Index

Part I—The Historical Credibility Of Hans Kung
Part II—Kungian Aporiae
Part III—Kung's Declension Of Faith
Bibliography
Conclusion

Joseph Costanzo was Professor of Political Philosophy, Historical Jurisprudence and Constitutional Law in the graduate schools of Fordham (1949-52, 1955-1970) and Georgetown universities. He has lectured at universities in America, Canada and Europe and, at the invitation of the United States Department of State (1960), he lectured in Ireland and Germany. Consequent to the papal promulgation of Humanae Vitae he concentrated his energies to the exposition and defense of the Petrine Commission and the unique apostolic mandate entrusted by Christ Our Lord to papal magisterium in a trilogy of articles that have appeared in L’Osservatore Romano and are now included in the Appendix of this volume.

In Memory of my Mother and Father—who by their lives nurtured within me a deep and abiding love of our Catholic Faith. Because I believed I spoke out (2 Cor. 4:10)

Every priest must, whether he wills it or not, come face to face with the novelties of theologizing in some quarters. He can either defer to the Church's claim of divine credentials, as the generality of the faith do, and turn back upon the innovators (ever-sores St. Augustine called them—up-rooters). Or, he may undertake to respond as best he can in terms of a personally lived Catholic faith by the grace of God and his own intellectual and spiritual resources. I have chosen to do the latter.

Part I
The Historical Credibility Of Hans Kung Anima et Animus

"A Candid Preface" (K. 11-30). The pages ache intensely here (and not infrequently throughout the entire book) with a teutonic neuralgia: "Rome," "Bishop of Rome," "Roman Pontiff," (never "Vicar of Christ"). As early, if not earlier, as 495 when the Roman synod hailed Pope Gelasius eleven times, "Vicarium Christi te videmus," cf. Council of Florence (Dz. 694), "verum Christi vicarium"; Vatican I (Dz. 826), "verum Christi vicarium"; so, too (Vatican Council II, Lumen Gentium, n. 18), never "His Holiness" (even members of the diplomatic corps representing non-Catholic countries use this term); "Roman canon law," (not simply canon law), "Roman ghetto," "Vatican ghetto," "curial ghetto," "Roman central administration," "traditional curial policy and theology" (not Catholic theology), "Roman curia," "Roman reaction," "narrow Roman theology and ideology," "not very ecumenical Romanism," "Roman system," "Roman textbooks" (notwithstanding that many of their authors were German and French), "Roman theory," "non-Roman readers," "Roman teaching," "Roman claim," "Roman-minded prelates," "Roman teaching office" (not the teaching office of the Catholic Church), "Roman mentality" (many of the professors of theology in Rome were non-Italians)—is it a theological discredit to teach according to the Bishop of Rome, the Roman Pontiff?); "Church of the Roman Imperial Capital," "centralized, juridicized, romanticized," "Rome at the time of the Counter Reformation" (not the Catholic Church), "Roman ecclesiastical policy and theology," "polarization of German and Roman theology" (there is the rub!), "increasing Roman influence," "Roman ideas," "as an army in battle array under Rome's command," "Romanizing of the whole Church," "Roman influences," "Roman absolutism," "Roman view," and so on and on.

The author anticipates charges of "lack of faith or charity," "of arrogance," of being "sharp" and "harsh," but he pleads that such impressions are but a reflection of the way he responds to events of the Church, to the Holy Father, to the Curia, to other theologians, and above all, to matters of dogma and moral doctrine. What actually emerges is Kung's own sort of faith and charity. There is not much to distinguish between this anti-Roman animus and his academically avowed purpose. This reader for one, concluded his study of this volume with the firm conviction that Kung's book was certainly not an "Inquiry" as he proposed. What "faith and charity" justifies his acerbic attack upon Pope Paul VI, his frequent sardonic referrals to the Curia, his ungracious comment upon "theologians like Danielou, formerly persecuted by the Inquisition, but now, themselves bringing an aura of scholarship to the role of Grand Inquisitor, are nominated as Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church" (22), his misdirected bias for the "Dutch Church" and the Dutch Catechism, his call for the repeal of priestly celibacy, of the regulations on mixed marriage and the doctrinal pronouncements of Pope Paul's encyclicals on the Church, on the Eucharist, his myopic considerations of ecclesiastical history?

The monotonous frequency and variations on Romanism and neo-scholasticism reveals not only a psychological alienation but also an intellectual turning of the worm. When Kung berates Roman centralization, he is ignoring the necessity for it in the past as a unifying defense and systematization against medieval imperial pretensions and interventions and later against the dictations of the modern states of the last three centuries; or if he speaks of the present, he chooses to minimize the regional and national episcopal conferences and the enormously increased clergy and religious consultations and participations encouraged by Rome itself. This writer cannot entirely suppress the suspicion that Kung is really after that institutional hierarchical structure of the Church which the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium, c. III) and the Decree on the Bishops' Pastoral Office in the Church (Christus Dominus, c. I) so unabashedly reaffirm. Since Pope Paul VI has internationalized the College of Cardinals and the Roman Curia, Kung's deprecations of what is Roman must mean simply papal government of the Bishop of Rome and universal pastor of the Church. When he speaks reproachingly of Roman doctrine and Roman textbooks he surely cannot have Italians in mind, since so many illustrious teachers and authors of "Roman" doctrine were non-Italians, and among them eminent German theologians must be numbered. He must, then, mean that theology and those textbooks, whether taught in Rome or elsewhere (geography has nothing to do with the designation "Roman"), that are in accord with the official and authoritative teaching of the ecclesial magisterium. His undisguised scorn and repetitive downbeat on "textbooks," whether of theology or neo-scholasticism, overlooks the original question. Were not the content of these berated "textbooks"—not excluding the Enchiridion Symbolorum Definitionum et Declarationum De Rebus Fidei et Morum (which Kung also disdains as workable theological sources, first edited by Henry Denziger and succeeded by later editions of Clement Bannwart, Karl Rahner, S.J. and Adolph Schoenmetzer, S.J.,—all German)—originally in extensive scholarly works of the master theologians through the centuries—Patristic, medieval and modern-and in expansive documentary tomes of the Roman Pontiffs and Councils; and were not their economical contraction into "textbooks" but the thoughtful accommodation to assist students of theology on their way to the larger horizons of greater competence and gradually deeper learning which their pastoral duties of the future might permit in the interstices of free time? And now my personal commentary on the particularities of Kung's resentments and objectives born of his own theological and historical prepossessions.

Against the express will of the majority of the Council, Pope Paul VI proclaimed for Mary the misleading title, Mater Ecclesiae, which aroused great hostility and doubt about the Pope's genuine desire for ecumenical understanding and not only outside the Catholic Church. (K. 17)

It is difficult to see how calling the Mother of God (theotokos, Ephesus 431), Mother of Her Divine Son's Church can be misleading. When we recall the unique prerogatives affirmed of Mary and her central role in the economy of salvation in the writings of the Church in the East and West, the ecclesiastical writers, and by the great theologians (and recalled with such passion by Cardinal Newman), Pope Paul's acclamation is a well-founded development.

In the final hours of the Council of Ephesus, Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, began his sermon with, "Hail Mary, Mother of God"—nand continuing with titles and eulogies unsurpassed through the centuries, he concluded with a startling statement: "May we...reverence the undivided Trinity, while we sing the praise of the ever-virgin Mary, that is to say, the holy Church, and of her spotless Son and Bridegroom." (Homiliae diversae 4) Perhaps this remarkable statement is but the resonance of the earlier thoughts of St. Ambrose, when he hailed Our Lady, "Mary is type of the Church." (Expositio evangelii secundum Lucam 2, 7)

What did the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council actually say? After discoursing about "the glorious and perpetual Virgin Mary, Mother of God and Lord Jesus Christ" (Lumen Gentium, c. 8 n. 52, hereafter L.G.), "Mother of the Redeemer. . .favorite daughter of the Father and the temple of the Holy Spirit," (n. 53) they continued:

At the same time, however, she belongs to the offspring of Adam, she is one with all human beings in their need for salvation. Indeed, she is "clearly the mother of the members of Christ. . .since she cooperated out of love so that there might be born in the Church the faithful, who are members of Christ, their Head." (St. Augustine, "DeS., Virginitate," 6 :PL 40, 399). Therefore, she is also hailed as a pre-eminent and altogether singular member of the Church and as the Church's model and excellent exemplar in faith and charity. Taught by the Holy Spirit, the Catholic Church honors her with filial affection and piety as a most beloved mother. (n. 53, italics supplied) Note: The Second Vatican Council was conducted under Mary's tutelage. Pope John's call to convoke the Council was on the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, February 11, 1961. The actual opening of the Council was on the Feast of the Maternity of the Blessed Mother, October 11, 1962. Earlier, Pope John made a pilgrimage to the Shrine of our Lady of Loretto to pray for the Council's success. After his address to the Council Pope John asked the faithful to pray to Our Lady, Queen of Heaven. Pope Paul closed the Council on the Feast of Our Lady, the Immaculate Conception, December 8, 1965. At the close of the Council's third session, on the Feast of the Presentation of Mary in the Temple, November 21, 1964, the Holy Father concelebrated Mass in her honor with twenty-four Council Fathers, each of whom had a major shrine of Our Lady within his jurisdiction. Pope Paul proclaimed Mary Mater Ecclesiae with these words: "For the glory of the Virgin Mary and for our own consolation, we proclaim Mary, the Mother of the Church, that is, of the whole People of God, of the faithful as well as the pastors, and we wish that through this tribute the Mother of God should be still more honored and invoked by the entire Christian people." (So much for those who say the Council muted devotion to the Mother of the Son of God.) The Fathers of the Council all but called Mary explicitly "Mother of the Church," and most appropriately in the concluding chapter of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church. As for Mater Ecclesiae, it is a metaphor with a basis in reality, as the scholastics would say. Mary gave birth to the Head from whom flows the existence and life of the Church, and now, assumed into Heaven, she accompanies the life of the community of faithful by her fruitful intercession. The transparently symbolic character of the Fourth Gospel allows the interpretation that the words of Jesus on the Cross, "Woman, behold Thy Son," and "Son, behold Thy Mother," (Jn. 19:25ff) may go beyond the purely historical and point to the relationship between Mary and the Church. Pope Paul simply explicitated the traditional thinking of the Church, including that of the Council Fathers of Vatican II.

Pope Paul's reform of the Curia would be more generously appraised by Kung (p. 20) if he shared the Pontiff's intentions and objections. In announcing the reform of the Roman Curia in 1967, His Holiness recalled his words opening the second session of the Council in 1963:
The reform at which the Council aims is not a turning upside down of the Church's present way of life or a breaking with what is essential and worthy of veneration in her tradition. It is, rather, an honoring of Tradition by stripping it of what is unworthy or defective so that it can be rendered firm and faithful.

Declaring that "certainly there can be no doubt about the need for the Roman Curia," Pope Paul said that his objective was to make it "better adapted to the needs of the time." His many reforms of the Curia have been hailed by commentators on his pontificate to be among his major achievements. The necessary services were certainly not to be cancelled, and the assumption of additional apostolates in response to the Council v.g. Commission on Justice, the Council of the Laity, the Vatican Secretariat for non-Christians, the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, et alii, have obviously necessitated an expansion of curial offices, not their diminution.

