ROMAN CATHOLIC POPES ARE CHRIST’S VICARS
“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven”. (Mtt. 16:18-19)
The forgoing scriptural passage from the Gospel according to Matthew remains sufficiently the bedrock and foundation upon which the age-long belief in the Apostolic character of the Catholic Church is solidly built. Christ, before accomplishing his salvific work on earth chose Apostles who would help according to their capacities to spread the Gospel and to perpetuate the work he had already inaugurated. Above all, He founded the Church and entrusted the leadership to St. Peter who became not just the Vicar of Christ but the primus interperes (first among equals) of the college of Apostles. “You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church…” (Mtt. 16:18) This is not without any other reason but to foster order, continuity, unity and communion among the members of the Church. Now, just as Christ entrusted the Church to St. Peter, so also St. Peter entrusted the staff of authority to his subsequent successors and this unbreakable line of succession has remained intact throughout the turbulent moments of the past ages till the end of time.
It will be a scandalous insensitivity to remain silent without reacting to those age-long anti-catholic questions which are reframed in our contemporary time in the guise of novelty and a flagrant display of intellectual soundness. Yves Congar rightly said that “a Theologian or a scholar who does not know the history of Theology and the Church may be condemned to repeat the mistakes of that history. (Yves Congar, A History of Theology, p. 15) Thus the question: Are Romish Popes God’s Vicars?, as raised by Uzodi Obialo in his article dated 9th November, 2014 in the Guardian Newspapers is merely a fabrication of those in the distant past who were ignorant of Church History and who profess the inexistence of such history in order to evade the heart-piercing truth about Catholicism. It is because of this escapist attitude that Cardinal John Henry Newman eminently avowed that “to be deep in history is to cease to be a protestant”. These are indeed the insightful words from a one-time protestant who claimed to have seen the light before he saw a greater light through faith that seeks understanding, which led him to seek meaning and truth!
On the fabricated issue and concern Obialo raised regarding the nature of the authority of the Pope and the responsibilities of other ministers in the Church, there is a case of misplacement of identity and ignorance of the nature of the hierarchical structure of the Church on his part. On the contrary, by virtue of the principle of fundamental equality, all Christ’s faithful are equal since they share in the common bond of baptism but by virtue of the fundamental principle of variety, we have those specially called to serve others and they include: the Pope, the Bishops, the Priests and the Deacons. It is based on this that the hierarchical structure of the Church is made up of: The Clergy and the Lay Faithful. Hence, this is clearly and unambiguously elucidated in the Code of Canon law: “By divine institution, among Christ’s faithful there are in the Church Sacred ministers, who are also called clerics- the others are called Lay People”. (Can. 207:1).
The Church is divine and human, divine in the sense that it is the mystical body of Christ, which by its essence cannot err or be affected by any sort of corruption. It is human in the sense that it is made up of humans who though frail in nature are striving towards a life of holiness. This human element of the Church has no doubt been responsible for all the scandals and corruption recorded within different epochs of history of the Church. Nevertheless, that would not be sufficient to condemn and nail the whole Church to the cross because of the errors of the past which were the consequences of the frailty of the human element of the Church. The Apostles who are the pillars of the Church were not called by Jesus as already finished products of holiness. They were like us in all things including sin. Who could ever imagine that St. Peter whom Christ made His vicar could deny him three times when he needed his solidarity the most? Who could ever conceive that there was power tussle among the Apostles on who should rule? However, Christ saw beyond their frail nature and still chose them to become instruments of grace, sanctification and salvation.
In subsequent times this same frailty reared its ugly head: Power tussle which led to the appearance of three Popes in 1414 A.D., the flamboyant life style of many clerics, and above all is the selling of indulgences for money and wealth, which eventually led to protestant reformation as super-headed by Martin Luther in the year 1517. His poor understanding of ecclesiology and literalistic approach to sacred scripture contributed heavily to his hasty and arrogant decision which made him fight the hierarchy of the Church and at the end quit from the Church. Although there is no doubt that his objections were right but the approach he adopted is not sacrosanct and prudent. An Igbo adage has it that “one cannot consider the dirty condition of the water used in bathing a baby and go to the extreme of pouring it away together with the baby”. This adage expresses seemingly the actions taken by Luther in a bid to correct certain misdemeanors among the clerics of his time. He easily forgot that conversion begins first from within, and not from without. Luther’s radical call for reformation is unlike the ever sung heroic act of St. Francis of Assisi, who also saw the high rate of scandals and corruption in the Church of his time. Instead of breaking away from the Church and criticizing the Church’s hierarchy, he prudently began to reform his life and by so doing he supplied to an extent what was lacking in the life of the clerics. In one of his writings, St. Francis admonished his followers and friars on the need to show reverence to ordained ministers even when they are in sin. According to him, “if he sees a priest and an Angel standing before him, he will first of all bow down and show reverence to the priest since he has the privilege to prayer over bread and wine to become the body and bread of Christ”.
The Pope is both the Vicar of Christ and the political leader of Vatican City, Rome. As the Vicar of Christ, he plays a prophetic role not just within the confines of the Catholic Church but in the world at large. While as the political leader of Vatican City, he cannot go beyond his jurisdiction and territorial boundary. Hence, it is merely sterile criticism to suggest as among the roles of the Pope to delve into the age-long Israel/Palestinian conflict, which even Jesus Christ could not venture into solving, when a similar issue arose at his own time (that is , when the Romans were ruling the Jews).
There is indeed a great need to have a good knowledge of history-for this will make for an undistorted idea of the events of the past, and will equip us with the reliable materials and evidences to justifying our claims and making a balanced judgment. To escape from the reality of history is to be bereft of ideas, and to venture into any discussion when one is bereft of ideas is to run into avoidable errors.
-Friar Francis U. Ezeh, OFM.CAP.
