority. In the council’s deliberations, a majority of bishops argued that any lack of clarity or potential loopholes could be exploited by the church’s critics and blunt the very weapon that the definition was intended to provide. Some of the majority bishops further opposed including theological concerns on the grounds that they did not fit the genre of conciliar definitions that traditionally operate in a legal mode.³⁷ Therefore, for reasons of practicality, strategy, and genre, the decree employed juridical or legal language.³⁸ Vatican I’s definitions do not intend to capture either the full reality of papal authority or the full character of the relationship between the Bishop of Rome and local churches. This was clear to the majority of the council fathers who recognized that the council’s work was incomplete even in relation to its own goals.³⁹ Rather, Pastor Aeternus’s definitions affirm—and provide some of the conditions whereby—the pope is able to exercise the power of authoritative intervention when the unity and saving work of the church require it. Ultimately, the council’s presentation of the papacy expresses a close and reliable connection between Christ and the church, maintained in the Spirit, that affords the latter protection, stability, and a particular access to truth.

In short, this discussion has shown that what Pastor Aeternus presents is a true but incomplete presentation of papal primacy. How it presents this is with a style chosen for clarity and efficiency. Why it presents papal infallibility is to secure the church’s authority and independence at a time of perceived internal and external threats. More work needs to be directed at setting the juridical expression of papal primacy within the context of the hermeneutical parameters established in the constitution’s prologue. A contextualized reading shows that Pastor Aeternus provides christological and pneumatological grounding for the nature and mission of the church, including its juridical structure and exercise of authority, which is often overlooked. This vantage point offers potentially generative connections between Vatican I’s teachings and Francis’s vision of synodality.

Horizon 3: The Exercise of Papal Primacy in a Synodal Church

Renewing the relationship between primacy and synodality requires fresh ways of understanding the exercise of primacy. Here, given the limits of space, we shall briefly identify two fundamental aspects of its exercise in a synodal church—the first related to the balance between papal and episcopal authority, and the second to the role of pastoral responsibility in relation to the people of God.

First, the proper exercise of papal authority in a synodal church requires achieving greater equilibrium between papal and episcopal authorities. The imbalance follows, in part, from inverse deficiencies at Vatican I. Pastor Aeternus’s juridical construction of papal primacy requires theological and pastoral development, while its theological affirmation of episcopal authority requires juridical specification—for example, regarding its nature individually, in regional bodies, and as a college in relation to the pope. Vatican II begins to address the incomplete and unbalanced expression of its predecessor by offering sustained reflection on episcopal authority. This effort unfolds across the council’s deliberations and decrees, but the third chapter of Lumen Gentium stands as the epicenter of this work.⁴⁰ After affirming Vatican I’s teaching on the papacy, it sets this teaching in a wider conception of church that includes episcopal collegiality.⁴¹ Here, the council fathers make the critical affirmation that “the order of bishops, which succeeds to the college of apostles and gives this apostolic body continued existence, is also the subject of supreme and full power over the universal Church, provided we understand this body together with its head the Roman Pontiff and never without this head.”⁴² By affirming the bishops’ responsibility for the whole church and placing the pope within the college, Vatican II moves beyond a deeply entrenched tendency to view papal and episcopal authority competitively in the manner of a zero-sum game. Moreover, it retrieves a communio model of the first millennium that views the church as a communion of churches and situates Vatican I’s teaching on the papacy in that context. Vatican II’s efforts at contextualizing Vatican I make it possible to properly hear the latter’s voice and see it as an asset for synodality.⁴³

While Lumen Gentium significantly advanced efforts toward achieving equilibrium between papal and episcopal authority, Francis rightly notes that this work remains unfinished. Toward this end, he emphasizes the need to develop regional churches in the form of episcopal conferences. In Evangelii Gaudium, he writes,