Kung's resentment of the Church's objections (and finally, rejection of the Dutch Catechism, October 13, 1972) and his caustic remarks of Pope Paul's Credo are cut from the same cloth, namely, his apparent fascination with that "new" theology that is at variance with the solemnly defined beliefs from Nicaea to Vatican I and reaffirmed by Vatican II, many of which go back to the most ancient, Western and Eastern Symbola Fidei. The "New Catechism," "De Nieuwe Katechismus," was published in Holland in 1966. Because of protestations on the part of the faithful against the suspected heterodoxy of the catechism either by what it said in part, by omission (deemphasis by misleading explanations and ambiguous statements), three theologians selected by the Holy See and three by the Dutch hierarchy were to convene and make a study of the disputed points in accordance with the express wishes of Pope Paul (April, 1967). The theologians chosen by the Holy See asked that certain emendations be made for the sake of clarity and precision. Nothing came of these proposals, not even those particular points which the Holy Father himself had indicated: the virginal conception of Our Lord and the satisfactorial and sacrificial character of the redemptive act which Christ offered to His Eternal Father. A commission of Cardinals (Frings, Lefebvre, Jaeger, Florit, Browne and Journet) appointed by Pope Paul studied the Catechism together with theologians familiar with the Dutch language (June, 1967). They decided that the Dutch Catechism was to be revised before new editions and translations were made and they also selected a group of theologians from seven different nations to make their study of the new catechism and report on it. Every one of the evaluations and proposals of this group were unanimously approved by each of the theologians. The commission of Cardinals reconvened (December, 1967) and decided what was to be changed and in what manner in the Dutch Catechism. With the cooperation of Cardinal Alfrink, two theologians of their choosing and two of the Dutch hierarchy were assigned to bring about the corrections. English, German and French translations of the Dutch Catechism were appearing in the meantime without any emendations. Almost with a touch of malice, disclosures were made to the public in a newspaper and in a book of the confidential transactions concerning the catechism, opinions were falsely ascribed to the theologians chosen by the Holy See, and the required corrections were cloaked over by deceptive glosses and ambiguous restatements which left the substance untouched under a novelty of verbal reconstruction. And, to top this, a distortion of the views of some modern exegetes on the Matthean and Lucan narration of the birth and infancy of Jesus (contrary to the actual belief of these theologians) is given to mislead the faithful—to suppose they are not bound to believe in the virginal conception of Our Lord in both its spiritual and corporal reality, but they are free to accept it only in symbolic signification. All of this is a summary of the torturous frustrations visited upon the Church by the authors and editors of the Dutch Catechism. In an article in Civilta Cattolica, June, 1971, Father Jean Galot charged that the New Dutch textbook betrayed a tendency to reject the divinity of Christ, to challenge Catholic ecclesiology and to seem to protestantize articles of the Catholic Faith. After six years of insufficient, unsatisfactory and ingeniously contrived emendations to guard orthodoxy in the Dutch Catechism, both the prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Franjo Cardinal Seper, and the prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Clergy, John Cardinal Wright, publicly ordered two Roman Catholic bishops to withdraw immediately as "gravely deficient," the Dutch Catechism. (October 12, 1972) So much for the "inquisitional processes against troublesome theologians" (K. 22), by the long-suffering and persevering Church.

It is true that the Church's calendar has been "reformed"—in the clumsiest way—at the expense of some unhistorical saints. (K. 23)

The thrust of this statement is unmistakable even if not explicitly expressed—the credibility of the Church on the cult of saints. Kung is much too much in a hurry to explain the action of the Church in removing the "unhistorical saints." In the first six centuries of the Church, the sanctity, at first of martyrs, then of confessors of the faith, and later of those of heroic Christian virtue and of those exemplary in their apostolic zeal for the Church—doctors, bishops, missionaries—was so acclaimed by the vox populi of the faithful. From the sixth to the tenth century the definitive pronouncement of approval on the part of the local bishop gradually became a necessary culmination of a process of inquiry into the validity of such a veneration, the cult of doulia on the part of the faithful. By 973 formal approval of the Roman Pontiff was deemed a matter of greater prestige for the veneration of a venerated saint, St. Udalricus. Under Gregory IX (1234) papal canonization became the only and exclusive legitimate form of inquiry into the saints' lives and miracles according to newly established procedural formes and canonical processes. In 1588 Pope Sixtus V, by his Immensa Aeterni Dei, entrusted the process of papal canonization to the Congregation of Rites. In 1642 Urban VIII ordered all the decrees and studies of canonizations during his own pontificate to be published in one volume—and a century later, Benedict XIV systematized in a clear and definitive manner the basic expectations of heroic virtue and the indispensable requirements of the canonical processes according to the evidences of the Congregation of Rites. In our own time, Pius X (1914) divided this Congregation into two sections: one, the liturgical section, and the other assigned entirely to the causes for canonization. In 1930, Pius XI established the historical section devoted to the critical-historical scrutiny of the evidences put forth in the causes for canonization. The Church is infallible when she officially canonizes the beatified. The solemn act by which the Pope, with definitive sentence, inscribes in the catalogue of saints a person who has been antecedently beatified reads in part: "We decide and define that they are saints, and inscribe them in the catalogue of saints, stating that their memory should be kept with pious devotion by the universal Church." De facto, most likely in accordance with the "hierarchy of truth" (Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis redintegratio), the Church herself does not teach authoritatively that infallibility includes such matters as the so-designated secondary objects of infallibility, the "Catholic truths" which are closely connected historically, logically or practically with the truth of faith—dogmatic facts, theological conclusions, canonizations, etc.—though they are of great importance within the context of the ordinary magisterium. But theologians are known to think that canonizations must be infallible, a judgment with which this writer concurs, ultimately on the grounds that the Holy Spirit would not allow the Church to venerate an unholy soul. Kung, in speaking of "some unhistorical saints," does not pause to alert his readers to the not insignificant differentials that can intervene between the popular acclamations of sanctity by the faithful in the early centuries of the Church, episcopal canonizations from the sixth to the thirteenth centuries and papal canonizations since the thirteenth century in which ecclesial and papal infallibility is squarely put on the line, at least by some theologians.

"Against the Council's wishes, the position of nuncios was strengthened by a motu proprio." (K. 23)

The history of papal nunciatures in modern times discloses that the accentuation on the diplomatic role of papal nuncios, that is to say, of the Roman Pontiff whom they personally represent, has been a historical response of the Holy See to the insistent call and high expectations of the international community for the Christian leaven for peace and order in the family of nations. The manifest urgency with which the new emergent nations in Europe and in Africa after each of the two world wars sought diplomatic accreditation with the Holy See belies the eventuality of the abandonment of papal nunciatures for the foreseeable future. The majority of states today maintain diplomatic relations with the papacy—"Catholic states," "Concordat," "non-Catholic," "non-Christian," "separatist," "laicist. " There is no inherent confessional note in the fact of having diplomatic relations with the Holy See, and only a small number of them have concordats with the papacy. Since the relations between the Holy See and the political States are reciprocal in most cases, there is correspondingly apostolic, nuncio, internuncio or charge d'affaires accredited at the seat of the civil governments. The Roman Pontiffs have always dispatched their own authorized representatives to all corners of Christendom and beyond from time immemorial—occasional emissaries on specific, limited missions. These special legates, legati missi, who were deputed for some papal commission, were not diplomatic agents, and neither were their assignment nor their office permanent. Called apocrisarius, in the fifth century this papal agent acted for the Pope on matters touching upon religious and ecclesiastical matters and as an on-the-spot observer of public events of importance. In time, it seemed advisable that these papal agents be legati nati, residential bishops of a region who, in addition to their functions as local ordinaries, were empowered with special faculties from Rome to serve as the permanent delegates of the Roman Pontiff. About the eleventh century Rome resorted to its former practice of sending its own specially chosen representatives, legati missi to distinguish them from the antecedent residential legates. The principal type of the legatus missus was the legatus a latere, because he came from the papal court, literally from the Pope's side. Today the legatus a latere performs ceremonial functions such as representing the Pope at international Eucharistic Congresses. The emergence of the papal envoy as a diplomatic agent, as a matter of historical record, was in reciprocity to representation at the papal curia already introduced by the Italian cities and by the need of negotiations with the royal courts of the modern sovereign independent states. The urgency for them, however, grew in the sixteenth century with the grave challenge to religious unity posed by the Protestant revolt in a concerted effort to secure the support of princes against the Lutheran rebellion. Today nuncios perform a double function: they represent the Roman Pontiff before the civil governments and preside over the state of the Church in the region assigned to them and report to the Bishop of Rome thereon. It is the secular side of this history that bears a significance which apparently Kung has overlooked. It is to the first separatist-laicist state of modern European history, the First Republic of France, that we must turn for paradoxical insistence that the Holy See continue to maintain the same reciprocal diplomatic relations as before the French Revolution, when the ruler of France was the "eldest son" of the Church. The First Republic, while bold to declare its state of rebellion against the spiritual authority of the Roman Pontiffs, insisted through the explicit instructions of the Directory that the Treaty of Tolentino of February 19, 1797 stipulate (Art. 5) that the French Republic continue to enjoy reciprocal diplomatic relations with the Holy See on the ambassadorial level as formerly as a "Catholic" state and not merely recognized as were traditionally the envoys of Protestant states as "residents" of Rome. For the first time, under military force, Rome was required to consent to accord at its Court the full diplomatic honors of ambassadors to the envoys of a government that was not officially Catholic—and France, in turn, has accorded to the papal nuncio assigned to France the deanship of the diplomatic corps, be it only for ceremonial occasions, a practice followed without challenge in other countries. This history of diplomatic missions at Rome reveals the full spectrum of legationes obedientiae (connoting a religious affiliation and political dependence upon the Papacy), ordinary missions, resident agents, special, temporary and permanent envoys, legations, ordinary and extra-ordinary ministers, vice consuls, consuls, ministers, ministers plenipotentiary, ambassadors—with the effort on the part of the foreign government to advance from one diplomatic status to another to its own advantage, tangible and intangible. The second historic event on diplomatic relations with the Holy See was the Congress of Vienna which upset the Reformation's settlement of cuius regio illius et religio, the principle of the Peace of Augsburg that was confirmed at Westphalia, by a modern sense of real politik on political allegiance and religious confession consequent to a process of the secularization begun in 1803 that profoundly transformed relationships with the Holy See by severing diplomatic from religious relations while at the same time employing the former in the service of the latter. Will it or not, the Papacy was forced by circumstances and historical exigencies to be a participant for a variety of complex reasons in international intercourse. It was the society of sovereign states, rather than the Papacy, which was the prime motor for the inclusion of the Papacy as a spiritual power and all its attendant and consequential incidents in war and peace in the public community of mankind, with high expectations of service to the advantage of each state and presumably to the overarching higher advantage of the community of nations. Pope Paul has an intimate personal concern about the substantive value of papal diplomacy. From 1944 to 1955 the then Monsignor Giovanni B. Montini was the pro-secretary of State of Pope Pius XII, in frequent contact with foreign envoys accredited to the Holy See. On the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the Pontificia Academia Ecclesiastica, April 25, 1951, Monsignor Montini addressed the young ecclesiastics trained for the papal diplomatic service. He defined diplomacy as "an art of creating and maintaining international order, that is to say, peace." The objective of this art is to strive perseveringly for the humane, rational and juridical relations among the people of the world, superseding both force and the calculating balancing of material interests by open and responsible settlements mindful of one another's needs.

If civil diplomacy tends to the unification of the world by making reason prevail over force, and to the growth of individual states in the harmonious concert of an ever larger international organization, it finds in ecclesiastical diplomacy almost a model towards which it can look with assurance; not so much because of any technical proficiency that the Church might display, or any success attending its efforts (for both of these elements may be lacking), as because of the ideal from which it takes its departure and towards which it tends, the universal brotherhood of men. This is a firm persuasion that has been manifestly prevalent among the numerous states who have sought and been accredited to the Holy See, whether the Papacy was in possession of Papal States or none at all or of a tiny geographic enclave stipulated by the Lateran Treaty of 1929, whether by major powers, small states, "Protestant," "Catholic," "Islamic," "Oriental," etc. Pro-secretary Montini was simply articulating the viewpoint and expectations of national states from the Papacy as a religious and spiritual power in the international order. The unique status of the Holy See in general international law consists in the fact, that it is precisely as a spiritual sovereign that she enjoys the rights of sovereignty ordinarily accorded to national political sovereignty and that no other Church or religion has ever been accorded the same status in the world community of states. Sovereignty and international personality is vested with the Holy See precisely as a spiritual authority, independently of the existence of a Papal state. The reason for the existence of the State of Vatican City is wholly derivative and contingent upon the presupposition that the free exercise of a supranational spiritual sovereignty by the Holy See is better ensured by an independent territorial jurisdiction of its own. Prior to 1870 and subsequent to 1929, there have been two subjects of international law: the Papal States or the State of Vatican City, and the Holy See. The Pope united in his own person these two distinct subjects of international law, and of the two, obviously, the more important and primary is the Holy See. Papal nuncios and apostolic delegates are accredited by the Holy See, not by the Papal State. Diplomatic relations by the states of England, the Netherlands, Finland, Japan, Egypt, India, Indonesia and others are established with the Holy See and not, as it popularly supposed, with the Papal States. Their diplomatic representatives are accredited to the spiritual sovereignty and not to the temporal sovereignty. The Holy See is a non-territorial international personality. Papal nuncios are nuntiaturae pacis—a reciprocation of this expectation of a peace mission in the community of nations. The motu proprio to which Kung alludes (K. 23), Apostolic Letter on Papal Representatives, grounds Papal diplomacy in ecclesiology. In its introduction, the Holy Father lays stress on the bonds existing in the universal Church between the visible center of her unity, the Roman Pontiff and the churches and the faithful spread all over the world. Papal diplomacy is the Church's presence throughout the world. The nuncios are the vicars of the Vicar of Christ among the faithful of the local churches. Nuncios are personal representatives of the Pope, not of anyone else. In the motu proprio the Holy Father has conjoined the function of papal diplomacy in the world as he had explained it as pro-secretary of State to a dynamic ecclesiology. The Papal representative is directed to the Church of the country to which he is accredited; he brings the presence of him whom Vatican Council I (Pastor Asternus, Ds 1821) and Vatican II (Lumen Gentium, n. 18) called "the permanent and visible source and foundation of unity of faith and fellowship" into the midst of all the faithful in matters of doctrine and pastoral care. It is as an overflow of the dynamism of Catholicity that the Papal representative to civil societies brings the presence and the testimony of him who is the depositary, guardian and dispenser of the truth and grace of Christ. There is no other way to explain the phenomenon after each of the two world wars, when newly emerging nations in Eastern Europe and the African states vied with each other to establish diplomatic relations with the Holy See.

