Neither Schismatic nor Excommunicated (3)

The Church Is Not Bi-Cephalous (Two-Headed)

"The unique body of the Church, one and unique, has only one head, and not two like a monster. It is Christ and His Vicar, the Lord having said to Peter: 'Feed my lambs."'[27]

The unique Church of Christ therefore is also One and under One alone.[28] And because Christ and the pope are not two different heads but one and the same unique Head, the Church cannot receive from Christ and the pope two different orientations and, even less, opposite ones. If this were to happen, there is no need to say to Whom one would owe allegiance.

The pope is indeed the Vicar and not the successor of Christ,[29] and the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, not the mystical body of the pope.[30] That is why St. Jerome wrote to Pope Damasus:

As for myself, I follow no one other than Christ as my first leader. I am then bound in communion with your Beatitude, that is to say to the Chair of Peter, knowing that on that rock is the Church built."[31]

Christ is the "cornerstone" on which the Church is built. Peter is a rock only "by participation."[32] He has heard, yes, "that he should be a rock; but not in the same way as Christ. Christ is the truly immovable rock. Peter is only immovable by virtue of Him..."[33] The pope is, yes, "Head and Leader of the Church, but on the visible level, in the juridical sense, for as long as he is assisted by Christ (infallibility) during the measured time of his pontificate."[34]

It follows that communion with the pope is inseparable from communion with Christ; the unity of the Church is unity with Christ and His vicar, never unity with the vicar without Christ or against Christ. Reason itself tells us that "we owe obedience to each one according to his rank." Otherwise justice is overthrown.[35]

The “Person” and the “Function” of the Pope

But could it be possible that he whom Christ has joined to Himself as head of the Church and as Peter would allow, favor, or want in the Church an orientation different from that wanted by Christ or opposed to it? Holy Scripture as well as Catholic theology tell us that, except in cases when the authority of the pope is covered by infallibility,[36] this is possible.

Peter confesses the divinity of Christ and Jesus tells him,

Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in Heaven. And I say to thee [to you who have confessed that I am the Son of God] that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church."[37]

The same Peter tries to divert Christ from His Passion and Jesus retorts to him,

Get behind me, Satan, thou art an obstacle unto me [that is the exact meaning of the word "scandal"] because thou savourest not the things that are of God, but the things that are of men."[38]

And that we not think that this "scandal" happened because the primacy had at that point in time only been promised but not yet conferred, there is the famous episode of Antioch.

The risen Jesus conferred on Peter the primacy which he exercises with the veneration of the first Christian community. In Antioch, however, Paul realized that Peter was "reprehensibilis" because he, and others led by his example, "did not walk uprightly according to the truth of the Gospel."[39]

Though inferior and subordinate to Peter, he reproved him "coram omnibus," in front of everyone. St. Thomas comments:

The occasion of the reproach was not minor but just and useful: it was the risk run by the truth of the Gospel. The manner in which it was made was suitable because it was public and evident ...given that this failure constituted a peril for everyone."[40]

Therefore Holy Scripture teaches that, with the exception of the case of infallibility, Peter is fallible and can become "reprehensible."

Identical is the teaching of the best Catholic theology, which makes a distinction between the "person" of the pope and his "function."

"Persona papae potest renuere subesse officio papae: the person of the pope can refuse to comply with his duty as pope," writes Cajetan, adding that "persistence in such behavior would make the pope a schismatic per separationem sui ab unitate Capitis: through his separation from union with the Head of the Church, who is Christ."[41] Cajetan specifies that the axiom "where the pope is, there is the Church" is valid inasmuch as the pope behaves as pope and as head of the Church; otherwise "the Church is not in him nor is he in the Church."

Cardinal Journet deals also with the case of "a bad pope but still a believer,"[42] of the possibility accepted by "major theologians" of a "heretical pope" and of a "schismatic pope."[43] He writes on this account that the pope "can also sin in two ways against ecclesiastical communion." The second way consists of the fact of "breaking the unity of direction, which could happen," according to the penetrating analysis of Cajetan,

if he rebelled, as a private individual, against the duties of his responsibilities, and refused to the Church─by trying to excommunicate it as a whole or simply by trying to live solely as a secular prince─the spiritual direction which she has the right to expect from him in the name of one greater than he, that of Christ Himself and of God."

And he adds:

the possibility of a schismatic pope reveals to us furthermore, in underlining a tragic day, the mystery of the holiness of this unity of aims which is necessary for the Church, and it might, perhaps, help a historian of the Church─or rather a theologian of the history of the Kingdom of God─to throw a divine light on the dark periods of the annals of the papacy, by allowing him to show how it was betrayed by some of its trustees."

It is obvious that if Catholic theology studies the prob lems caused by a bad, schismatic or even heretical pope, it is precisely because, as Cajetan says, "persona papae potest renuere sub esse officio papae": the person of the pope, outside the occasions when his infallibility is involved, can refuse to accept the functions of his position as pope. One last remark: because they had made a distinction between the "papacy" and its "trustees," between the "person" and the "function" of the pope, many theologians were personally told to get in line during the dark periods of the papacy.[44]

As for ourselves, to whom these dark periods had seemed to have been resolved forever, we have lost the habit of such distinctions; and since the First Vatican Council, we have ended up by mistaking infallibility and infallibilism, as if the pope were infallible always in everything, and not in very precise circumstances and under well-determined conditions.[45]

Footnotes

27 Boniface VII, bull Unam Sanctum (Dz.468).

28 St. Thomas, IIa-IIae, q.39, a. 1 and Cajetan in IIa-IIae, q. 39.

29 Cardinal Journet, L'Eglise du Verbe Incarne. Desclee de Brouwer, Fribourg, 1962, vol.I, p.526.

30 Ibid., p. 524;Cajetan, De comparata auctoritate papae et concilii, chap. VIII, No 519.

31 Ep. XV, 2, quoted by Leo XIII in the encyclical Salis cognitum, June 29, 1896.

32 Leo XIII, Salis cognitum.

33 Homily De Paenitentia attributed to St. Basil, quoted by the Council of Trent and by Leo XIII in Satis cognitum.

34 Cardinal Journet, op.cit., p.524.

35 Quote of Bossuet, in Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique, vol. lX, col. 908.

36 See Dz.1839.

37 Matt.16:17-18.

38 Ibid.,16:23.

39 Gal. 2:14.

40 In all of St. Paul's Epistles.

41 In IIa-IIae, q.39, a.1, No. 6.

42 Op.cit., vol. I, pp.547 ff.

43 Ibid., p.626; vol. II, pp. 839 ff.

44 See Dictionnaire de Theologique Catholique, under "schisme."

45 On this subject, let one re-read Vatican I's Constitution Pastor Aeternus.