138

A magisterium of authority and

service
Theodore Davey

N 6 JANUARY 2001, POPE JOHN PAUL II issued an Apolistic Letter,

O Nova millennio ineunte, in part four of which he reflects on the
'spirituality of communion'. There he states his conviction that the
great challenge facing believers in the new millennium is how to make
the Church the home and school of communion.
This key scriptural concept occurs several times in Acts and in the
Pauline epistles, denoting a sharing in God's gifts by individuals and
communities, as witnessed in the lives of the earliest disciples. It is also
used of spiritual blessings, which the gentiles are invited to share, as
well as the corporate solidarity which we have with Christ and with one
another through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. In the reflections
which follow, however, communion particularly signifies the bonds that
unite all eucharistic communities under their bishops, to form the one,
holy Catholic Church. The Anglican-Roman Catholic International
Commission considered communion the most appropriate way of
expressing the mystery underlying the various New Testament images
of the Church, and it is particularly suited to the People of God image:

Koinonia [communion] is the term that most aptly expresses the

mystery underlying the various New Testament images of the Church.
When, for example, the Church is called the people of the new
covenant or the bride of Christ, the context is primarily that of
communion. 1

The object of this article is to argue that the episcopal magisterium

exists to serve the welfare of that communion. Thus, in Novo miUennio
ineunte, the pope goes on to remark that this new century should see us
trying to devise forums and structures that will serve to enhance and
safeguard communion.

How can we forget in the first place those specific services to

communion which are the Petrine ministry and, closely related to it,
episcopal collegiality? These are realities which have their foundation
and substance in Christ's own plan for the Church, but which need to
 AUTHORITY AND SERVICE 139

be examined contantly in order to ensure that they follow their

genuinely evangelical inspiration. 2

Magisterium and the strengthening of communion

The word magisterium is generally understood to refer exclusively to
the teaching authority and function of the body of bishops, in
communion with and under the Bishop of Rome; a blending and a
delicate balance between primacy and collegiality. 'In official Catholic
documents the pope is recognized as having a pre-eminent magisterium
in view of his role as successor of Peter, though in respect to
sacramental orders he is on a level with all other bishops. '3 During the
Middle Ages it was not uncommon to refer to a dual magisterium of
bishops and theologians, those latter considered to be teachers because
of their theological understanding and training. And in the years
following Vatican II, the idea of a dual magisterium of bishops and
theologians surfaced again, defended by Cardinal Avery Dulles among
others. 4 But this has found little support recently, primarily because of
its potential for division and disagreement with the hierarchical
teaching authority. This is not to deny that theologians have a teaching
role in the Church or 'that they perform essential tasks within the entire
teaching process . . . [I]t is the theologian's task to reflect upon
revelation systematically in order to deepen our understanding of it, and
prepare the beginnings of a clear, precise, consistent, topical, persuas-
ive formulation. '5
However, we must remember Vatican II defined:

The body of the faithful as a whole, anointed as they are by the Holy
One, cannot err in matters of belief. Thanks to the supernatural sense of
faith which characterises the People as a whole, it manifests its
unerring quality when, from the bishops down to the last member of
the laity, it shows universal agreement in matters of faith. (Lumen
gentium 12)

A popular distinction used to be drawn between the Church teaching

(ecclesia docens) and the Church taught (ecclesia discens). Now,
however, this is seen as too imprecise because of the passivity
apparently predicated of the body of the faithful. The canonist Ladislas
Orsy remarks that all believers have access to God's revelation in
Christ, and therefore 'they can perceive, witness its truth, have insights
into its depths' .6 But only the Apostolic See of Rome and the college of
140 AUTHORITY AND SERVICE

bishops as magisterium, 'acting collegially are authentic teachers, that

is "teachers endowed with the authority of Christ". Only they possess
the promise of the guidance of the Spirit in this essential task. '7 This is
the foremost ministry of the magisterium: the enhancement and
strengthening of communion in faith among all believers.
The pope's words marking the beginning of the new millennium also
remind us that the Church of Christ is constantly in need of reform, in
head and members, and that it is the function of the whole Church to
take part in such examination and discernment. As well, it is a matter of
not over-emphasizing papal primacy to the detriment of collegiality or
vice versa, but rather of seeing true communion flowing from a delicate
balance between them. Put very simply, the constitutional history of the
Church and of the canon law is mainly the story of the tension, mostly
creative, between papal primacy and episcopal collegiality. And that
tension remains today, s