And a Papal Commission for the reform of Canon Law—in which there was no representation of public opinion in the Church, not even of progressive specialists like those of the Canon Law Society of America-was allowed to work out a "basic Law of the Catholic Church" which would use the words of Vatican II to strengthen the hold of Roman absolutism . (K . 23, italics supplied)

During the Council a number of bishops and leading churchmen proposed that a fundamental law of the Church be included with the reform of the Canon Law. The benefits as envisaged were a common law, theological-juridical in character, underlying, unifying and giving life to the diversity of theologies, liturgies and ecclesiastical disciplines of the Latin and Oriental Churches of the one universal Catholic Church. Since 1965 the preliminary questionnaires, the first and second amended draft (Schema legis Ecclesiae Fundamentalis, Textus emendatus) of the proposed basic law, were reviewed by various ecclesiastical agencies, the Commission for the Code, by a Group of Consultants, Theologians and Canonists, the International Theological Commission, the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith and by worldwide consultation with all the bishops of the Catholic Church for their opinions, criticisms, amendments for acceptance or rejection or acceptance secundum modum. All the bishops were informed in writing that they could consult learned priests and laymen, that the faithful be heard according to the explicit wishes of Pope Paul, expressed in His address to the Cardinals on June 23, 1970. Non-Catholic observer-consultants attended by invitation the meetings of committees of revision.

Kung's neurasthenic eagerness to portray the Church as darkly as possible, clandestine, conspiratorial, a deju, forever trying to put something over the faithful succeeds here to inspire him with no more than such flaccid resentment as "no representation of public opinion." Would Kung have a Gallup poll in a matter calling for theological and juridical expertise? As for the Canon Law Society of America, the Bishops in the United States can consult whom they will. Actually, Cardinal Pericle Felici, President of the Commission for the Lex Fundamentalis, visited the United States the Fall of 1972 in order to consult in person with groups of canonists in different regions of the country. So much for Kung's charge of Roman absolutism.

The reform of women's orders had been demanded, but in America, where it had been most seriously attempted, it was stopped by the Congregation for Religious. (K. 23)

Let us turn to the Decree on the Appropriate Renewal of the Religious Life (Perfectae Caritatis, October 28, 1965) and take note of what the Council Fathers meant by "religious renewal."

Since the religious life is intended above all else to lead those who embrace it to an imitation of Christ and to union with God through the profession of the evangelical counsels, the fact must be honestly faced that even the most desirable changes made on behalf of contemporary needs will fail of their purpose unless a renewal of spirit gives life to them. (n. 2, e) The hope of renewal must be lodged in a more diligent observance of rule and of constitution than in a multiplication of individual rules. (n. 4) To live for God alone by dying to sin (cf. Rom. 6:11) but also by renouncing the world . . . share spiritually in Christ's self-surrender (cf. Phil. 2:7-8) and in His life (cf. Rom. 8:1-13) . . . to develop a life hidden with Christ in God (cf. Col. 3 :3) . . . cultivate the spirit of prayer. . . think with the Church to an ever-increasing degree. (n. 5) The lay religious life, for both men and women, constitutes a life which of itself is one of total dedication to the profession of the evangelical counsels. (n.10) That chastity which is practiced "on behalf of the heavenly kingdom" (Mt. 19:12), and which religious profess, deserves to be esteemed as a surpassing gift of grace. For it liberates the heart in a unique way (cf. I Cor. 7:32-35) and causes it to burn with greater love of God and all mankind . . . let them practice mortification and custody of the senses. . . a certain spiritual instinct should lead them to spurn everything likely to imperil chastity. (n. 12) Religious poverty requires more than limiting the use of possessions to the consent of superiors; members of a community ought to be poor in both fact and spirit .... (n. 13) Through the profession of obedience, religious offer to God a total dedication of their own wills as a sacrifice of themselves. . . . (n.14)

Compare the above with the entrapment with semantics: "love" ("as I have loved you"), "presence" (religious?), "relevance" (His?), "involvement" (His Father's business?), "self-fulfillment." This last is the facile heresy: -it is so patently false and yet so beguiling. What of the defective—physical and mental: the maimed, the hopelessly frustrated, the eternal incompatibles, the casualties of war, of accident, of assault, the diseased, etc.? There is not the dimmest intimation of "self-fulfillment" in the entire New Testament (nor in the Old Testament, for that matter): Gospels, Acts, Epistles. The Christians are forewarned to the contrary on earthly expectations—for the sake of the "kingdom," and "in His name." There is only one fulfillment—to grow in the likeness of Christ. The Johannine prologue is a blunt rejection of such overweening humanist pretensions-"born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man".... And as for that eternally irresistible appeal to "reform," the Roman Catholic Church has never wanted for conscientious critics of the human failings and abuses within the Church which her Divine Master had foretold would be the stumbling block of scandal to the faithful and to the world: St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Gregory the Great, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Theresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Ignatius Loyola and a glorious etceteration. These saintly Christians reformed the Church first by reforming themselves and then the faithful, and not by leading themselves and others out of the Church, nor by defecting from their solemn vows nor least of all, by assaulting the unity of the Mystical Body of Christ by denigrating the Vicar of Christ and the hierarchy.

One of the official appraisals of the reform, notably on the "Atlantic," has been given by the late French Jesuit Theologian Jean Cardinal Danielou, a member of the Congregation for Religious and Secular institutes, of which the late Ildebrando Cardinal Antonuitti was prefect. On the occasion of a plenary session of the Congregation in mid-October, 1971, Cardinal Danielou not only addressed the assembled Religious but he also gave an interview on a Vatican radio broadcast:

Question— Is there a real crisis in the Religious Life, today, and if so, what are its dimensions and symptoms?

Answer— There is a very grave crisis in the Religious Life today. Indeed, we can no longer speak of "renewal" but must speak of "decadence." This crisis is especially acute in the Atlantic world. Eastern Europe and the people of Africa and Asia are in a much healthier state. Where it exists, the crisis exists across the board, not merely in this or that aspect of Religious Life. Evangelical Counsels are no longer seen as consecration to God but are viewed merely from a psychological or sociological viewpoint. A great effort is made not to appear middle class, yet individual poverty in the Christian sense is no longer practiced. Group dynamics are substituted for religious obedience. A regular prayer life is abandoned on the pretext that religious formation is to be avoided. The consequences of this confused state of affairs can be seen pre-eminently in the growing scarcity of vocations. Young people require a serious formation if they are to take up the Religious life. These consequences can also be seen in the numerous defections from the Religious Life which give scandal to the Christian people because the breaking of actual vows is involved.

Question—What are the basic causes of this crisis which you have described?

Answer—The basic cause of this crisis in the Religious Life can be found in a false interpretation of Vatican Council II. The directives of the Council for the Religious Life were very clear : a greater fidelity to the demands of the Gospel to be expressed in the constitution of each Religious order, and an adaptation of these constitutions to the conditions of modern life. Those Religious orders which have followed the directives of the Council are experiencing a truly radical renewal and are attracting many new vocations; but in too many cases the directives of Vatican II have been displaced by the erroneous ideologies which are today purveyed by so many journals, conferences and theologians. Among the principal errors of these ideologies may be counted: 
a. Secularization—Vatican II said that human values needed to be taken seriously. The Council never said that we should be immersed in a secularized world in which the religious dimension could no longer be taken seriously as a component of civilization. Nevertheless, in the name of such a false secularization, both male and female Religious have abandoned their habits; they have given up their specifically evangelical work in favor of secular-type work, thus substituting social or political action for the worship of God. What is remarkable is that these Religious should embrace secularism at the very moment when the world's need for a deeper spirituality has never been greater. b. A False Conception of Liberty—This false conception of liberty manifests itself in a veritable contempt for rules and institutions and in an exaltation of improvisation and what is called spontaneity. This attitude is especially absurd considering that it comes at the very moment when Western society has lost its sense of true freedom, freedom with discipline. The restoration of an ordered rule is a necessity for the Religious Life. c. A Mistaken Conception of Evolution—This mistaken conception is seen whether it is a question of the "evolution" of men or of the Church, for even if the things around us change, the permanent natures of man and of the Church remain unchanged. One of the fundamental errors of today's mistaken evolutionism is to call into question the very basis of any Religious Life or Religious Order.

Question—What are the remedies for this crisis in the Religious Life which you have described?

Answer—The simple and urgent remedy is to turn away from the mistaken road which has been traveled in the reform of so many Religious Orders. We must put an end to experimentation and to initiatives which are contrary to the directives of the Council. We must sound a clear warning against the books, journals and conferences which continue to disseminate erroneous notions of renewal. We must restore in their integrity the practice of the Religious Life in accordance with rules modified only as the Council truly required. Where it appears impossible for some to retrace the steps which have been taken, at the very least it is unjust not to allow those Religious who do wish to remain faithful to the constitutions of their orders and to the directives of Vatican II, to form their own separate communities. Superiors are obliged to respect the wishes of such Religious, and the community must be allowed to have houses for the proper formation of novices. Experience has demonstrated that vocations are more numerous in houses of strict observance than in those where discipline is neglected. In cases where superiors oppose legitimate requests, an appeal to the Holy Father for recourse would be justified. The Religious Life is called to carry out its task, the Religious Life must rediscover its true meaning and break radically with the secularization which is undermining it today and preventing it from attracting new vocations. (Italics supplied)

Each reader may judge for himself the justice of this appraisal and whether the action of the Congregation for Religious that Kung has in mind (p. 23) was necessary or not, as touching the women's orders in America.

Indulgences (K 23) Indulgences (have been) "reformed," but not abolished. (K. 23)

Why should they be? It is an ancient practice of the Church rooted in Scripture and repeatedly reaffirmed by papal and ecclesial teaching until its definition at the Council of Trent as an article of faith against Wycliffe, Hus and the Reformers. Old Testament texts establish the distinction between the forgiven sin (culpa) and the enduring consequences of guilt (poena), punishments due to sin, notably in the personal and original sin of our first parents (Gen. 3: 17-19; Wis. 10:2), the "sin" of Moses and his exclusion from the land of promise (Num. 20:12; 27:13f.), the fall of David (2 Sam. 12:1014). There are consequences to guilt that are not effected by penitence and conversion and which serve even as penalties as means of spiritual regeneration and rehabilitation. (cf. I Cor. 5:5; 11:32; I Tim. 1:20; Rev. 2:22f.) The Church as minister of redemption assists in this recovery into perfect charity through her efficacious intercessory prayers in virtue of the infinite merits of Christ's Redemption and the abundant merits of the saints which constitute the Treasury of the Church (Clement VI, Unigenitus Dei Filius, January 25, 1343). Recapitulating Church practices and theology, especially since the thirteenth century, and ecclesial affirmations and condemnations of Wycliffe, Hus, Luther and Michael du Bay, Catholic doctrine teaches that indulgences are the remission before God of a temporal punishment for sins of which the guilt has been forgiven (at least by the end of the work to which the indulgence is attached), granted by ecclesiastical authority out of the Treasury of the Church to the living, per modum absolutionis, to the dead, per modum suffragii.

