We shall first of all recall that Christ Himself entrusted to the Church certain exceptional (or extraordinary) powers, and certain regular (or permanent) powers; and that the regular powers of jurisdiction comprise, by divine ordinance, two degrees. It will then be possible to enter on a detailed study of the particular or episcopal jurisdiction, and the universal or papal jurisdiction.

How did the apostolate give birth to the episcopate? In what sense are the bishops the successors of the Apostles? Did the episcopate come immediately from the hands of Christ? Did the Church receive from Him her definitive jurisdictional constitution? We will examine the teaching of the theologians on these points.

The Church came from the hands of Christ. The Gospel itself witnesses that it was immediately from Him that the Church received the basic constitution which she is to keep till the end of time: "As the Father hath sent me, so also I send you" (John xx. 21); "All power is given me in heaven and on earth. Going therefore, baptize ye all nations. . . and behold I am with you all days even till the consummation of the world" (Matt. xxviii. 18-20). And that is why we are able to profess, in the anti-modernist oath, "that the Church, the guardian and teacher of the revealed word, was established immediately and directly [proxime ac directo institutam] by the true and historic Christ, while He lived among us". He gave her at once both the exceptional and temporary powers and the regular and permanent powers.

On the Apostles whom He chose that "they should be with him" (Mark iii. 14), for whom He performed miracles to touch and awaken their hearts (vi. 52), to whom He explained the meaning of the parables (iv. 11) and of the Scriptures (Luke xxiv. 45), to whom He appeared over a period of forty days to instruct them on the Kingdom of God (Acts i. 3), and who were to be witnesses of His life and resurrection (i. 22), the Saviour poured out a hidden power which associated them in an exceptional way with the foundation of His Church, enabling them to launch her on the world with the initial impulsion which would carry her from age to age to the end of her history. They would have authority to promulgate certain sacraments; they would have plenary prophetic knowledge of the revealed deposit; they would be inspired to manifest this deposit to the world; and wherever they went they would themselves found local Churches. These privileges are apostolic in the sense that the Apostles were their sole depositaries. They constitute what we have called, in the most restricted sense, "the apostolate". They were intransmissible; and if the Church is called apostolic today, it is not because she possesses them, but simply because she issued from them and because they presided at her birth. They were to be found in an equal degree in each of the Apostles. But since they were granted only in view of the foundation of a Church which was essentially destined to be governed by a single visible ruler, they tended of themselves to place the Apostles, in all that concerned the government of the Church, in dependence on the trans-apostolic powers entrusted by Christ to Peter.[832] So that the Apostles themselves were counted among those sheep of Christ having Peter for visible shepherd.[833] And when Peter died they would remain, as regards ecclesiastical government, subject to the supreme and regular power over the universal Church which would pass on from Peter to his successors.[834]

Within these exceptional and temporary privileges concerned with the founding of the Church there lay hidden the ordinary and permanent powers concerned with preserving the Church; powers by which the Apostles were not only the causes of the Church's coming into being but were also her first regular heads. These are the powers that are apostolic in the sense that the Apostles were not their only, but their first, depositaries. They passed as they stood to the Church, which therefore on this new ground deserves to be called apostolic. These are the powers of order and jurisdiction. They depend on Peter, sole visible head of the body of the Church, and it is from him, consequently, that the other Apostles were regularly to receive them; but, by a singular favour, they received them in fact immediately from Christ.[835] Here we may recognize the ordinary and permanent powers of jurisdiction which we have opposed to the "apostolate" understood in the restricted sense, by calling them the "pontificate".

Thus all the powers possessed by the Apostles, whether exceptional or regular, of order or of jurisdiction, apostolate or pontificate, came to them immediately from Christ.

The thesis I have just set out is that which is today the most generally accepted, and is in my opinion the only correct one. Nevertheless, it has not been accepted by several great theologians.

Following Turrecremata's Summa de Ecclesia,[836] St. Robert Bellarmine holds, in his De Romano Pontifice,[837] that Peter alone received episcopal consecration immediately from Christ, and that the other Apostles received it from the hands of Peter. If it be objected that the apostolate supposed the powers of order and of jurisdiction and that it was conferred by Christ directly on all the Apostles, Bellarmine replies that the apostolate carried with it only the right to preach and a delegated jurisdictional power of wide extension but including neither the power of order nor the episcopate. If it be insisted that on this view the bishops would not be successors of the Apostles, he replies that the bishops are certainly the successors of the Apostles, not however because the apostolate included the episcopate, but because the Apostles were, additionally, bishops—that they were even the first bishops of the Church although they were ordained by Peter and not by Christ. What are we to think of this view?