The Second Vatican Council stated that, like the ancient patriarchal churches, episcopal conferences are in a position “to contribute in many and fruitful ways to the concrete realization of the collegial spirit.” Yet, this desire has not been fully realized since a juridical status of episcopal conferences which would see them as subjects of specific attributions, including genuine doctrinal authority, has not yet been sufficiently elaborated. Excessive centralization, rather than proving helpful, complicates the Church’s life and her missionary outreach.⁴⁴

Papal primacy on the synodal path could empower episcopal conferences to listen more effectively and act on what they have heard. Examples of such empowerment might include allowing episcopal conferences, in certain circumstances, to submit ideas for synodal agendas, appeal decisions of the Holy See, and consult on aspects of doctrinal decision making.⁴⁵ Similarly, the synodal church must seek greater equilibrium between the sensus fidelium and other forms of ecclesial authority by promoting structures of mutual accountability.⁴⁶ While papal primacy retains its own theologically and juridically distinctive roles in the synodal church, it must also exercise its authority to recognize and promote the sense of the faithful. Examples of empowerment here might include developing, and in some instances even requiring, processes of communal discernment in relation to certain questions or moments in a community’s life. The papacy could support training and formation for listening as well as structures for feedback that direct the sensus fidelium in an upward motion that informs ecclesial teaching and governance. To that end, synodal listening requires clearer structures of accountability that advance Francis’s vision of balance and mutuality among papal primacy, episcopal authority, and the sensus fidelium in order to call forth and discern what “the Spirit says to the Churches.”⁴⁷

Second, a synodal church envisions papal primacy exercised primarily as a pastoral primacy that builds relationships and fosters listening among the faithful. This is consistent with Pope Francis’s call for a “pastoral conversion” of “the papacy and the central structures of the church.”⁴⁸ Pastoral primacy requires the Catholic Church to enlarge its understanding of primacy beyond its near-exclusive association with Vatican I’s emphasis on the primacy of jurisdiction, an expression that is steeped in notions of political sovereignty popular in its time but largely untenable today. Rather than consigning primacy to the juridical categories of law, obligation, and obedience, pastoral primacy draws its direction from synodality’s emphasis on the work of the Spirit and the authority of the sensus fidelium. This shift necessitates leaving the realm of ideas for the realm of lived realities. In the context of synodality, the practical benefits of a universal ministry dedicated to the cause of unity come to the fore. Pastoral primacy finds expression, for example, in efforts to foster unity among Christians and reconciliation among and within divided churches, speaking on behalf of Christians worldwide on issues such as immigration or environmental degradation, gathering people for international events such as World Youth Day, and providing resources for protecting churches against intrusions by the state or religious discrimination.⁴⁹ These exercises of the Petrine ministry demonstrate their roots in the witness of the Gospel, and their authenticity invites dialogue with other Christians.⁵⁰ Primacy in a synodal church must be experienced as an authentic instrument for listening, unifying, and empowering discipleship. It requires listening to diverse constituencies in the church—including episcopal conferences and wider expressions of the sensus fidelium—to discern what the Holy Spirit is revealing to the people of God. None of this is to say that the juridical dimension of primacy should be abandoned as if it were not an authentic dimension of this authority. The pope’s expression of what he hears may necessarily unfold in juridical terms. Nevertheless, in a synodal church, the juridical dimension of primacy must serve its pastoral dimension to advance the goals and relationships that constitute its very existence.⁵¹

Conclusion

When interviewed about the preparations for the Synod, Cardinal Mario Grech, the secretary general for the Synod of Bishops, stated, “To create a synod one must be a synod!”⁵² In other words, extensive and careful listening is both the precondition and hallmark of synodal progress. This study has argued that working toward synodality requires listening to the voice of Vatican I. A contextualized reception of the council understands its affirmation of papal primacy as an extension of ecclesial indefectibility that is at the service of church unity and its mission to communicate and safeguard the good news of salvation. When set within a wider context—a more expansive ecclesiology already envisioned at Vatican I and advanced at Vatican II—papal primacy finds complementarity with episcopal collegiality as well as the sensus fidelium. Synodality aims to draw these authorities into greater mutuality so they edify and support each other in the interests of the people of God, journeying together. Against the horizon of a pneumatological and soteriological ecclesiology, what seems to be a paradox—a robust view of synodality and a strong role for papal primacy—is revealed to be a fruitful and essential relationship. Working out the consequences of this renewed relationship will not be easy, but it is an essential component of the journey that Francis envisions and which God “expects of the Church in the third millennium.”⁵³

