By R.A Capone
One only shall be your teacher, Christ (Mt 23, 10).
The authority of the Church is from Christ who at His Ascension spoke these words to the Apostles: “All power is given to me in heaven and on earth” (Matthew 28:18). Christ received His authority from the Father who sent Him into the world to redeem sinners and for the salvation of souls. Christ sent His apostles to all nations, to baptize in the name of the Holy Trinity and: “(t)each(ing) them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matthew 28: 20). The Apostles, the first bishops, appointed their successors to carry on this work of redemption in the Church, “the ‘pillar and bulwark of the truth,’ (who) has received this solemn command of Christ from the apostles to announce the saving truth” (Catechism, 1992, 2032).
In Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII wrote that the faithful must “learn to reverence and love holy Church, the common Mother of us all; and hence to obey the precepts of the Church, and to frequent the sacraments, since they are the means ordained by God for obtaining forgiveness of sins and for leading a holy life’(57). The Church is indeed our loving Mother and Teacher who imparts to her children the way of truth in doctrine, morality and worship.
These days we hear more about a “listening” Church, but very little about this “teaching” Church. When one considers who is the source of her doctrines and her teaching authority, Christ, one recognizes the profound risk of listening to those contrary voices. Those voices who want to fundamentally change her Apostolic mandate to teach and govern the faithful whether under the guise of a greater pastoral approach or simply out of an explicit rejection of her doctrines.
The teaching authority of the Church is based on the Person of Christ who is the truth and the only way to the Father and eternal life. In his book, “The Spirit of Catholicism”, (1929), the German priest and theologian, Karl Adam, writes,
(T)he Church in her official system is to secure the great and primary Christian idea that there is properly only one authority, only one teacher, only one sanctifier, only one pastor: Christ, the Lord.
This authority was passed first to the Apostles and from them onto their successors, the Catholic bishops, who, under the authority of Christ are to teach all that He has commanded. Gerhard Cardinal Muller wrote recently:
The essence of the Church cannot be grasped by the sociological categories of natural reason, but only in the light of faith that the Holy Spirit works in us.
The Church is the Kingdom of God on earth, a “sacramentally constituted communion” in which “the bishops and priests are not the representatives of the people they govern; they are representatives of God” who is its Head (First Things, October 2023).
The Church is not a democracy, an earth-bound organization governed by common consent and majority rule.
Today there is a grave temptation to seek out those who preach a gospel of comfort without acknowledging the reality of sin or the need for repentance. This is a wide and easy path requiring one not to seek forgiveness, to atone nor to cultivate virtue. It’s the way that leads to perdition. It’s the way of the world. Whether concerning doctrine, morality or worship, this way deforms, ignores or explicitly rejects the unchanging faith of the Apostles and the saints. Saint Paul anticipating this sad state occurring offered this warning to Saint Timothy:
(f)or there shall be a time when they will not endure sound doctrine; but, according to their own desires, they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears: And will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables (2 Timothy 4: 3,4).
This verse is preceded by this well-known and courageous exhortation to “(p)reach the word: be instant in season, out of season: reprove, entreat, rebuke in all patience and doctrine”. (verse 2) Despite those voices calling for a greater “listening” and more “pastoral” Church, the Apostle to the Gentiles reminds teachers of the faith, the bishops and priests, in both good and bad times to extol its true doctrines in charity and patience. It is Christ Who is the teacher in the Church, the unchanged and forever unchanging, the same Christ yesterday, today and tomorrow. This is indeed the only true and worthy pastoral approach of her ministers to act always in the person and name of Christ (alter Christi).
We have just witnessed the conclusion of the Synod on Synodality in October that undeniably attempted to revolutionize the Church’s governance and ecclesial functions. It stressed a more horizontal Church and one that is less vertical and hierarchical. The great danger of this “important change” in the Church, the term which some synod supporters prefer “revolution”, is the coming effect it will have on faith and morals. Here is an example of revolutionary act: for the first time in Church history members of the laity have been given the right to vote along with bishops, the actual successors of the Apostles. The Apostolic Constitution Episcopalis Communio (2018) provided for the presence of those ‘non-bishops’ at the Synod. These included 70 individuals culled internationally – priests, lay faithful, consecrated women, and deacons as part of the 364-member synod assembly in Rome (21 percent of the total).