Let us begin by clearing up all merely verbal disagreement. If the name "apostolate "be reserved for the jurisdictional powers which were the exclusive privilege of the Apostles, it is clear, as Bellarmine says, that the bishops, not possessing these exceptional powers, would not succeed the Apostles in any proper way, in the way in which one bishop succeeds another;[838] they succeed the Apostles not inasmuch as they were Apostles, but inasmuch as they were bishops. But if by "apostolate" we mean the totality of the extraordinary and ordinary powers conferred on the Apostles, the bishops would then properly succeed the Apostles in respect of all the regular powers of the apostolate, but not in respect of the exceptional powers.

This question of vocabulary once out of the way, two points of fact remain to be cleared up, though their importance for the rest might seem secondary. The first concerns the power of order, and the second that of jurisdiction.

On the first point, relating to the power of order, St. Robert Bellarmine considers that the Apostles had to receive from Peter the fullness of the power of order; Cajetan thinks, on the contrary, that they received it immediately from Christ, e. g. at the Last Supper, and Suarez, who is of the same opinion, adds that it is hardly possible to allege any valid ground for thinking otherwise.[839] These views of Cajetan and Suarez seem to me hardly open to question, and I shall take them for granted.

On the second point, relating to the power of jurisdiction, St. Robert Bellarmine considers that the Apostles, having received the supreme ecclesiastical power from Christ, could not be other than extraordinary and delegated pastors, without any possible genuine successors as far as jurisdiction is concerned,[840] and Suarez considers similarly that the Apostles possessed a delegated general jurisdiction, without themselves having the transmissible ordinary episcopal jurisdiction;[841] but John of St. Thomas believes, on the contrary, that besides the extraordinary jurisdictional power that they had as founders, as causes of the coming into being of the Church, the Apostles had a regular jurisdictional power for her conservation, attached to their power of order, which would pass as it stood to their successors.[842] Billet, who is of the same opinion, notes that this assertion is not gratuitous but based on the idea of the bishops as successors of the Apostles (even as regards jurisdiction), and that it is inconceivable that during the period of foundation the Church was not yet in possession of her final and permanent constitution.[843] Finally, and above all, it was expressly with episcopal jurisdictional power in view that the Vatican Council declared the bishops to be successors of the Apostles.[844] We shall have to return to the meaning of this assertion and to the point that here sets Bellarmine and Suarez in opposition to other theologians.

In the Gospel texts addressed to the Apostles in view of a mission extending to all nations and to all times, it is evidently impossible not to recognize—enveloped no doubt in exceptional and temporary privileges, but nevertheless clearly formulated—the promise of the permanent, ordinary, transmissible jurisdictional powers needed to preserve the revelation unaltered down the ages, and for taking, as circumstances might dictate, all the measures required for the spiritual good of souls. "The Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you" (John xiv. 26); "It is expedient for you that I go; for if I go not, the Paraclete will not come to you: but if I go I will send him to you" (xvi. 7); "When the Spirit of Truth is come, he will teach you all truth" (xvi. 13); "Go ye into the whole world and preach the gospel to every creature" (Mark xvi. 15); "Going therefore, teach ye all nations. . . teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world" (Matt. xxviii. 19-20); if the brother who has sinned "will not hear the church, let him be to thee as the heathen and the publican. Amen I say to you, whatsoever you shall bind upon earth shall be bound also in heaven, and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth shall be loosed also in heaven" (Matt. xviii. 17-18).

How are we to understand the power of jurisdiction indicated in these great texts?

Is it only, as Bellarmine and Suarez believe, an exceptional power to found the Church, one in which the regular power for conserving her would be contained only in potency, virtually, analogically, as the flower in the stem, the effect in its cause? If we take this view, the Church would have received her definitive statute, not immediately from the hands of Christ, but from those of the Apostles.

Was it not rather, as Cajetan, John of St. Thomas, and many modern theologians believe, an exceptional power to found the Church in which the regular power of conserving her was contained expressly, formally, univocally, as a part in the whole?