Kristin Colberg https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6823-7982

Footnotes

1. Francis, “Address at Ceremony Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Institution of the Synod of Bishops” (Vatican City, October 17, 2015), https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2015/october/documents/papa-francesco_20151017_50-anniversario-sinodo.html (hereafter cited as “October 17, 2015 Address”).

2. The council does not use the word “synodality” or the adjective “synodal,” but it does use the noun “synod” 136 times. See Ormond Rush, “Inverting the Pyramid: The Sensus Fidelium in a Synodal Church,” Theological Studies 78, no. 2 (June 2017): 299–325 at 303, https://doi.org/10.1177/0040563917698561.

3. On this topic see Massimo Faggioli, “Vatican II and the Agenda for Collegiality and Synodality in the Twenty-First Century,” in A Council for the Global Church: Receiving Vatican II in History (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), 229–53.

4. Rush, “Inverting the Pyramid,” 303.

5. Francis, “October 17, 2015 Address.”

6. The International Theological Commission affirms this need in its text “Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church,” which states, “There is, however, still a long way to go in the direction mapped out by the Council. In fact, today the drive to find an appropriate form for a synodal Church—although it is widely shared and has been put into practice in positive ways—seems to be in need of clear theological principles and decisive pastoral orientations. Hence the new threshold that Pope Francis invites us to cross.” International Theological Commission, “Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church,” §8, https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_cti_20180302_sinodalita_en.html.

7. For an extended treatment of these decisions, see Rush, “Inverting the Pyramid,” 305–20.

8. Rafael Luciani, “From the Synod on Synodality to the Synodalization of the Whole Church: Towards a New Ecclesial Reconfiguration in the Light of Synodality,” Iglesia Viva 287 (July–September 2021): 97–121 at 97.

9. As O’Malley has established, Vatican II’s goals were not envisioned in terms of altering “observable behavior,” as was the case with its predecessors whose procedures were based on models derived from the Roman Senate; they sought interior conversion and a growth in holiness among the faithful. See John O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 43–52, and When Bishops Meet: An Essay Comparing Trent, Vatican I and Vatican II (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019), especially the chapter “What Do Councils Do?,” 13–34.

10. Ormond Rush, The Vision of Vatican II: Its Fundamental Principles (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2019), 32.

11. O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II, 305. In another place O’Malley expands on this point: “As modeled in Vatican II, a council is a meeting in which the church takes time out to explore its identity, to recall and develop its most precious values, and to proclaim to the world its sublime vision for humanity. This is new. This is a paradigm shift” (When Bishops Meet, 27).

12. International Theological Commission, “Synodality,” 70 (emphasis in original).

13. Francis, “October 17, 2015 Address.”

14. Lumen Gentium (November 21, 1964), §10, https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html (hereafter cited as LG). On this point, see Sigrid Müller, “‘A Lantern on the Way’: Pope Francis’ Signposts for Ecclesial Ethics,” Ecclesiology 17, no. 2 (July 2021): 213–37 at 219, https://doi.org/10.1163/17455316%E2%80%9317020004, who stresses that “the comprehensive meaning of the sensus fidelium has consequences” for the synodal path and life of the church.

15. Competing interests and conflicting interpretations have contributed to a “web of error, misunderstanding and misinterpretation which have long rendered it difficult to discern the council’s true meaning.” John Tracy Ellis, “The Church Faces the Modern World: The First Vatican Council,” in The General Council: Special Studies in Doctrinal and Historical Background, ed. William Joseph McDonald (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1962), 135.