While bearing in mind this doctrinal summary, this much certainly has been defined as an article of the faith by the Council of Trent: that the Church has authority (potestas) to grant indulgences and that they are salutary for the faithful (DS 989). Now, why should Kung ask for the cancellation of a solemnly defined doctrine unless he thinks of indulgences in a theologically frivolous and exaggerated way? This writer, for one, sees indulgences understood as they ought to be, according to the mind of the Church; that is as a spiritual event that integrates the tragedy of sin with the ineffable wonder of Redemption, of the mercy of repentance and conversion, and the compassion of the Church made holy by her Redeemer to assist efficaciously by her intercessory prayer all who sincerely seek charity without reservation—that is God. And what of the bond of the communion of saints and the souls in Purgatory? Recall, too, the requirements of recourse to the Sacraments, life of grace, works of mercy or prayer, visits to the Blessed Sacrament, etc. in a genuine effort to purify and sanctify the spiritual life. Abolish the indulgences? And what of the charity for the living and the dead expressed through vicarious satisfaction because of the solidarity of all Christians in the Mystical Body of Christ and the doctrine of the Communion of Saints? The first had its genesis in the words of the Risen Savior:

"Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" "Who are you, Lord?", he asked, and the voice answered, "I am Jesus, and you are persecuting Me." (Acts 9:4-5)

Paul discourses about the Body of Christ in I Corinthians and Romans only occasionally, but at length in the later captivity epistles, Colossians and Ephesians, with new developments of "Head" and "plenitude." He spoke of his own vicarious suffering for the Christians at Colossae as "filling up what is wanting in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of His body, the Church" (Col. I :24) and of his "fellowship of Christ's sufferings" (Phil. 3: 10), which Christians must bear in order to bring the Body of Christ to fullness. Credo in ...sanctorum communionem. This unison of supernatural life and sensibilities whereby the Christians who became "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Pt. 1:4, cf. Jn. 14:6-24) contribute vicarious satisfaction to the well-being of an ailing member of the Body of Christ encompasses the present and passing world and the world to come. The theology and practice of indulgences for the living, and especially for the souls in purgatory, presupposes this living faith in a shared existence with Christ and with one another, known and unknown in Christ.

(The non-recognition of the state of Israel is an odd theological exertion of Kung [K. 24] to enlarge his resentment against the papacy—but without a whimpering whisper about the outrageous plight and inviolate rights of the Palestinian Arabs.)

Kung's reaction to Pope Paul's encyclicals is imbued with a politicizing mentality. Here in this matter, both in language and content, the animus of "Candid Preface" hardens into an adversary theologizing:

Papal doctrinal statements seem to be party documents inspired by narrow Roman theology and ideology. . . (apart from Populorum Progressio). The remaining important doctrinal statements, however, in essentials display a reactionary character. (K. 25)

Let us look to the encyclicals that Kung specifically lists as "reactionary. "

Pope Paul VI wrote: We are indeed living members of the Body of Christ, that we are the authentic heirs of the Gospel of Christ, those who truly continue the work of the Apostles. There dwells in us the great inheritance of truth and morality characterizing the Catholic Church which today possesses intact the living heritage of the original apostolic tradition. (n. 48)

If, as we have said before, the Church has a true realization of what the Lord wishes it to be, then within the Church there arises a unique sense of fullness and a need for outpouring, together with the clear awareness of a mission which transcends the Church, of a message to be spread. It is the duty of evangelization. It is the missionary mandate. It is the apostolic commission. (n. 66)

The desire to come together as brothers must not lead to a watering down or subtracting from the truth. Our dialogue must not weaken our attachment to our Faith. On our apostolate, we cannot make vague promises about the principles of faith and action on which our profession of Christianity is based. (n. 91)

Of Ecclesiam Suam Kung writes: "disappointing because of its not very ecumenical Romanist and its defective biblical interpretation." We may here recall what the Fathers of the Council declared in the Decree on Ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio) November 21, 1964. For it is through Christ's Catholic Church alone, which is the all-embracing means of salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained. It was to the apostolic college alone of which Peter is the head, that we believe Our Lord entrusted all the blessings of the New Covenant, in order to establish on earth one Body of Christ into which all those should be fully incorporated who already belong to any way to God's People. (n. 3)

This unity, we believe, dwells in the Catholic Church as something she can never lose . . . the Catholic Church has been endowed with all divinely revealed truth and with all the means of grace .... (n. 4)

Nothing is so foreign to the Spirit of ecumenism as a false conciliatory approach which harms the purity of Catholic doctrine and obscures the assured genuine meaning. (n. 11)

So spoke the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council, whose renewal of the Catholic Church Kung invokes with so much spirited frustration.

Were the Council Fathers of Vatican II "reactionary" when they confirmed the doctrine which the Church has always held and taught and which the Council of Trent solemnly defined? At the Last Supper, on the night when He was handed over, Our Saviour, instituted the Eucharistic Sacrifice of His Body and Blood, to perpetuate the Sacrifice of the Cross throughout the ages until He shall come; and so entrusted to the Church, His beloved spouse, the memorial of His death and resurrection: a sacrament of devotion, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a paschal banquet in which Christ is received, the soul is filled with grace and there is given to us a pledge of future glory. (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy.) (n. 47) In the encyclical, Mysterium Fidei, Pope Paul VI wrote: Those who partake of this sacrament in Holy Communion, eat the Flesh of Christ and drink the Blood of Christ, receiving both the beginning of eternal life, and the "medicine of immortality," according to the words of the Lord, "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has life everlasting, and I will raise him up on the last day." (n. 5)

Indeed, we are aware of the fact that, among those who deal with the Most Holy Mystery in written or spoken word, there are some who, with reference either to Masses which are celebrated in private, or to the dogma of transubstantiation, or to devotion to the Eucharist, spread such opinions as disturb the faithful and fill their minds with no little confusion about matters of faith as if every one were permitted to consign to oblivion doctrine already defined by the Church, or to interpret it in such a way as to weaken the genuine meaning of the words or the approved import of the concepts involved. (n. 10)

To corroborate the point with examples: it is not allowable to put such emphasis on what is called the "communal" Mass as to disparage Masses celebrated in private; or so to insist on the sacramental sign as if the symbolism, which all most certainly admit in the Eucharist, expresses fully and exhaustively the manner of Christ's presence in this Sacrament; or to discuss the mystery of transubstantiation without mentioning the marvelous changing of the whole substance of the bread into the Body and the whole substance of the wine into the Blood of Christ as stated by the Council of Trent, so it consists in "transignification" or "transfinalization'' as they put it: or finally, to propose the opinion and put it into practice according to which Christ the Lord is no longer present in the consecrated hosts which are left after the celebration of the Sacrifice of the Mass is ended. (Mysterium Fidei, n. 11) Of this encyclical on the Eucharist, Kung wrote:

Paul VI, to the scandal of many bishops, published just before the assembly of the Council for its fourth session, with an eye on Holland—also shows the Pope tied to a textbook theology on which neither the exegesis nor the historical studies of the last decades have made any sort of impression." (K. 25) Again, Kung invokes the memory of Pope John.

"John XXIII's statement that the clothing of formulas of faith may change, while the substance of faith remains the same, is disowned." (K. 25) This is less than honest. The substance of faith was being subverted by the new formulas and if Kung thinks Pope John XXIII would have objected to Mysterium Fidei of his successor, he is presuming wildly beyond reasonable expectations. It seems that der Heilige Geist which has been featured so prominently in Kung's earlier works is pitted so hopelessly against the irrepressible Lo Spirito Santo.

Kung objects to this encyclical (p. 25); but was Pope John XXIII, whose memory Kung repeatedly invokes—a "reactionary" when in his Second Allocution to the Roman Synod on January 26, 1960, he declared:

It deeply hurts us that . . . anyone can dream that the Church will deliberately or even suitably renounce what from time immemorial has been and still remains, one of the purest and noblest glories of her priesthood. The law of the ecclesiastical celibacy and the efforts necessary to preserve it always recall to mind the struggle of the heroic times when the Church of Christ had to fight for and succeeded in obtaining her threefold glory: always an emblem of victory, that is, the Church of Christ, free, chaste, and Catholic. (ASS 52, 1960. PP. 235-236) ...." Of this "emblem of victory," Pope Paul VI wrote:

Jesus, who selected the first ministers of salvation, wished them to be introduced to the understanding of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven (Mat. 13: 11; Mark 4: 11; Luke 8: 10), to be co-workers with God under a very special title, and His ambassadors (2 Cor. 5:20). He called them friends and brethren (John 15:15; 20:17), for whom he consecrated Himself so that they might be consecrated in truth (John 17:19). He promised a more than abundant recompense to anyone who should leave home, family, wife and children for the sake of the kingdom of God. (Luke 18:29-30) More than this, in words filled with mystery and hope, He also commended, an even more perfect consecration to the kingdom of heaven by means of celibacy, as a special gift. (Mat. 19:11-12) The motive of this answer to the divine call is the kingdom of heaven (ibid. v. 12);similarly, the ideas—of this kingdom (Luke 18 :30), of the Gospel (Mark 10:29), and of the name of Christ (Mat. 19:29), are what motivate those invited by Jesus to the difficult renunciations of the apostolate, by a very intimate participation in His lot. (cf. Mark loc, cit. Italics supplied. S.C. n 22)

This biblical and theological vision associates our ministerial priesthood with the priesthood of Christ; it is modeled in the total and exclusive dedication of Christ to His mission of salvation, and makes it the cause of our assimilation to the form of charity and sacrifice proper to Christ, our Savior. This vision seems to us so profound and rich in truth, both speculative and practical, that we invite you, Venerable Brothers, and we invite you, eager students of Christian doctrine and masters of the spiritual life, and all priests who have gained a supernatural insight into your vocation—to persevere in the study of this vision, and to go deeply into the inner recesses and wealth of its reality. In this way, the bond between the priesthood and celibacy will be seen in an ever improving union, owing to its clear logic and to the heroism of a unique and limitless love for Christ the Lord and for His Church. (n. 25, Italics supplied) This encyclical is said by Kung to "distort the supreme truths of the Gospels" (K. 25). National episcopal synods have reaffirmed priestly celibacy and the third episcopal synod held in Rome, 1971, has confirmed it. Even the Committee headed by Belgian Cardinal Leo Suenens, who had been an advocate of optional celibacy, voted unanimously against it. More significantly, the Synod Fathers voted against the ordination of mature married men, with the strongest opposition on the part of the bishops of the very areas where it had been thought such married priests might serve.

Lex coelibatus sacerdotalis in Ecclesia latina vigens integre servari debet. Placet 168. Non placet 10. Placet justamodum 21. Absentions 3.

Without prejudice to the right of the Supreme Pontiff, the priestly ordination of married men is not admitted, not even in particular cases .... Placet 107.

Formula B:

It pertains to the Supreme Pontiff alone, in particular cases, to permit for reasons of pastoral necessity, and "bearing in mind the good of the universal Church the priestly ordination of married men, of mature age, and of approved moral character....Placet 87. (On this ballot there were 2 abstentions and 2 invalid votes.)

Is Karl Rahner, whom Kung extols on many occasions for widening the horizons of theological vision, a "reactionary" for defending sacerdotal celibacy and exposing the pretentious fallacies of its opponents? (cf. The Furrow [Maynooth College], May, 1968), cf. too, Bernard Haering's defense of the Church's legislation on sacerdotal celibacy, National Catholic Reporter, July 6, 1966). The idea that priests who have already taken the vow of celibacy should be freed from the obligations of their vows and allowed to marry was rejected so completely that even those bishops who had advocated its consideration recognized the overwhelming disapproval of the concept. One bishop said that to speak of this as optional celibacy was a misnomer, suggesting what was asked was optional adherence to solemn vows. Was the Holy Spirit not at work at the Third Synod of Bishops (1971), or were they wholly bereft of those charisms that Kung repeatedly speaks of in the latter part of his book? Why does the author treat with complete silence the explanations which the Second Vatican Council gave with the greatest care on the values of "celibacy in view of the Kingdom of God" in four documents—no less—that very Council to which he had looked so hopefully for the renewal of the Catholic Church? (K. 11).

. . . that precious gift of divine grace which the Father gives to some men (cf. Mt. 19:11; I Cor. 7:7) so that by virginity or celibacy, they can more easily devote their selves to God alone with undivided heart (cf. I Cor. 7:32-34). This total abstinence embraced on behalf of the kingdom of heaven has always been held in particular honor by the Church as being a sign of charity and stimulus towards it, as well as a unique fountain of spiritual fertility in the world. (cf. n.42)

Perfectae Caritatis (Decree on the Appropriate Renewal of the Religious Life):

That chastity which is practiced "on behalf of the heavenly kingdom" (Mt. 19:12), and which religious profess, deserves to be esteemed as a surpassing gift of peace. For it liberates the human heart in a unique way (cf. I Cor. 7:32-35) and causes it to burn with greater love of God and all mankind .... As a result they will not be influenced by those erroneous claims which present complete continence as impossible or as harmful to human development. In addition a certain spiritual instinct should lead them to spurn everything likely to imperil chastity. (n. 12)

By it (priestly celibacy) they (seminarians) renounce the companionship of marriage for the sake of the kingdom of heaven (cf. Mt. 19: 12); they devote themselves to the Lord with an undivided love which is profoundly proper to the new covenant; they bear witness to the state which the resurrection will bring about in the world to come (cf. Lk. 20:36); and they gain extremely appropriate help for exercising that perfect and unremitting love by which they can become all things to all men through their priestly ministrations, etc. (n.10).