Vatican H and after

When comparing the ecclesiology of Vatican I with Vatican II, it has
been asserted that there were several factors which, coming together,
helped form our present theological understanding, none of which was
available to the Church of 1870. The first one of these was the renewal
of biblical studies, from which Vatican II benefitted enormously, The
second was the immense progress in our knowledge of the history of the
Church and of the way it and its structures have developed, by Christ's
will, over the centuries. Cardinal Newman was perceptive and inspired
in this regard. A third element was the decision of the Council of the
twentieth century to abandon a negative and suspicious stance vis-?~-vis
the world, and to take seriously the world as the arena of God's saving
activity, a world full of joys and hopes, griefs and anxieties in The
Church in the world of today:

All these factors, flowing together into a new and creative vision of
Christ in the world, Christ in humanity, Christ in his Church, make
themselves felt in the ecclesiology of Vatican II in a way that would not
have been possible of accomplishment at the time of Vatican I, even if
it had had the opportunity of finishing its projected w o r k . . . 9

As regards the Church' s relationship to the world, mentioned above,

one sees from Vatican II in its second inspiring ecclesiological
constitution, Gaudium et spes, how positive an engagement it was and
should be. 'God is to be found continually at work in human history,
 AUTHORITY AND SERVICE 141

whether collective or individual; and the Spirit of Jesus Christ is to be

detected and acknowledged not as some remote oracle but in events as,
"God in his nearness to us".' 10 When considering our topic, it is
helpful to go back thirty years, to the document of the International
Synod of 1971, Justice in the world. Here, the synod of bishops
collegially endorsed and affirmed the openness of Vatican II to God's
creation, and there we find the assertion:

Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of

the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the
preaching of the Gospel, or, in other words, of the Church's mission for
the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every
oppressive situation [6]. 11

There can be and has been considerable debate about the exact
meaning of 'pursuit of justice and transformation of the world';
whether it is a 'dimension' of the preaching of the Gospel, or a 'pre-
condition' of evangelization. But the fact remains that the pope and the
college of bishops have fully committed themselves and the Church to
service of the world as the locus of God's activity. However, we cannot
leave it at that, as though the Gospel of Luke, when it describes
believers as having the mission of alleviating human distress, implies
there is nothing further to the Christian vocation (Lk 4:18-19). It is also
a matter of 'refining our understanding of the Christian vocation and
entails total commitment both to freeing our fellow humans and Earth
from bondage and confessing that the fullness of that liberation comes
in a kingdom not yet fully present . . . it is how to understand the
Church's relation to the "both/and" of a this-worldly and eschatolo-
gical liberation'. 12 Chapter 8 of Romans must be read in conjunction
with Luke 4. Strengthening the bonds of communion between the local
churches, and striving to serve the world as it is gradually turned into
the Kingdom God intended it to be, is a significant objective of the
ministry of the magisterium.
As an instance of how seriously the magisterium has taken the theme
of the 1971 Synod, George Weigel recounts a conversation in the mid-
1980s when Sir Michael Howard, then Regius Professor of Modem
History at Oxford,

. . . suggested that there had been two great revolutions in the

twentieth century. The first had taken place when Lenin's Bolsheviks
expropriated the Russian people's revolution in November 1917. The
142 AUTHORITY AND SERVICE

other was going on even as we spoke: the transformation of the Roman

Catholic Church from a bastion of the ancien rdgime into perhaps the
world's foremost institutional defender of human rights. It was a
fascinating reading of the history of our century. 13

Historical developments
When we turn to look at the early development of episcopal and
papal authority, we find that the change in understanding that was
articulated at Vatican II can be seen as a return to a much older view of
the authority of these offices.
In terms of service, well into the Middle Ages, the concept of the
bishop's authority was tied to his being a man of God, a man through
whom the Spirit shone, rather than someone with a place in an ordered
hierarchy. As Congar remarks, the oldest sections of the Latin ritual of
ordination insist upon his commitment to his people rather than any
ecclesiastical power he might have. Devoting himself to an assiduous
study of Holy Scripture, to prayer, fasting and hospitality, 'he must
welcome, listen to and help everybody, he must practise almsgiving. He
is to edify his people by word of mouth and by the celebration of the
liturgy, and in so doing, he is to be aware not of his dominium or
potestas, but of his ministerium'. 14 This emphasis on the ministerium or
service which the local bishop gives to his people has a two-fold aspect,
since as a member of the apostolic college the bishop is the figure who
'expresses the universality of the People of God, but insofar as it is
assembled under one head, it expresses the unity of the flock of
C h r i s t ' . 15 Throughout the Conciliar Constitution on the Church of
Vatican II, the authority of the hierarchy is always explained in terms of
service and not domination, thus activating an earlier memory.