16. While Vatican I has generally suffered from studies that consider its texts apart from their appropriate context or focus only on the definition of papal infallibility, notable exceptions provide contextualized and vital readings of the council, including Robert Aubert, Vatican I (Paris: Éditions de L’Orante, 1964); Cuthbert Butler, The Vatican Council: The Story Told from Inside in Bishop Ullathorne’s Letters, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, 1930); Klaus Schatz, Vaticanum I, 3 vols. (Paderborn, Germany: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1992–94); Giacomo Martina, Pio IX, 3 vols. (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1974–90); and Ulrich Horst, Unfehlbarkeit und Geschichte (Mainz, Germany: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1982).

17. O’Malley has considered this question in several forums. Among these are “Vatican II: Did Anything Happen?,” Theological Studies 67, no. 1 (February 2006): 3–33, https://doi.org/10.1177/004056390606700101, and What Happened at Vatican II.

18. Stephen Schloesser, “Against Forgetting: Memory, History, Vatican II,” Theological Studies 67, no. 2 (May 2006): 275–319, https://doi.org/10.1177/004056390606700203. Applying this methodology to the study of Vatican I is the focus of my book Vatican I and Vatican II: Councils in the Living Tradition (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2016).

19. Hermann Pottmeyer identifies the three traumas as (1) conciliarism and Gallicanism, (2) the system of a state-controlled church, and (3) rationalism and liberalism. For his description of these, see his Towards a Papacy in Communion: Perspectives from Vatican Councils I and II (New York: Herder and Herder, 1998), 13–35. Jeffrey von Arx goes as far as to describe Rome’s reaction to these traumas as “something akin to an institutional version of post-traumatic stress disorder.” See his “A Post-Traumatic Church: Vatican I and the ‘Long 19th Century,’” America Magazine, June 2015, 22–24 at 22.

20. Butler, The Vatican Council, 1:81.

21. This text and a helpful commentary are found in Fidelis van der Horst’s Das Schema über die Kirche auf dem I Vatikanischen Konzil (Paderborn, Germany: Ferdinand Schöeningh, 1963). See also Patrick Granfield, “The Church as Societas Perfecta in the Schemata of Vatican I,” Church History 48, no. 4 (1979): 431–46, https://doi.org/10.2307/3164535, and Henri Rondet, Vatican I: Le Concile de Pie IX: La preparation, les méthodes de travail, les schémas restés en suspens (Paris: Lethielleux, 1962).

22. For an authoritative study on the position of the minority bishops, see Margaret O’Gara, Triumph in Defeat: Infallibility, Vatican I, and the French Minority Bishops (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1988). For an exploration of the majority bishops’ position, consult Richard F. Costigan, The Consensus of the Church and Papal Infallibility: A Study in the Background of Vatican I (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005); Jeffrey von Arx, ed., Varieties of Ultramontanism (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1998); and Gisela Fleckenstein and Joachim Schmiedel, eds., Ultramontanus: Tendenzen und Forschung (Paderborn, Germany: Bonifatius, 2005). Two important sources on the overall debate include John O’Malley’s Vatican I: The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018) and Hermann Pottmeyer’s Unfehlbarkeit and Souveränität: Die päpstliche Unfehlbarkeit im System der ultramontanen Ekklesiologie des 19. Jahrhunderts (Mainz, Germany: Grünewald, 1975).

23. While the focus here is on Pastor Aeternus and its presentation of papal authority, the same hermeneutical pitfalls pertain to Dei Filius when interpreters focus on its final treatment of revelation with little attention to the context established in the preceding chapters. See O’Malley, Vatican I, 133–79.

24. Walter Kasper stresses the importance of Pastor Aeternus’s prologue as a lens for reading the text. He employed the term “hermeneutic rules” in an email to the author on December 11, 2018. Kasper treats this topic in his “Introduction to the Theme and Catholic Hermeneutics of the Dogma of the First Vatican Council,” in The Petrine Ministry: Catholic and Orthodox in Dialogue, ed. Walter Kasper (Mahwah, NJ: Newman Press, 2006), 7–23.

25. Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus, 812. All references to Pastor Aeternus are taken from Norman Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 2, Trent to Vatican II (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 811–16. The Latin can be found here: https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-ix/la/documents/constitutio-dogmatica-pastor-aeternus-18-iulii-1870.html.

26. Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus, 812.

27. Gerard Kelly, “The Roman Catholic Doctrine of Papal Infallibility: A Response to Mark Powell,” Theological Studies 74, no. 1 (February 2013): 129–37 at 132, https://doi.org/10.1177/004056391307400107.

28. See Michael Buckley, Papal Primacy and the Episcopate: Towards a Relational Understanding (New York: Crossroad, 1998), 45.

29. On these rules and their impact on Pastor Aeternus’s interpretation, see Kristin Colberg, “Looking at Vatican I’s Pastor Aeternus 150 Years Later: A Fresh Consideration of the Council’s Significance Yesterday and Today,” Horizons 46, no. 2 (December 2019): 323–47, https://doi.org/10.1017/hor.2019.57.

30. Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus, 813.

31. Francis A. Sullivan, Magisterium: Teaching Authority in the Catholic Church (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1983), 5.

32. Sullivan, Magisterium, 5.

33. Karl Rahner connects Vatican I’s teachings with the doctrine indefectibilitatis ecclesiae, arguing that while some opponents of the council’s definitions portrayed them as a “blank cheque” and a modern innovation, they are instead a consequence of the Christian belief in “the indestructability of the believing church, which itself is the outcome of the unique and eschatologically victorious event of Christ.” Rahner, “On the Concept of Infallibility in Catholic Theology,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 14 (New York: Crossroad, 1976), 66–84 at 75.

34. Expressions of ecumenical agreement about ecclesial indefectibility are numerous. In fact, this agreement is frequently used as the basis for approaching disputed questions. For an example of this, see the Group of Farfa Sabina, Communion of Churches and Petrine Ministry: Lutheran–Catholic Convergences (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016). Also valuable for a discussion of fault lines among offices and authorities for different Christian communities is Peder Nørgard-Højen’s “Introduction,” in How Can the Petrine Ministry Be a Service to the Unity of the Universal Church?, ed. James Puglisi (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 1–10.

35. Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus, 814.

36. Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus, 814.

37. See Costigan, The Consensus of the Church and Papal Infallibility, 35–62.

38. The critical text for understanding this debate and the arguments for employing juridical language is Bishop Vincent Gasser’s relatio at the council. This is published in James T. O’Connor, ed., The Gift of Infallibility: The Official Relatio on Infallibility of Bishop Vincent Gasser at Vatican Council I (Boston: St. Paul Editions, 1986).

39. Many bishops voted in support of Pastor Aeternus’s definitions motivated by a trust that once the council resumed, its teachings on the papacy would receive necessary contextualization through developing a more comprehensive ecclesiology as was intended. This trust was bolstered by the efforts to develop a second constitution on the church to be called constitutio secunda. This text was to be a revision of the first schema on the church, Supremi Pastoris, in light of the remarks made by the council fathers over the course of the debate. German philosopher and theologian Joseph Kleutgen was tasked with drafting this text, which came to be known as Tametsi Deus. Tametsi Deus consisted of ten chapters and sixteen canons, but it was never distributed to the council fathers due to the outbreak of the Franco–Prussian War. The text was largely forgotten until it reemerged, with a relatio by Kleutgen, in 1927. Thereafter it gained considerable attention among theologians as it provided insight into the thinking of the council fathers, demonstrating a less polemical and more balanced view of the church. Renewed attention to the schema advanced an awareness among many of those who would serve as periti at Vatican II of the fact that Vatican I remained unfinished and needed to be completed with a reflection on the relationship between episcopal collegiality and papal primacy. The text for Tametsi Deus is found in Giovan Domenico Mansi et al., eds., Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, 53 vols. (Florence: Antonio Zatti, 1759–1927), 53: 308–17. For sources on Tametsi Deus, see Granfield, “The Church as Societas Perfecta”; John Joy, On the Ordinary and Extraordinary Magisterium from Joseph Kleutgen to the Second Vatican Council, vol. 84, Studia oecumenica friburgensia (Münster, Germany: Aschendorff Verlag, 2017); and Henri Rondet, Vatican I: Le Concile de Pie IX.