Presbyterorum Ordinis (Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests):

For it (perfect and perpetual continence) simultaneously signifies and stimulates pastoral charity and is a special fountain of spiritual fruitfulness on earth.... Celibacy accords with the priesthood on many scores. For the whole priestly mission is dedicated to that new humanity which Christ, the conqueror of death, raises up in the world through His Spirit. This humanity takes its origin "not of blood, nor of the will of man, but of God." (Jn. 1:13) Through virginity or celibacy observed for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, priests are consecrated to Christ in a new and distinguished way. They more easily hold fast to Him with undivided heart. They more freely devote themselves to Him and through Him to the service of God and man. They more readily minister to His kingdom and to the work of heavenly regeneration etc. . . . This legislation, to the extent that it concerns those who are destined for the priesthood, this most holy Synod again approves and confirms. (Italics supplied) (n. 16)

Was the Council of aggiornamento singularly at fault on sacerdotal celibacy?

Despite the frequently expressed mind of the Ecumenical Council in Lumen Gentium, Perfectae Caritatis, Optatam Totius and Presbyterorum Ordinis, despite Pope John's unequivocal support of sacerdotal celibacy and Pope Paul's encyclical, Sacerdotalis Caelibatus (and reaffirmed unanimously by the Third Episcopal Synod at Rome, 1971), Kung can write most ungraciously of Pope Paul:

Also betraying an abysmal lack of confidence, he attempted to impose on all the clergy that repressive measure—the annual renewal of priestly promises in connection with the Maundy Thursday liturgy. (K. 26, Italics supplied)

Renewal of vows, not merely promises, has always been a traditional practice of seminarians and religious, and even after the final vows, their renewal is not uncommon on the occasion of a yearly retreat. To speak of the papal call for the renewal of priestly vows as an imposition, as "repressive," "betraying an abysmal lack of confidence," "lack of intelligence" is an inexcusable act of rashness.

The kernel of Kung's argument is that the moral doctrine of Humanae Vitae, which Kung readily admits (35-36) was the constant and universal authoritative teaching of the Church—tantamount to an infalliblis ex ordinario magisterio—is wrong (according to Kung), and therefore belies the doctrine of infallibility of the Church. At this moment, suffice to observe that if such a universal, centuries old moral doctrine of the Church can be wrong and the faithful gravely deceived in a matter of eternal salvation, then cui bono Kung's theory of indefectibility? (K. 181- 193)

Pope Paul VI's Credo recapitulates the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed and subsequent doctrinal definitions: God the Creator; Three Divine Persons, coaeternae sibi et coequales, unity in the Trinity and Trinity in the unity; the Incarnation and the economy of Redemption; the Resurrection and eternal life; the Blessed Virgin, Mother of God, Immaculate and her glorious Assumption; Original Sin, transmitted with human nature, "not by imitation, but by propagation," and that it is thus "proper to everyone"; regeneration through Baptism; the divine institution of the "one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church"; infallibility; the Mass and Transubstantiation; eternal life and the resurrection of the dead. Kung (25) speaks of this Credo as a "typical Roman gesture of identification, without consulting the Church." On the contrary, the successor of Peter did, indeed, consult the solemn definitive teachings of the ecumenical councils, and the Roman Pontiffs of the preceding 2000 years.

It seems to this writer that anyone who calls into discredit Pope Paul's encyclical on the true identity of the Catholic Church as the Church which Christ instituted and its authentic mission to evangelize all the people of God into the unity of its fold, (Ecclesiam Suam), on the traditional and unwavering belief of the Church in the Eucharist, (Mysterium Fidei), on the undivided and total dedication of the priest symbolized by sacerdotal celibacy in the likeness of His Divine Lord (Sacerdotalis Coelibatus), on the reaffirmation of the centuries-old constant and universal teaching of the Church on the morality of marital communion (Humanae Vitae), on Pope Paul's Credo, which is in substance a repetition of the Nicean Constantinopolitan Creed-goes a very long way toward raising questions about Kung's own articles of faith. On October 11, 1962, the first day of the Council, Pope John said that his intention of convoking the Council was "to assert once again the magisterium (teaching authority), which is unfailing...." (Abbott, pp. 710-719) To what purpose?

The greatest concern of the Ecumenical Council is this: that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine should be guarded and taught more efficaciously. (cf. Abbot, p. 713)

To "guard" is to keep and defend, and the principal purpose is precedent to and a necessary prerequisite to the teaching of the articles of the faith more efficaciously. This the late Pontiff repeated at greater length.

(But) from the renewed, serene, and tranquil adherence to all the teaching of the Church in its entirety and preciseness, as it still shines forth in the Acts of the Council of Trent and First Vatican Council, the Christian, Catholic, and apostolic spirit of the whole world expects a step forward toward a doctrinal penetration and a formation of consciousness in faithful and perfect conformity to the authentic doctrine, which however, should be studied and expounded through the methods of research and through the literary forms of modern thought. The substance of the ancient doctrine of the deposit of faith is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is another. (italics supplied)

Kung's frequently expressed enthusiastic veneration for the late Pontiff seems to stop short of Pope John's unmistakable intention and meaning.

Kung speaks of Pope Paul's Motu Proprio of March 31, 1970, the Apostolic Letter Determining Norms for Mixed Marriages, as displaying "fundamentally unecumenical attitude of the Roman central administration." (K. 25-26)

Now surely an ecumenical perspective of mixed marriages does not mean mixed churches nor mixed credal faiths nor mixed morality of marriages. The Council Fathers did not intend that the Decree of Ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio) was to work at cross purposes with the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium), both of which were not without marked significance, promulgated on the same day, November 21, 1964. The Council Fathers taught nothing that would in any way mute Pope John's exhortation for the renewal of the Catholic Faith in the personal lives of the faithful; the married, no less, than the unmarried, nor in any way give encouragement to that false conciliatory approach (irenismus) which, on the contrary, the Council Fathers explicitly condemned on several occasions.

The Apostolic Letter set down the minimum but indispensable requirements in a matter of divine law, the safeguarding of the faith of the Catholic and the promise to do all that is reasonably possible to ensure that children are baptized and educated in the Catholic Faith. This promise is no longer required of the non-Catholic, and the canonical form may be dispensed with by permission of the local ordinary for exceptional reasons. What more ecumenical norms can be forged for mixed marriages which do not play false to the Catholic Faith? The generality of Protestants have acknowledged the ecumenical spirit of charity of the pontifical document. The American Lutheran Church Council, to speak of one, approved the Apostolic Letter, and its implementation by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (January 1, 1971), was equally received with manifest gratification. Dr. Carson Blake, then Secretary General of the World Council of Churches, perceptively observed that the perfect solution will be achieved only when Christian unity is recovered.

In his haste (or in deliberation), Kung never explains to the faithful the teaching and "mind" of the Church on mixed marriages, neither in Inquiry (Gr. 1970; Eng. 1971) nor, for that matter, in subsequent publications.

Firstly, realistically, what are the facts about mixed marriages, and secondly, the Church teaching on the grave obligation to safeguard the Catholic faith of the Catholic party and of the progeny.

Statistically, seventy percent of mixed marriages now end in divorce or separation. (C. Adams, Marriage Counsellor, Pennsylvania)

Sixty percent of Catholics in mixed marriages turn away from their religion in some significant way. (U.S. Bishops Committee on Mixed Marriages) At least forty percent of children born to such unions are not reared as Catholics. Forty percent of Catholics who marry non-Catholics do not marry before a priest. (Rev. J. L. Thomas, S.J.)

Between two and three times as many marriages result in divorce and separation in Catholic-Protestant unions than when the couple is of the same faith. (Landis Study of 28,184 cases) Is it then surprising that the U.S. Bishops should declare in Basic Teachings For Catholic Religious Education (n. 13):

It should be made clear that the Church discourages the contracting of mixed marriages in order to encourage a full union of mind and life in matrimony.

From Instruction On Mixed Marriages issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith on March 18, 1966, a little more than three months after the solemn closing of the Second Vatican Council on December 8, 1965, we excerpt the following: That the sacrament of Matrimony, established by Christ as a sign of His union with the Church, may fully exert its sacred power and really be for the spouses a great Mystery (Eph. 5:32) by which in the intimate union of their life they symbolize the love by which Christ gave Himself for men, there is the greatest demand for full and perfect harmony of the spouses, especially in matters pertaining to religion.

The Catholic Church considers it her most serious duty to safeguard and protect the welfare of the faith both in the spouses and the children. Consequently, the Church strives with the greatest care and vigilance that Catholics contract marriage with Catholics.

Let all the shepherds teach the faithful the religious importance and value of this sacrament (of Matrimony). Let them gravely warn the faithful of the difficulties and dangers which are inherent in contracting a marriage with a Christian non-Catholic, and much more with a non-Christian (unbaptized). By all suitable means let them bring it about that young people contract marriage with a Catholic party. The Instruction, however, points out that today communications, acquaintances and contacts of Catholics with non-Catholics are more frequent, and so the bonds of friendships are more easily established between them which, as is evident from experience, are wont to bring on more frequent occasions of mixed marriages: Accordingly, the pastoral solicitude of the Church today even more demands that in mixed marriages the sanctity of Matrimony in keeping with Catholic teaching and the faith of the Catholic spouse be completely safeguarded and that the Catholic education of the children be cared for with the greatest possible diligence and effectiveness.

This pastoral care is, therefore, more necessary because, as is known, there are found among non-Catholics diverse opinions both concerning the essence of marriage and its qualities, especially in regard to indissolubility, and consequently about divorce and contracting marriage after divorce. The Church, therefore, considers it her duty to protect the faithful that they may not endanger the faith and suffer harm either spiritual or material. Therefore, those who intend to contract marriage are to be instructed accurately about the nature, qualities and obligations of matrimony and the dangers that must be avoided.

The grave obligation of the Catholic spouse to guard, preserve and to profess his (her) own faith and to baptize and to educate in that faith the offspring that may be born must be made known to the non-Catholic party.

Let Catholic spouses, however, take care to strengthen and increase in themselves the gift of faith, and, ever following the paths of Christian virtues in their family, let them also continually give the non-Catholic party and their children a shining example. If we recall that the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium) and the Decree on Ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio) were both promulgated by the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council on the same day, November 21, 1964, there was never any intention to compromise the inviolabilities of the Catholic Faith for salvation under the guise of a misleading irenicism against which the Decree on Ecumenism explicitly warned—"a false conciliatory approach, irenismus, which harms the purity of Catholic doctrine and obscures its assured genuine meaning." (n. 11) It is in that same Decree on Ecumenism that the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council declared without hesitance or equivocation: For it is through Christ's Catholic Church alone which is the all-embracing means of salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained. It was to the apostolic college alone, of which Peter is the head, that we believe our Lord entrusted all the blessings of the New Covenant, in order to establish on earth the one Body of Christ into which all those should be fully incorporated who already belong in any way to God's People.

. . . the Catholic Church has been endowed with all divinely revealed truth and with all means of grace .... (n. 4) From Pope Paul VI's Apostolic Letter on Mixed Marriages (March 31, 1970) in which Kung sees "the fundamentally unecumenical attitude of the Roman central administration" (K. 25, 26) we excerpt the following: There are many difficulties inherent in a mixed marriage, since a certain division is introduced into the living cells of the Church, as the Christian family is rightly called, and in the family itself the fulfillment of the gospel teachings is more difficult because of diversities in matters of religion, especially with regard to these matters, which concern Christian worship and the education of the children.

For these reasons the Church, conscious of her duty, discourages the contracting of mixed marriages, for she is most desirous that Catholics be able in matrimony to attain to perfect union of mind and full communion of life.

The Church vigilantly concerns herself with the education of the young and their fitness to understand their duties with a sense of responsibility and to perform their obligation as members of the Church, and she shows this both in preparing for marriage those who intend to contract a mixed marriage and in caring for those who have already contracted such a marriage.

Nevertheless, one cannot ignore the difficulties inherent even in mixed marriages between baptized persons. There is often a difference of opinion on the sacramental nature of matrimony, on the special significance of marriage celebrated within the Church, on the interpretation of certain moral principles pertaining to marriage and the family, on the extent to which obedience is due to the Catholic Church, and on the competence that belongs to ecclesiastical authority. From this it is clear that difficult questions of this kind can only be fully resolved when Christian unity is restored.

The faithful must, therefore, be taught that, although the church somewhat relaxes ecclesiastical discipline in particular cases, she can never remove the obligation of the Catholic party, which Divine Law, namely, the plan of salvation instituted by Christ, is imposed according to the various situations.

The faithful should, therefore, be reminded that the Catholic party has the duty of preserving his or her own faith; nor is it ever permitted to expose oneself to a proximate danger of losing it.

Furthermore, the Catholic partner in a mixed marriage is obliged, not only to remain steadfast in the faith, but also, as far as possible, to see to it that the children be baptized and brought up in that same faith, and receive all the aids to eternal salvation which the Catholic Church provides for her sons and daughters.