The papal office

Historically it seems that Pope Leo the Great was the person who
made explicit the technology of papal primacy or Petrine authority,
although this had been gradually forming, especially in the West, for
over two hundred years. Leo approached this Roman tradition by
clearly explaining the relationship between Christ and Peter and
between Peter and the Bishop of Rome, and his approach played a
major part in clarifying the Latin West's understanding of the
theological foundation of the papal office.
Although not particularly original, since other popes had already
invoked the Matthew text to clarify and justify papal authority, Leo
 AUTHORITY AND SERVICE 143

took the Petrine text of Matthew 16:18-19 ('You are Peter and upon
this rock I will build my Church . . .') in justifying his office. Leo,
however, emphasized that Christ himself gave to Peter personally, and
to him alone, a primatial role in the apostolic college. Peter's authority
over the apostles was a sharing in the sacred authority or potestas of
Christ. Such a relationship existed between Jesus and Peter that the
apostle's judgements were considered to be identical with those of
Christ, and it seems Leo took it for granted that Peter had received a
primacy in the apostolic college by dominical institution, that is, from
Christ himself.
In addition to his teaching that Jesus gave to Peter a primacy over the
other apostles, Leo held that the pope continued to fulfil Peter's role in
the Church. Although the idea of the Bishop of Rome as successor to
Peter was already known in ecclesiastical tradition at Rome, there was
little systematic treatment of the subject. But Leo, who had been a
Roman lawyer, took the legal concept of heredity and applied it to papal
succession. The Roman Law regarded the heir as having the same
rights, authority and obligation as his predecessor. 16 In the same way,
then, the pope could exercise the same office and fullness of authority
that Christ had entrusted to Peter. After the death of Peter, the pope was
both his successor in the historical sense and his substitute or vicar in
the legal sense.
Further, according to Leo, Peter continued to exercise authority in
the Church in a mystical way. This mystical identification of the heir
with the deceased was not found in Roman Law. To the idea of juridical
continuity through succession in office, Leo added that of mystical or
sacramental continuity: from heaven Peter continues to pray for the
Church and to govern it through his heir and vicar, the Bishop of Rome.
In this sense the pope is Peter himself.
Leo founded the permanence of the papacy on Peter's unfailing
guidance of the Church. Therefore, Christ not only instituted Petrine
primacy, but also continues to guide the Church through a living Petrine
authority. Consequently, papal primacy itself is also willed by Christ.
Tradition holds that to Leo we owe two maxims that have come down
to us with implications for collegiality: 'He who governs all should be
elected by all', and 'No one shall be designated a bishop who has not
been chosen by the clergy, accepted by the people and consecrated by
the bishops of the province with the approval of the metropolitan.' 17
144 AUTHORITY AND SERVICE