Synods and syndolality rightly ordered do not present a threat to the Church. Pope Leo XIII gathered bishops for joint consultations “not for the purpose of distilling a majority opinion” but that “served to orient all to the normative apostolic tradition, with the bishops exercising their co-responsibility to ensure that the Church abides in the truth of Christ.” (Cardinal Muller, First Things, October 2023)
How does this recent synodal structure reconcile with the Church’s understanding of herself as the spotless Bride of Christ, His Mystical Body and her source of authority originating in Christ and delegated to the Apostles and their successors? In the Apostolic Constitution, Episcopalis Communio, the term, “authority” is used only twice – the first refers to how the pontiff may “select and promote ways in which the College of Bishops can exercise its proper authority over the universal Church.” The other uses references that “there may be added further special guests, chosen because of their acknowledged authority.” The reference to the bishop’s proper authority over the universal Church is a clear statement of the Church’s understanding of her traditional Christ-centered and hierarchically delegated authority over matters of faith and morals. This synod is a clear deviation in the form of governance which potentially exposes the Church’s mission of saving souls to many dangers as witnessed by the topics discussed.
How is this the case? Bishops’ authority, rooted in the Christocentric nature of the Church and as successors to the Apostles, cannot be ceded to any including the laity. Father Karl Adams continues:
The whole constitution of the Church is completely aristocratic and not democratic, her authority coming from above, from Christ, and not from below, from the community (italics author).
Christ was sent by the Father and the Apostles were sent by Christ. Tertullian describes it this way: “The Church is from the apostles, the apostles from Christ, Christ from God” (De praescriptione). In Romans, Saint Paul exhorts all to be subject to higher authority, whether the state or the Church “for there is no power but from God: and those that are, are ordained by God. Therefore he that resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God.” (Romans 13:1,2) He says further that “they that resist, purchase to themselves damnation”.
Adam recalls that the authority of Christ was seated in the Apostles and then over time with the bishops who become Christ’s instruments and whose responsibility is always to let Christ act through them to teach, sanctify and govern the Church. Christ is, as the scholastics say, the ‘principal cause’ “of all the functions exercised by the Church, their ultimate source and the basis of their efficacy.” In these functions, “the human self, the human personality, the individual as such, falls wholly into the background…(n)ot any human personality, but the redemptive might of Jesus controls the Church”.
Saint Matthew records Jesus’ words of warning to his disciples to follow good doctrine and not the bad examples set by the Pharisees: “One only shall be your teacher, Christ.” Christ is the foundation, the keystone of the Church’s traditional teaching, the ever-fruitful font of all true preaching centered on saving souls. Adam: “Her conservatism and her traditionalism derive directly from her fundamentally Christo-centric attitude.”
In order to enter the Kingdom of God Catholic faithful must depend on the Church, his Mother and Teacher (Mater et Magistra) and her sacraments as the ordinary means of grace and holiness. One must not grasp after authority or seek to be exalted beyond one’s state. The members of His Mystical Body must become meek and childlike, dependent and small, to negotiate the way through the narrow gate and the low lintel which leads to the Father. The saints possessed many great and varied gifts, but all had part of the humility of Christ. The faithful must not grasp at authority that belongs to the bishops.
Finally, the Church is a community of love, of supernatural stock, whose authority comes directly from God. Saint Paul counsels Saint Timothy to “(k)eep the good thing committed to thy trust by the Holy Ghost, who dwelleth in us” (2 Timothy 1:14) and to “(t)ake heed to thyself and to doctrine; be earnest in them. For in doing this thou shalt both save thyself and them that hear thee” (1 Timothy 4:16). The journey of the faithful in Christ, the members of His Body, leads to self-denial and self-emptying. This death to self will produce great fruits including docility and eagerness to learn, to hear, to listen to what the Father sent the Son to reveal to mankind and carried forward in time by the Church’s hierarchy faithfully teaching the Word of God. “And Simon Peter answered him: Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life” (John 6:69).
Dr Capone is a retired physician, former hospice medical director l, administrator and educator having taught Catholic bioethics at St Vincent College. He lives in Western Pennsylvania with his family.