To obtain a dispensation from the bishop from an impediment (of mixed religion) the Catholic party shall declare that he (she) is ready to remove dangers of falling away from the faith. He (she) is also gravely bound to make a sincere promise to do all in his power to have all the children baptized and brought up in the Catholic Church.

At an opportune time the non-Catholic party must be informed of these promises which the Catholic party has to make, so that it is clear that he (she) is cognizant of the promise and obligation on the part of the Catholic.

Both parties are to be clearly instructed on the ends and essential properties of marriage, not to be excluded by either party. Even after the truly ecumenical concessions of Pope Paul's Apostolic Letter which removed the former exaction of promises from the non-Catholic party and provided modifications in the pro forma matrimonii with the consent of the ordinary, there is nonetheless a continuity of doctrinal substratum with antecedent papal teaching. One need only consult Pope Pius XI's celebrated Encyclical on Marriage promulgated December 31, 1930 from which we choose these passages: The religious character of marriage, its sublime signification of grace and the union between Christ and the Church, evidently require that those about to marry should show a holy reverence toward it, and zealously endeavor to make their marriage approach as nearly as possible to the archetype of Christ and the Church.

They therefore, who rashly and needlessly contract mixed marriages from which the maternal love and providence of the Church dissuades her children for very sound reasons, fail conspicuously in this respect, sometimes with danger to their eternal salvation. This attitude of the Church to mixed marriages appears in many of her documents, all of which are summed up in Canon 1060 of the Code of Canon Law: "Everywhere and with the greatest strictness the Church forbids marriages between baptized persons, one of whom is a Catholic and the other a member of a schismatical or heretical sect; and if there is, added to this, the danger of falling away of the Catholic party and the perversion of the children, such a marriage is forbidden also by the divine law." So wrote the Roman Pontiff who was the first to speak of "separated brethren." We continue: If the Church occasionally, on account of circumstances, does not refuse to grant a dispensation from these strict laws (if the divine law remains intact and the dangers above mentioned are provided against by suitable safeguards), it is unlikely that the Catholic party will not suffer some detriment from such a marriage.

Whence it comes about not infrequently, as experience shows, that deplorable defections from religion occur among the offspring, or at least a headlong descent into that religious indifference which is closely allied to impiety. There is this also to be considered that in those mixed marriages, it becomes much more difficult to imitate by a lively conformity of spirit the mystery of faith of which we have spoken, namely, that close union between Christ and His Church.

Assuredly, also, there will be wanting that close union of spirit which, as it is a sign and mark of the Church of Christ, so also should it be the sign of Christian wedlock, its glory and adornment. For where there exists diversity of mind, truth and feeling, the bond of union of mind and heart is wont to be broken, or at least weakened. From this comes the danger lest the love of man and wife grow cold and the peace and happiness of family life, resting as it does on the union of hearts, be destroyed. A close review of the rationale underlying the doctrinal affirmations of Pope Pius XI and those given on mixed marriages after the Second Vatican Council discloses a continuity of a sense of realism of the hazards of mixed marriages and an unambiguous reaffirmation of the doctrinal integrity of marriage and the grave obligations to safeguard the Catholic faith of the Catholic party and of the offspring in mixed marriages. Kung's own brand of ecumenism (as it bears on mixed marriages) is vastly at variance both with the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium) and with the Decree on Ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio) which the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council promulgated. This is another instance where Kung's referral to the spirit of Vatican II is tragically at odds with what the Fathers of that Ecumenical Council actually taught. The Council Fathers placed the Decree on Ecumenism within the context of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, and not, as this writer surmises Kung does—outside of or in challenging parallel to the text and context of Lumen Gentium . In 1972 Monsignor Jozef Tomko, an aide to Franjo Cardinal Seper, prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, published his 223-page book, Matrimoni Misti (Ital.). It is the first systematic study of the vexed problem of mixed marriage. It examines the problem under its historical, scriptural, sociological, pastoral, ecumenical and theological aspects. His book traces the problem of mixed marriage from its earliest treatment in the Old Testament, into the New Testament and among the Fathers of the Church, through the Middle Ages and the Protestant Reformation down to the present ecumenical age. Monsignor Tomko draws on his experience as secretary for the mixed-marriage debate at the 1967 Synod of Bishops and as secretary of the commission that prepared Pope Paul's 1970 Motu Proprio Matrimonia Mixta. The author reviews the public debate that helped forge the Vatican's present regulations on mixed marriages, and recalls the bitter controversy occasioned by publication of the regulations. Central to the book is a defense of the canonical form, the law (which at present allows dispensation by the bishop) that invalidates any marriage involving a Catholic that is not witnessed by a Catholic priest. In defending the canonical norm, the author acknowledges that the Church's decision in the sixteenth century to require a priest's presence for validity was based on a reason that hardly exists today: to combat secret marriages and the bigamy that often resulted from them. Marriage laws in most countries today make secret marriage a rarity, but he insists that other reasons justify the Church's decision to keep that requirement in force, although the Church has at the same time made dispensation from it easier. He retells the pro and con debate on the question of canonical form at the 1967 Synod of Bishops. His own arguments for its retention come under four headings: to safeguard the sacred and sacramental character of marriage, to guarantee the indissolubility of marriage, to offer greater certainty of the validity of marriage, and to give the Church a broader opportunity to help prepare for marriage and help sustain them. In a chapter on the right of freedom of conscience, the author maintains that there can be no solution to the dilemma of conscience created by the choice of a religion for the children of mixed marriages. He blamed this widespread drama of conscience not on the Catholic Church's insistence that children be raised as Catholics, but rather on "the reality of divisions and contrasting convictions among religious and among Christian confessions themselves." The religious education of the offspring is the obligation of both spouses, while at the same time it is in practice impossible that such an education follow the dictates of the well-formed consciences of both. 

Primacy of Jurisdiction and Primacy of Service

Kung writes: "His (the Pope's) primacy is not a primacy of ruling but a primacy of service." (p. 27)

As the statement stands, it applies to all Popes, including the first, Peter. This issue must ultimately find its resolution in revelational data, in the teaching of Christ Jesus as it was repeated in the kerygma and preserved in paradosis, the earliest oral traditions, which were then incorporated under apostolic supervision into the gospels, and in the self-awareness of the Church of its own true identity as His Church, its mission and empowerments. His Church cannot be deceived nor be capable of deceiving the faithful in so fundamental a claim as primatial authority. We now state some prefactory reflections. The Catholic Church is by divine ordination a teaching Church. "Everything" that He commanded to be taught was, as He promised, to be understood more clearly and more fully by the operation of the Holy Spirit in the course of time. The God of revelation is not a rationalist God, nor is His teaching Church a rationalist Church. From the beginning the Church was in possession of the depositum fidei as its apostolic patrimony, but not in the fullness of human articulation and formal particularity. All articles of faith: the Incarnation, the Trinitarian mystery, Original Sin, Redemption, Grace, Sacraments, etc., were formally defined in the course of time. Hence, a relative or comparative tardiness of formal definition imports no doctrinal defectibility. To teach His salvific word to all men, to administer the sacraments, regulate the liturgy, requires governmental discipline with the right to demand obedience. The primacy of service to teach His message of salvation and to administer His means of sanctification—requires by a principled necessity primatial authority in order to realize unity of fellowship in the unity of faith. Let us note as a caution that, historically, the manner and extent of the exercise of primatial authority, while identical with its original endowment, hardly constitutes a continuum with its actualities in medieval, Renaissance and modern papacy. Primitive Christianity, unique and normative for the Church and her teaching to the end of time, as recipient of the definitive salvific event of Christian revelation is in view of Christ's promise for a deeper and greater understanding of His word by the assistance of the Holy Spirit, and in the development of institutional forms in accordance with its original endowment of empowerments historically just that—primitive.

If we were to gather together all the Scriptural evidences of Simon Peter's prominence and preeminence, the special marks of predilection shown him by Jesus, his role as spokesman of the Twelve—of no other Apostle is so nearly a character biography given by the evangelists-and after Pentecost (Acts cc. 1-15), Peter's authoritative leadership in the primitive Church in Jerusalem and his missionary preaching (Acts 2:14-39; 3:12-26; 4:8-12; 5:29-32; 10:34-43), all this would not by itself constitute nor provide the grounds for inferring a grant of primacy of jurisdiction, iure divino. For this we must find an actual historical transaction of such a commission in the Scriptural loci classici, the Petrine texts.

Mt. 16:17-19, "But you," He said, "who do you say I am?" Then Simon Peter spoke up, "You are the Christ," he said, "the Son of the living God." Jesus replied, "Simon, son of Jonah, blessed are you! Because it was not flesh and blood that revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. So, I now say to you: "You are Peter, (Kepha) and on this rock (kepha) I will build my Church. And the gates of the realm of death can never hold out against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven: whatever you bind on earth, shall be considered bound in heaven: and whatever you loose on earth, shall be loosed in heaven."

The genuineness of this Matthean pericope is universally upheld by Catholic biblicists as textual critics apart from as well as consequent to its canonicity. Among Protestants, thanks to the learned argumentation of Oscar Cullman, the eminent Swiss Lutheran theologian, and the critical studies of others before him, many have come to acknowledge that Jesus did speak these words against those who claim they are spurious. Those who say that the Matthean verses 18 and 19 are a second century retrojection of a Romanizing process will have to contend with its Palestinian antiquity, its Semitic linguistic characteristics—bar-yona, "flesh-blood," "bind-loose," the ancient gravity of rock as a divine title and its prophetic antecedents in the Old Testament usage, the qahal of God (Gr. SKKESIA), "gates of Sheol," "Keys" of the steward and the Aramaic Greek strophic rhythm of three lines each that are not alien to the Matthean literary construction. (cf. Mt. 11 :7-9; 25-30)

As on the occasion of the "living bread" discourse (Jn. 6:67-69), Simon Peter speaks for the Twelve and identifies Jesus to be the Messiah, the coming deliverer, "He who is to come" (Mt. 11 :3), even though all of the Apostles do not yet understand clearly the true nature and mission of the messianic kingship (cf. Mt. 16:22-23; 20:20-24; Mk. 10:4244; Lk. 22:24). "Therefore, I say to you"; that is, because of Simon's confession, "You are Kepha and on this Kepha I will build my Church." From the first days of His public ministry, Jesus chose the Twelve as a group apart, the Isaianic "remnant" (Isa. 4:3), which accepted the proclamation of the "kingdom," and He now provides for its continuance in the Church (ekklesia, qahal), of the new covenant (Lk. 22:20; I Cor. 11:25) an organized religious community whose leader He now appoints. The Matthean -qahal-ekklesia should be studied with the Danielic (7:13) "Son of Man," in mind, a title which Jesus applies to himself when He speaks of His lowliness (8:20), His humanity (11:19), His humility (20: 28), generally in His references to the humiliation of His forthcoming betrayal, passion, death, resurrection and exaltation. In Daniel (c. 7), there is the mysteriously more than human reality conceived both as an individual (v. 13) and in its collective sense an extension of the individual sense (w. 18, 22), where the "son of man," and "the saints of the Most High" are apparently identified, the "Son of Man" being leader, representative and exemplar of "the saints of the Most High." Just as in Daniel, the triumph of the "Son of Man," who includes in some fashion in his person the Saints of the Most High, follows upon the destruction of the pagan empires, so in Matthew a new, the messianic, community is set up from the "remnant" foretold by the prophets and receives the promise of victory over the realm of death and the rule of malign powers. The word ekklesia appears only twice in the four gospels, and both in Matthew (16:17; 18:18). But the promise to build His Church is not exclusively contained in these Matthean verses but is clearly discernible in the teaching of Jesus: in His ecclesial parables and metaphors, particularly, the Shepherd and His flock, (Jn. 10); in His private instructions to the Twelve and the worldwide commissions laid upon them to the end of time. A Messiah without a messianic community would have been unthinkable to any Jew. In the Pauline epistles, all of which, let us reflect, appeared before the first extant written gospel, ekklesia (Hb. qahal, edah), appears sixty-five times to designate every usage, the local church, the severalty of local churches, the universal Church (cf. to 3 Jn. 6, 9, 10, and in Apc. 20 times; also Jn. 5:14).