Refining collegiality
At the same time the concept of collegiality was already becoming
explicit. Texts of the letters of the popes of that early period reveal a
real progress in theological thinking on the subject: for instance the
letters of many of the popes of the fifth century. From these texts we can
define the episcopal college as the gathering of all the bishops under
and with the Bishop of Rome; its basis is episcopal consecration and
common apostolic succession, and its solemn manifestation as suc-
cessor to the apostolic college is the Council. There is clear under-
standing of collegiate responsibility for the Church's mission, and all
the time there is insistence that the bishop is not an isolated individual,
and must not be treated as such. From Leo's time, as indicated earlier,
we find clear witness to the function of the pope as head of the
episcopal college, and the collegiate responsibility of the bishops is but
a sharing in the universal care and solicitude that belongs to Peter.
The very terms that Leo uses, such as communio episcoporum,
societas, collegium, reveal the presence of permanent collegiality in the
Church of that day. Thus for the Church the authority of a bishop lay in
the fact that he was a father in the life of the Church, the liturgical figure
who unites the whole of the local community, now become diocesan,
with God the Father, and with the other churches also. The collegial
aspect of the bishop's offices was so important that higher bishops such
as metropolitans and patriarchs had their powers only in so far as these
were acknowledged by the whole communion of bishops. It is worth
noting that at the recent papal consistory in Rome, one of the Eastern
rite cardinals present there, Lubomyr Husar of the Ukraine, had
previously been elected head of his church by twenty-six fellow
bishops,~S a contemporary act of collegiality.
However, the teaching on episcopal collegiality did not develop
uninterruptedly, nor was it so unambiguously accepted and clear that it
could not be challenged, and a main challenge occurred in the thirteenth
century. There were those, proponents of extreme Roman centraliza-
tion, who held that Christ had conferred authority only on Peter, and
that the bishops were simply servants or delegates of the pope.
Opposing them were those who argued that, on the contrary, Christ
conferred authority on all the apostles, and therefore on the bishops,
who were more than simple delegates or vicars. Tierney, the dis-
tinguished historian of canon law, cautions, however, that these latter
proponents of episcopal jursidiction were using the traditional texts 'to
defend the autonomy of each individual bishop in his own diocese.
Ideas akin to the modern doctrine of episcopal collegiality found
 AUTHORITY AND SERVICE 145

virtually no support at this time'. 19 And collegiality as the Church came

to define it, is a richer concept than autonomy.
Many of the influential canonists of the time, particularly Hostiensis,
in attempting to hold the middle ground, developed a different theory of
collegiality. They took it away from the bishops, and instead gave it to
the college of cardinals. In this way, they hoped to preserve centralized
papal authority, while retaining aspects of collegiality. 2° And, as is
well-known, during the early part of the fifteenth century, conciliarism,
or the theory that a General Council is superior in authority to the pope,
although issuing primarily as a response to the felt need for reform and
to end the Great Schism, left a legacy of mistrust in the matter of
General Councils that has had a deleterious effect on a balanced view of
collegiality until today. The model that conciliarism promoted, of the
pope as servant of the General Council, similar to that of Secretary-
General of the United Nations, would find no resonance in orthodox
Catholic belief.
As we have seen, the doctrine of a juridical primacy of the pope was
gradually becoming explicit towards the end of the Western Roman
Empire. R . W . Southern gives a fascinating example of how the
doctrine of papal primacy was not simply a conclusion of theologians
and canonists, but lay deep in the consciousness of the early period:

The rulers and pilgrims from the newly converted peoples of Europe
who came to Rome to be baptised and, if possible, to die in the
presence of the Apostle, were not drawn by sophisticated theories of
papal authority but by the conviction that they could find nowhere such
safety as in the physical presence of the Keeper of the keys of heaven.
St Peter still worked in the tomb, but his person was entrusted to the
pope. The hands might be those of Gregory or Leo, but the voice was
that of St Peter. 21

The older doctrine of episcopal collegiality survived, however, and

both doctrines are in place today. Vatican II, therefore, was re-
emphasizing a patristic doctrine when it declared that collegiality came
about by sacramental consecration and communion with the Head and
with other members of the College of bishops. It also concluded that
episcopal consecration, along with the office of sanctifying, also
confers the offices of teaching and governing.
146 AUTHORITY AND SERVICE

A contemporary challenge
The Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, in a recent coversation about
Pope John Paul II, when asked how he judged him as a historical figure,
said it was necessary to distinguish between the pope's politics and his
theology. As regards his politics, Hobsbawm went on to remark that
this .pope reminded him of the great papacies of the late nineteenth
century, particularly Leo XIII's, and that John Paul II was 'the last great
ideologue to criticise capitalism for what it is'. Later in the interview he
remarked that, not being religious, theology did not concern him, but he
made the pertinent comment that just as the state is no longer in total
control of its citizens, so the Catholic Church can no longer depend on
the automatic loyalty of its believers: 'the problem with an authori-
tarian religion like Catholicism is that it is based on a voluntary
acceptance of its theology' .22
Now whatever meaning Hobsbawm puts on the word 'authoritarian'
in his comment above, it is undoubtedly true, a clich6 almost, to remark
that people from our contemporary secular society, freely enter the
Church, and just as freely leave. In confirmation of this one canonist
puts it:

There is the underlying social reality that in nearly all countries today
churches are voluntary associations. People are relatively free to join
them or to walk away from them, to be actively engaged in them or
nominally identified with them. This freedom of association is an
undeniable fact of life, and it qualifies and conditions all disciplinary
activity, including the canonical, within the churches. Voluntary choice
governs church involvement both 1) at the level of the ecclesial
membership, ongoing affiliation, and personal identification, and 2) at
the level of local church loyalty, Mass attendance, active participation
and financial support.23

Another writer has described the Church today as having 'walls' that
are completely permeable: 'people can leave, at least from a formal
point of view, just as easily as they can enter' .24 This emphasis on the
voluntary seems to me to be of quite fundamental importance when
considering the ministry and function of the magisterium. Certainly
across the Western world, extrinsic authority of pope or bishop, namely
~ha~ possessed s~M~ b?~ ~i~tue ~ ~ne's p~sition ~ ~ncti~n, is ~itt~e
regarded nowadays. In fact all the established sources of authority in
the West have to prove themselves regularly, many by the democratic
process. This is not to argue that the Church is a democracy, although
 AUTHORITY AND SERVICE 147

obviously there are democratic elements in the Church. But it is to

underline the fact that the magisterium, too, is at a crucial moment
when institutional religion seems in danger of being replaced by vague
religious impulses without institution. That the Church is an institution
no one can deny; and that the Church has survived the ebbing tides of
history, often hostile, precisely because of its institutional elements, can
be forcefully argued. But it is the intrinsic authority of the magisterium
when it proclaims and safeguards the deposit of Faith that is so
compelling. And authority differs sharply from power.

Theodore Davey is a Passionist priest and canonist, who teaches pastoral

theology and canon law at Heythrop College, University of London.

NOTES

1 'Anglican-Roman Catholic Conversations: Final Report, 4' in H. Meyer& L. Vischer, Growth in

agreement (Paulist Press, 1984).
2 Nova millennio ineunte, 44.
3 A. Dulles, 'The two magisteria: an interim reflection', Proceedings of the 35th Annual
Convention of the Catholic Theological Soc&ty of America (1980), p 157.
4 Ibid., pp 155-169.
5 R. A. McCormick, 'The teaching role of the magisterium and of theologians', Proceedings of the
24th Annual Convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America (1969), pp 239-254.
6 L. Orsy, The Church: learning and teaching (Fowler Wright Books, 1987), p 65.
7 McCormick, op. cit., p 247.
8 For two illustrative accounts of contemporary tension between primacy and collegiality see J. R.
Quinn, The reform of the papacy (Crossroad, 2000), pp 76-116; and D. Efroymson & J. Raines
(eds), Open Catholicism: the tradition at its best (Michael Glazier Books, 1997), pp 87-110.
9 R. Gallagher & S. Cannon, Sean O'Riordan: a theologian of development (Columba Press,
1998), pp 241-242.
10 J. Mahoney, 'Theological and pastoral reflections' in M. Abrams & D. Gerard (eds), Valuesand
social change in Britain (M Publications, 1985).
11 M. Walsh & B. Davies, Proclaiming justice and peace: documents from John XXllI-John Paul
H (Twenty-Third Publications, 1984), p 190.
12 W. Burrows, 'Mission and evangelization today', 44th General Chapter of the Passionist
Congregation (Brazil: Italci, 2000).
13 G. Weigel, Soul of the world: notes on thefuture of public Catholicism (Gracewing, 1996), p 99.
14 Y. Congar, Power and poverty in the Church (Geoffrey Chapman, 1964), pp 50-51.
15 Lumen gentium, 22.
16 For a full historical treatment see W. Ullmann, 'Leo I and the Theme of Papal Primacy',
Journal of Theological Studies (1960), pp 33-35.
17 PL54:628; PL54:1203.
18 'The Church in the World', The Tablet (2 June 200t), p 813.
19 B. Tierney, Rights, laws and infallibility in medieval thought (Variorum, 1997), p 401. This is a
very concise summary of a fascinating article that well deserves fuller treatment.
148 AUTHORITY AND SERVICE

20 Ibid.
21 R, W. Southern, Western society and the Church in the Middle Ages (Penguin Books, 1985),
pp 94-95.
22 E. Hobsbawm & A. Polito, The new century (Abacus, 2000), p 57.
23 J. A. Coriden, Freedom and good order for the Church (Paulist Press, 2000), p 102.
24 M. Visser, The geomeOy of love (Viking, 2000), p 129.