40. The importance of this chapter was such that it was judged as “the backbone of the council” and the “center of gravity of Vatican II.” See Cardinal P. Eyt, “La collégialité épiscopale,” in Le deuxième concile du Vatican 1959–65. Actes du colloque organisé par l’École francaise de Rome en collaboration avec l’Université de Lille 3 (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1989), 54. In regard to this chapter, Yves Congar noted in his journal, “Vatican I has received its necessary complement.” Congar, My Journal of the Council, ed. Dennis Minnis, trans. Mary John Ronayne and Mary Cecily Boulding (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012), 590.

41. For an extended treatment of the way that the third chapter of Lumen Gentium seeks to bring balance to Vatican I’s teaching on the primacy by placing it within the context of episcopal collegiality, see Karl Rahner, “The Hierarchical Structure of the Church, with Special Reference to the Episcopate,” in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed. Herbert Vorgrimler, vol. 1 (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966), 186–218. See also Colberg, “Vatican I’s Impact on What and How Vatican II Taught,” in Vatican I and Vatican II, 115–36.

42. LG, §22.

43. The connection between Vatican II’s view of episcopal collegiality and Francis’s notion of synodality is the topic of Massimo Faggioli’s “From Collegiality to Synodality: Promise and Limits of Francis’s ‘Listening Primacy,’” Irish Theological Quarterly 85, no. 4 (November 2020): 352–69, https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0021140020916034.

44. Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (November 24, 2013), §32, https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html (hereafter cited as EG).

45. See Hervé Legrand, “Communio Ecclesiae, Communio Ecclesiarum, Collegium Episcoporum,” in For a Missionary Reform of the Church: The Civiltà Cattolica Seminar, ed. Antonio Spadaro and Carlos Marìa Galli (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2018), 159–95 at 184.

46. On this topic, see Dario Vitali’s “The Circularity between Sensus Fidei and Magisterium as a Criterion for the Exercise of Synodality in the Church,” in Spadaro and Galli, For a Missionary Reform of the Church, 196–217. Two other important sources on the exercise of the sensus fidelium are Ormond Rush, The Eyes of Faith: The Sense of the Faithful and the Church’s Reception of Revelation (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009); and Richard Gaillardetz’s “What Is the Sense of the Faithful?,” in By What Authority: Foundations for Understanding Authority in the Church (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2018).

47. Francis, “October 17, 2015 Address.”

48. EG, §32.

49. This is further developed in Legrand, “Towards a Common Understanding of Papal Ministry,” in Puglisi, Petrine Ministry, 330–34.

50. On this point, Pottmeyer writes, “I am therefore convinced that—more than any other efforts—it is incumbent on the Catholic Church itself to give its Petrine ministry a convincing form to make it possible for other Christians to share this experience.” Hermann Pottmeyer, “Historical Development of Forms of Authority and Jurisdiction: Papal Ministry—An Ecumenical Approach,” in Puglisi, Petrine Ministry, 98–107 at 106.

51. See Buckley, Papal Primacy, 62–74.

52. Andrea Tornielli, “Cardinal Grech: The Church Is Synodal Because It Is a Communion,” Vatican News, July 21, 2021, https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2021-07/cardinal-grech-synod-synodality-interview-communion.html.

53. Francis, “October 17, 2015 Address.”

Biographies

Kristin Colberg is an associate professor at Saint John’s University and School of Theology and the College of Saint Benedict. She serves as a member of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) and on the theological commission supporting the Synod on Synodality. She is currently working on a book on ecclesial indefectibility.

 

SOURCE Theological Studies