Jesus confers upon Simon His place in that messianic community by changing his name and using the only Aramaic word that would serve His purpose, kepha, as apparently He had promised earlier to do (Mk. 3:16; Lk. 6: 14; Jn. I :42), but only here is the explanation given for the change. In biblical usage a name did not merely indicate; rather, it made a thing what it is (Jn. 3 :20; Mt. I :21; Lk. 1: 13, 31), and a change of name meant a change of destiny (Jn. 17: 5). What is unique about Simon's change of name is that there is no evidence that kepha (aram) or Petros was ever used as a person's name before Jesus conferred it to symbolize Peter's place and role in the Church as its rock-foundation. The words of Jesus are spoken in response to Simon's faith; but it is the person of the one confessing who is addressed-"You are Kepha and upon this Kepha I will build my Church. Any attempt to deny the identity of the one and same predicate-Kepha-twice repeated of the one and same predication, the person, Simon Peter, must be construed as a prepossession of confessional interpretation.

Petros, the masculinized Greek of Petra, appears quite commonly alone in the Gospels and Acts, more than 150 times. Conjoined with Simon the double name occurs about twenty times, mostly in John. In the Pauline epistles, all of which appeared before the first canonical gospel, Peter is regularly referred to as Kephas, the Grecized form of the Aramaic, Kepha (1 Cor. 1:12; 3:22; 9:5; Gal. 1: 18; 2: 9, 11, 14), and twice Petros (Gal. 2: 7, 8). And John, nearly the last of the New Testament writers, introduces Simon (1 :42) as the one whose name will be changed to Kephas, explaining "meaning rock." These repetitive usages of Petros and Kephas stressed upon the Greek-speaking Christians the unique role and function of Peter in the primitive Church. In the Old Testament Rock appears as a divine title to connote invincibility against any assault and as the surest haven of security and salvation.

Be my Rock of refuge, A stronghold to give me safety, For you are my rock and my fortress, O my God, rescue me from the hands of the wicked. (Ps. 71:34)

God, the Rock, appears frequently in Deuteronomy, Samuel 1 and 2, Psalms, occasionally in first and second Isaiah, once in Habakkuk. Abraham was the rock from which Israel was hewn (Isa. 51: 1). The "stone of witness" which Yahweh will lay in Zion; "a precious cornerstone"; a foundation stone" (Isa. 28: 16); the "stone that grew into a great mountain, filling the whole earth" (Dn. 2:34, 35, 44, 45), where the stone stands for the new kingdom, as Daniel interpreted Nebuchadnezzar's dream; "the stone rejected by the builders that proved to be the keystone" (Ps. 118:22), (this stone Jesus identifies with Himself [Mt. 21:42]): this same symbolic rock-foundation of the messianic community which the Messiah will institute by a new testament Jesus now applies to Simon Peter alone, in the presence of the other Apostles and thus implies that Peter is more than a mere foundation as the other "apostles and prophets" are (Eph. 2:20). Christ is the "main cornerstone" (Mt. 21: 42; I Cor. 3:11; Eph. 2:20), but this foundation appears visibly in Peter.

The gates of ancient cities were their stronghold both as impregnable defenses and as a vantage point for counterattack and assault. The "gates" are symbolic of the power of the realm of death (Hb. Sheol, Gr. Hades: cf. Jb 17:16;38:17),passim; "gates of death" (Ps. 9:13; 107:18; Isa. 38:10,—an underground abode of the dead, the just and the unjust the complete negation of life, thought, love, of all spiritual activity except the mere consciousness of nothingness, a neuter terminal existence for all from which there is no possible deliverance except by Yahweh. This hopefulness appears in Psalms 30:3;49:15; 86:13, passim, (cf. also I Sam. 2:6; Jn. 2:3f). Against this enigmatic Old Testament conception of death must be projected these words of Jesus:

I am the Resurrection and the life, If anyone believes in me, even though he dies, He will live, and whoever lives and believes in me, Will never die. (Jn. 11 :25)

The Petrine commission and the promise of invincibility is given by Him who is life, the Giver of life by whose conquest over death and His own resurrection life is renewed on earth and recovered in the realm beyond, the just and the unjust according to judgment. The Risen Savior has the "keys of death and hades," the power to release souls (Apoc. 1: 18). He "lord of the living and dead" (Rm. 14:10), has deprived death of its power of paralyzing captivity by proclaiming life and immortality (2 Tm. 1: 10) by descending into hell (Acts 2:27, 31; 1 Pt. 3:10; cf. Apostles Creed). In its extreme brevity, this Matthean pericope is a compendium of Christian revelation—that men may have eternal life through the Church, on earth and beyond, that the powers of evil cannot foreclose redemption and the works of salvation. The "triumphalism" of the Church, to this purpose derives from the Risen Christ, conqueror of death and Lord of life, who is the "main cornerstone" of His Church of which Peter is the visible presence. Ubi Petrus ibi Christus. In these Matthean verses the historical Jesus identifies himself as the author of the Church. There is no other historical explanation for its origin for what is human life but a divine invitation to eternal life (Jn. 3: 15). To the fulfillment of this salvific end the Risen Christ instituted His Church for pilgrim mankind (Jn. 21:15-17) as He had promised (Mt 16:18, 19)—the Church of the Resurrection that cannot err about His way, His Truth, His Life, for so He mandated His Apostles and what with His abiding presence to the end of time, (Mt. 28:20 and parallel places) and the divine assistance of the "Spirit of Truth" (Jn. 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:12, 13).

In keeping with the figure of speech "build," "gates," which symbolize the two citadels of life and death, Jesus confers (promises to do so in the future) on one man, Peter, the "keys," the symbol in antiquity of supreme authority of the steward in place of the master over his royal household or of a ruler over his kingdom (cf. Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel, tr. by John McHugh, New York, 1961, 129 ff). Yotham as regent was "master of the palace and ruled the country" (2K. 15: 5); "master of the palace" is the title on the official seal of Godolias, the man whom Nebuchadnezzar installed as governor of Judah after the capture of Jerusalem (2K 25:22); the "steward, Shebna, the master of the palace" under Ezechias (Isa. 22: 1-5); Elyaqim receives the keys of the royal palace and is thereby invested with the same authority as Hickial (Isa. 22:21, 22):

I lay the key of the house of David upon his shoulder; If he opens, none will shut; If he shuts, none will open.

The kingdom of heaven must be understood according to its customary Matthean usage: namely, that kingdom which is announced and instituted by Jesus by His own presence, preaching and the remnant He has gathered around Him for special and private instructions and mandates—the Church looking to an eschatological term, the ekklesia with its Greek connotation of the free born, a notion to which Paul was to give a profound theological signification. Accordingly, Peter's authority to govern is only over the pilgrimage Church; that is to say, he is appointed steward of that means to salvation which is His Church. How this rule will be exercised is expressed in rabbinical terminology to "bind and loose." A comparison is here intended with the disciplinary and doctrinal authority of rabbis who in Jesus' time interpreted the Old Testament for the faith and conduct of the people. A specific determination of "bind and loose" is the power to forgive sins which Jesus granted in a post-resurrectional scene (Jn. 20:22, 23). The power of the "keys," the supreme and all inclusive power conferred upon Peter, must not be confused with the power of "binding and loosing." This latter power Jesus also grants to other apostles and disciples, but in regard to this wider circle, Jesus makes no mention of the power of the "keys" neither before (Mt. 18:18) nor after His resurrection. (Jn. 20:22, 23) The power of the "keys" is given exclusively to Peter, and with it the full power of binding and loosing. The grant of authority to others (Mt. 18: 18; Jn. 20:22, 23), in no way diminishes nor impinges upon Peter's primatial authority to which all other authorities are subject. Herein lies the distinction by divine design between the authority of the supreme pastor, Peter and his successors, and the supreme pastoral authority which the apostolic college and its successor, the episcopal college, united with its Head, kepha, the bearer of the "keys" and the supreme shepherd, possess and exercise in unison. The metaphors "rock" and "keys" embody an exactitude of meaning whose boundaries the operations of the Holy Spirit and the presence of Christ in His Mystical Body (Jn. cc 14-17) will declare in and through the experiential history of the Church. The decisions of the key-bearer will be ratified with a permanent character "on earth in heaven." Whether or not Matthew has given us the actual history and geography does not call into question that Jesus did speak these logia. Yet its suitability at Caesarea Philippi remains in possession as long as the alternatives, the Last Supper or a post-resurrectional scene, hardly rise above conjectures, hypotheses and assumptions, and labor under difficulties of their own. (For a critique of Cullmann's Upper Room thesis, of Robert H. Gundry, The Narrative Framework of Matthew xvi: 17-19, Nov.,1964-65, pp.1 -9.) Further, Simon Peter is prominently featured (Mt. 24:28, 29; 15:15) prior to this pericope and immediately following (17:24-27). And the ecclesial discourse (c. 18) appropriately follows upon the Petrine commission. The text is genuine—e'vero ("there is no scientific justification for this denial," Cullmann, Peter, etc., tr. Floyd Filson, London, 198), and its chronology and topography in Matthew is, at the least, ben trovato. The doctrinal and historical significance of the Matthean text is that it was written after Peter had long since left the Jerusalem community and been martyred in Rome. So evident (if not so manifest) and enduring even in his absence was Peter's primacy in Palestinian Christianity that the Matthean text was contested by no contemporaries.

At the Last Supper, shortly after instituting the new covenant, Jesus addresses Himself directly to Peter in the presence of the other Apostles, and warning him that Satan had obtained leave to try the faith of all the Twelve (as he had in the case of Job 1:12; 2:6)—"you all"—the Greek word for "you" here is plural; in verse 32, it is singular—"to sift as wheat" (Satan had already proceeded against Jesus through Judas, Lk. 22:3-6), Jesus promises to pray for Peter, choosing to strengthen the faith of the others through the mediation of the one whom He had called kepha. The Lucan pericope contains a commission which confers leadership, the commission to Peter to strengthen his fellow disciples. In a context which speaks of faith, the strengthening is best understood of faith, and the passage suggests the rock metaphor in the name of Peter (Mt. 16: 18; cf. Lk. 6 :48). In the same breath, as it were, of the prediction of Peter's thrice repeated denial of Jesus later that same evening we are divinely reassured that whatever the human frailties of Peter (and of his successors), the Petrine office here, as in Matthew 16: 16-19 and John 21: 15-17, is to be "the permanent and visible source and foundation of unity of 0faith and fellowship" (Vatican Council I, Pastor Aeternus, Dz. 1821 (3050); Vatican Council II, Lumen Gentium, III, 18). (This Lucan text was cited by Vatican I [Dz. 3070] as a scriptural basis for papal infallibility.)

The Fourth Evangelist begins and ends his gospel with a truly significant focus on Peter. In 1:42 Jesus accosts Simon; "You are Simon, son of John; you are to be called 'Cephas'—meaning Rock." According to form history this must have been a calculated prolepsis. The gospel concludes with Peter as supreme pastor. From fisherman to "rock," "bearer of the keys," "steward of the kingdom of heaven," "strengthener" (teacher) of his brethren, to "universal shepherd of His flock." The imagery of the Shepherd is one of kindly and protective providence. He leads his sheep to pasture and to water, leads them to shelter in inclement weather and defends them against beasts of prey and thieves in the night at the risk of his own life. The sheep recognize their shepherd's voice and follow him wheresoever he leads them. The shepherd keeps his flock together and seeks out the strayed sheep (Jn. c. 1O; cf. Gn. 31:38-41; 1 Sm. 17:34-37). In the Old Testament the people of God are represented as the flock of Yahweh, and Yahweh Himself and His representatives (Moses, David, etc.) as shepherds, and evil rulers of Israel are denounced as unworthy (the hirelings of the Johannine Scriptures). Jeremias excoriates the shepherds, i.e., the rulers of the people; indeed, all who have authority for faulting their flock, their people (2:8; 10:21; 23: 1-2; 50:6), and prophesies dire punishments for them in particular. Ezechiel is no less forceful in his denunciations of the shepherds, of men of authoritative responsibilities for failing their flock (34: 2-10). Isaias scores them for their senselessness and aggrandizement of their self-interest (56: 11ff). But Jeremias prophesies that in the messianic restoration Yahweh will give his people shepherds after his own heart (3:15; 23:4), and Ezechiel foretells that the people of Israel will be reunited under one shepherd (34:23;37:22, 24 cf Jn. 10:16). From "(Bethlehem) Ephrathah . . . will be born the one . . . who will feed his flock with the power of Yahweh" (Mi. 5:3; cf. Mt. 2:6). In the Old Testament Yahweh as shepherd is a recurrent messianic theme and finds its classic expression in Ps. 23: 1-4 (see, too, Ezk. 34: 11 -22). In the New Testament Luke's narrative (2: 8-20) of the angelic announcement of the birth of the Savior to the shepherds and the shepherds' visit to the cave sheepfold in Bethlehem, city of David, to pay homage to the descendant of David, the shepherd-king, contrasts with silent emphasis with the conduct of the religious and royal rulers (also denoted shepherds in the Old Testament). Jesus calls himself the good shepherd (mindful of the faithless and devoted shepherds that Ezechiel and Jeremias distinguished) who lays down his life for his sheep "so that they may have eternal life and have it to the full" (Jn. 10). On the way to Gethsemane Jesus foretells in the words of Zacharias (13:7) the dispersion of the apostles with their shepherd is struck (Mt. 26:31ff; Mk. 14:27ff). During his last years in Rome Peter wrote of His Lord as the "chief shepherd" (1 Pt. 5:4). The epilogue of Hebrews (13:20) concludes with the greeting about the "great Shepherd" of the sheep whose blood sealed an eternal covenant, a greeting formulated by a conflation in the patterns of thought and language of the Old Testament texts (cf. Isa. 63: 11; Zec. 9: 11; Ezk.37:26). In Jn. 21:15-17 Peter is not simply given the office of shepherd—officers in the primitive Church were considered shepherds, (Acts 20:28; Eph. 4:11)—Peter is appointed in Jesus' place, supreme and universal shepherd over all His flock including the other apostles, an office which is not shared by any of the other Apostles. Only by understanding Our Lord's role as Shepherd as He describes it and by acknowledging that Peter has been appointed to take His place on earth in His visible absence—and to consider (in a mixture of metaphors) the pastor's office and authority in terms of the commission of the "keys" by a ruler of a kingdom or by the master of a royal household to his vizier—can we see that Jesus confers upon Peter supreme, plenary and universal authority over His Church. "The Lord is my Shepherd." Peter is now shepherd in His place over His flock. Jesus is both shepherd and "gate," the giver of life and the way into life (cf. Jn. 14:6). Peter, as rock foundation of His Church and key bearer, is now also "the gate" to His sheepfold in the sense that he dispenses the sacramental means of/for eternal life. The First Vatican Council cited Jn. 21:15ff. in defining that the Risen Savior had conferred on Peter the jurisdiction of the supreme shepherd and the ruler of the whole flock. Simon, the fisherman (cf. Jn.21:11 which symbolizes the apostolic mission under Peter's leadership) is divinely appointed the visible correspondent to Christ Jesus, the main foundation (1 Cor. 3:11)-the kepha of the new people of God (ekklesia, qahal/edah Mt. 16: 18), the key-bearer of Christ's household (v. 19), the strength for faith (Lk. 22:33), supreme pastor (shepherd) of His flock, the universal Church, supreme over all the faithful including other shepherds, over all other authorities within the Church (Mt. 18:18; Jn. 20:2123), not excepting the other Apostles (Jn. 21:15-17).

