It would assuredly be foolish of us to expect that there will be, in the foreseeable future, a general unification of Christianity under the papacy if this is understood to mean a recognition of Peter’s successor in Rome. Perhaps it is also a part of the inevitable constraints and limitations of this mandate that it can never be fully executed and must, consequently, be a source of friction among Christian believers, who exhibit in its regard a quality that is not vicarship, but autocracy. Nevertheless, it is not inconceivable that the Pope should exercise some kind of unifying role that transcends the community of the Roman Catholic Church. Even for those who do not accept the claims of his office, the Pope personally is a sign to the world of a responsibility, transmitted and proclaimed, for the word of God and, consequently, a provocation of which all are aware and that concerns all not only to seek greater fidelity to the word, but also to strive for unity and to accept responsibility for the lack of unity. In this sense, there is, despite the separation, a function of the papacy that builds unity and that, in the last analysis, no one can erase from the historical drama of Christianity. For the papacy and the Catholic Church, the criticism of the papacy by non-Catholic Christianity continues to be a spur to seek an ever more Christ-like realization of the Petrine ministry; for non-Catholic Christianity, on the other hand, the Pope continues to be a visible incitement to that concrete unity that is the responsibility of the Church and should be her sign before the world: may both sides succeed in accepting without reservation the question that is posed to us and the task that is given us and thus, in obedience to the Lord, become the dwelling-place of a peace that prepares the way for a new world—for the Kingdom of God. From: Dienst an der Einheit, pp. 177–78 Ratzinger, J. (1992). Co-Workers of the Truth: Meditations for Every Day of the Year (I. Grassl, Ed.) (M. F. McCarthy & L. Krauth, Trans.) (38–39). San Francisco: Ignatius Press.
Posted on: Tue, 28 Jan 2014 13:42:50 +0000
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