Kung does not do full justice to the New Testament idea of authority. He has failed to grasp the deeper understanding of Church jurisdiction as it is uniquely and pre-eminently situated in Kepha. That there was jurisdictional authority in the early Church, Petrine and apostolic, is evident in the Acts of the Apostles. Peter decides upon the full complement of the Twelve (1:15ff.). He speaks for the apostolic college (2:14), and summarily presents in public the earliest apostolic kerygma (2:14-39; 3:12-26; 4:8-12; 5:29-32; 10:34-43); defends Christianity before the Sanhedrin (4:8ff); and before the decisions of the Council of Jerusalem (15:7-11, 14), Peter, by authority of a special heavenly vision, receives the first heathen, Cornelius, into the Church without requiring obedience to Judaic law, and without prejudice to food, nor does he submit him and his household to circumcision. Religiously and socially the Church is opened to the Gentile world, and Peter's teaching prevails at the Council of Jerusalem (11:1-8). Luke obviously intends a parallel between Jesus and Peter in describing the crowds of infirm pressing about their persons seeking miracles (Acts 5:15-16; Mk. 6: 56). And Peter is saved for the primitive Church by a miraculous deliverance from the prisons of Herod. (12:1-12) Both Luke (24: 35) and Paul (I Cor. 15:5) say that the Risen Jesus appeared first to Peter, and it is not beyond the legitimate bounds of exegesis to reason that in accordance with the mandate of the Petrine texts this special apparition concerned Peter's mission as primate. And Paul, when as yet he had not known Peter, journeyed to Jerusalem for the express purpose of visiting Cephas for fifteen days. (Ga. 1: 18) Apostolic authority is manifest in the teaching, formation and supervision of the Christian community (2:42), and their conduct is stamped by divine approval by the many miracles they work (1: 43). The Twelve end the dispute between the Hellenists and the Hebrews and settle upon the seven deacons (6:1ff.). They consult the congregation but they themselves make the final decisions. (v.g. Acts 15:22) At the Council of Jerusalem, the much agitated question about the requirements to be imposed upon the Gentile Christians is decided by apostolic authority in union with and in accordance with the magisterial authority of Peter:

After much discussion had gone on a long time, Peter stood up and addressed them .... This (Peter's speech) silenced the entire assembly. (Acts 15: 7, 12) Ordinances were prescribed and certain Jewish Christians rebuked for acting "without any authority from us" (v. 25).

We have stated earlier that there is a principled necessity between the primacy of service of Christ's teaching Church and the primacy of jurisdiction to ensure that the salvific message and the sacramental means of salvation and sanctification be preserved intact and inviolate by His delegated authority with the right to demand obedience of conscience and conduct. The primitive Church insisted on obedience to apostolic authority (Acts 15:25) in what is required of Gentile converts; on faithfulness to the "Good News of Christ" (Ga. 1:8), even for Paul (2:1-7); the insistence "in maintaining the traditions," i.e., the teaching of Christ and the apostles (1 Cor. 11:2), in preserving intact "what I received from the Lord, and in turn passed on to you" (1 Cor. 11:23, cf. 15:3, 11). In the First and Second Epistle to the Corinthians Paul fulfills his apostolic mission by teaching Christ Jesus and the moral law and Christian regulations touching many phases of conduct: on incest, fornication, marriage, virginity; on recourse to the pagan courts, on food offered to idols, on decorum in public worship; directives for the celebration of the Lord's Supper, on the controlled exercise of extraordinary charisms (and their subjection to Church authority, 1 Thess. 5:12; 19-21). Paul warns the faithful against deceitful teaching and lapses into paganism (Eph. 4: 14, 15, 21; cf. Col. 2: 7, 8). He repeatedly reassures the faithful that what he has taught them is truly Christ's message "on the authority of the Lord Jesus" (1 Thess. 2:12; 3:10;4:2, 15; 5: 12; 2 Thess. 2: 15; 3: 1,3, 6). The Pastoral Epistles, Timothy 1 and 2 and Titus declare with indisputable clarity that the successors are endowed with the same authority of jurisdiction and teaching to correct distortions of the Christian truths and moral doctrine and if need be, to reprimand and punish. The insistence on the unaltered retention of the deposit of faith is repeatedly expressed in the strongest accents (1 Tm. 2:5-7; 3:15; 4:6; 3:20; 2 Tm. 1:13, 14; 2:2; 3: 1-9; 4:1-5), "expounding the sound doctrine" (Tit. I :9); "make them sound in the faith" (v. 14), "whether you are giving instruction or correcting errors; you can do so with full authority, and no one is to question it" (2:15; cf. 3:8-11, not the congregation, but the authorized representatives of the apostles are to be obeyed). And in the universal or Catholic epistles, cf. 2 Pt. 1: 12; 2: 2; 3: 2; I Jn. 2: 24, 26; 2 Jn. 9-11. For excommunication, cf., v.g., 1 Cor. 5:5; 1 Tm. 1 :20; 2 Tm. 2:17). The post-apostolic Church makes manifest this self-awareness of its divinely endowed power of jurisdiction. In the concluding decade of the first century Pope St. Clement, the third successor of St. Peter as Bishop of Rome from A.D. 90 to 99, in his First Letter to the Corinthians intervened authoritatively and forcefully in the internal affairs of the Corinthian Church without being requested to do so. Clement insisted that the delegation of three men who brought his letter to Corinth were not to return without confirmation of a settlement of the schism. The ancient history of the Church shows no similar letter of rebuke and reproval sent by one Christian community to another, and we judge that none would have been received except from Rome. (More of this letter later in our discussion of apostolic succession.) In the opening years of the second century St. Ignatius of Antioch, the third Bishop of Antioch (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3:36), writes of the authority of jurisdiction within the local Christian community, that of the bishop: Obviously the one whom the master of the household puts in charge of domestic affairs ought to be received by us in the same spirit in which we would receive our master himself. Plainly then, one should look upon the bishop as upon the Lord Himself. (To the Ephesians 6)

There are those who invoke the name of bishop while their actions are without regard for him. Such men, it seems to me, are lacking in good conscience, for they do not assemble regularly as enjoined. (To the Magnesians 4)

For it seems to me that, when you are obedient to the bishop as you would be to Jesus Christ, you are living, not in a human way, but according to Jesus Christ .... (To the Trallians 2)

The primacy of jurisdiction and the lower levels of jurisdictional authority is no less inherent in the Church as the authority to teach and the power of Orders. Indeed, the primacy of jurisdiction exists by Christ's ordination for the sake of service of the teaching and salvific Church for the unity of the faithful in the unity of faith. This is indisputably evident in the New Testament. History discloses its larger dimensions and outer boundaries and the diverse modes of operation with the expansion of the Church's apostolic mission in its preservation of doctrine in Scripture and Tradition against heresies with the development of sacramental theology and in the universal supervision of Catholic liturgies. Throughout ecclesiastical history the Holy Spirit was no less operative in the greater and deeper understanding of primatial authority as in other dogmas of the Catholic deposit of faith. Reason itself can discern that there is a principled necessity between primacy of jurisdiction and the primacy of service of the teaching and saving Church. The history of the proliferation of Christian sects, churches, creeds at variance with one another in the understanding of Christian revelation and even in doctrinal contradiction of one another, especially since the Reformation is a tragic confirmation of this discernment. The promise made to Peter in Mt. 16:18-19 is fulfilled by the Risen Jesus in Jn. 21:15-17, fittingly, it seems, in the complementary conclusion of the Johannine evangel just as it had begun with the promise of the change of name from "Simon, son of John," to "Cephas-meaning Rock" (Jn. 1:42). If Form Criticism attributes this very early promise of change of name, prophetic of the role that is made explicit in Mt. 16:18, 19, to a retrojection in view of subsequent events, then this arrangement to suit the theological purpose of the authors/author of John points to a significance of a calculated intention that enlarges as it is related to the last recollection. The Johannine pericope reaffirms the Matthean singularity of Peter as the supreme and universal caretaker,-steward-keys, shepherd-tend-feed-gate (cf. Jn. 10), each of these figures of speech signify the authority of governance related, of course, to the divinely ordained mission of teaching and sanctifying.

We will have occasion to observe again and again that Kung tries to dichotomize when he can: The holder of the Petrine ministry may not set himself up either as Lord of the Church or—still less—as Lord of the Gospel. (K. 48)

While "gospel" appears only twice and then as "law of the gospel" (as if Paul had not contrasted "law" and "gospel"). (K. 48)

About thirty times in different ways, there is talk (in Humanae Vitae) of the "law" that the Church upholds and proposes, while freedom of will and civic freedom are mentioned, but not the "freedom of the children of God" (as if Paul had not taught that Christ liberated us from the law into this freedom). (K. 49) This sudden parenthetic aside into a Lutheran interpolation of Pauline theology breaks out into a depressing vision of the Church: In this document (Humanae Vitae) law counts for more than Christian freedom, the ecclesiastical teaching office for more than the gospel of Jesus Christ, papal tradition for more than Scripture. (K. 49)

Neither in the entire corpus of Pauline writing nor in its theological reconstruction is there any evidence of any such contrast between law and freedom, nor in the letters of Peter and James. No opposition is set between "law" and the "gospel" by any of the scriptural depositories of Christian revelation. There are contrasts of expression to express spiritual and supernatural contrasts and a variety of contextual considerations.s16 The first contextual consideration is the manner by which God's justice has been made known—the same justice has been revealed through the Law and the Prophets, which as a norm of behavior made sin manifest rather than eliminated it (Rm. 3:21). The Law served as a negative, protective pedagogue (Gal. 3:24). The Law of the Jews had no power in itself to save. Let there be no misunderstanding; the Mosaic Law is God's Law: sacred, just, good and spiritual (Rm. 7:12-14). But this Law recognized deeply within us as good is rendered "unspiritual" by man's selfishness. The Law only made man more conscious of his conduct as a formal transgression, thus aggravating the offense and serving as an instrument of sin. That "same justice of God" which now comes through faith to everyone, Jew and pagan alike, who believes in Jesus Christ (Rm. 3 :22-23), this "same justice" Paul calls the "law of faith," and constitutes the first Pauline contrast of expression and spiritual reality. The contrast is in their efficacy not in their antithesis, because the "law of faith" gives the "Law" its true value (Rm. 3:31). In the Gospels Jesus attacks the Scri