In support of this second view we may bring a twofold argument:

a. All theologians admit that the Apostles possessed the plenitude of the power of order and a mission to hand it on to the bishops, their successors. But if the plenitude of the power of order is the basis of, and normally brings with it, an ordinary jurisdictional power [845] is it not natural to conclude that the Apostles, who possessed the power of order in a regular and transmissible way, possessed also an ordinary and permanent jurisdictional power in a regular and transmissible way, masked if you like under their extraordinary jurisdictional power; and that they had a mission to pass it on to their successors? The bishops then would be successors of the Apostles not only as regards their power of order but also as regards their regular power of jurisdiction.

b. If that is so, the proposition we meet with in the Fathers,[846] and which the Church makes her own,[847] according to which the bishops are the successors of the Apostles, can receive its full meaning. On the contrary, Bellarmine and Suarez are led to maintain that the Apostles possessed only the extraordinary and intransmissible jurisdiction, and did not formally have the ordinary and transmissible episcopal jurisdiction.

Hence the important consequence: according to the commoner view, which I have adopted, the Church received her definitive jurisdictional constitution immediately from the hands of Christ.

For Peter, at least, what was received immediately from the hands of Christ was indubitably a regular ordinary power, transmissible for all time; in virtue of it, on the precise point of the government of the universal Church, his relation to the other Apostles was not one of equality, but the relation of a shepherd to his flock. The Saviour made him not merely the same promises as he made to the others, but promises still more astonishing by which he was designated as the foundation stone of the Church and the keybearer in this world of the Kingdom of Heaven—"And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven" (Matt. xvi. 18-19)—and again: "Feed my sheep" (John xxi. 16-17). When He made these promises, the new powers conferred thereby were, besides the exceptional and intransmissible powers common to all the Apostles, the regular, permanent, transmissible powers in virtue of which, from the morrow of the Ascension, Peter and his successors were to be the ultimate visible foundation of the Church, the stewards of the Kingdom of Heaven, the supreme shepherds of all the sheep of Christ. The divine Word, by reason of the mysterious love that impelled Him to become incarnate to heal our wounds through this sensible contact, had willed to become Himself the Master, Teacher and Visible Head of the apostolic band, which He sent to preach the Kingdom of God; at the same stroke He had willed to give His Church its first constitution by organizing it around Himself as a single visible centre. When He withdrew His visible presence from men, He had either to replace this first organization of the Church by a new one, or else, if He wished to preserve His work as it stood and develop it along its original lines, to have recourse to the sole remaining solution: namely, to single out one of the Apostles from the rest by promising him a special assistance, powerful enough, effectual enough, to enable him to become the visible spokesman of Christ, His Vicar on earth, a permanent visible centre of organization for the universal Church. "Since Christ was about to withdraw His bodily presence from the Church, "says St. Thomas Aquinas, who here touches the root of the question, "He needed to appoint one to take His place in governing the whole Church. Wherefore, before His Ascension, He said to Peter: Feed my sheep; and before His Passion: Thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren; and to him alone He made the promise: To thee I will give the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven; whence it results that in order to safeguard the unity of the Church, the power of the keys was to descend from Peter to the others."[848] And again: "If the power of binding and loosing was given to all the Apostles in common, nevertheless a hierarchy appears in this power, and that is why it is given first to Peter alone, as to him from whom it should pass down to the others."[849]

"And it cannot be said, "continues St. Thomas, "that although He conferred this dignity on Peter, it does not pass from him to others. For it is evident that Christ so instituted His Church that it would endure to the end of the world. . . and that those He appointed to the ministry then and there, were, for the good of the Church, to communicate their powers to their successors until the end of time: especially since He says: Behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world."[850]

As the privileged and exceptional powers of the Apostles became gradually extinct, and their regular, permanent and transmissible powers alone survived, it more and more appeared that, unlike the regular power of Peter which extended over the universal Church, the regular powers of the others were destined by their nature to feed particular flocks and to be limited to local Churches: Timothy seems to rule in Ephesus (1 Tim. i. 3) and Titus in Crete (Titus i. 5).

Consequently, it was due to a provision of divine law that the regular jurisdictional power was to reside, on the one hand in the Apostles and their successors so as to make them shepherds of a particular flock; and on the other, in Peter and his successors, so as to make them supreme shepherds of the universal flock. By the imprescriptible will of Christ the hierarchy of the Church had, as regards the power of order, three degrees, bishops, priests, and ministers, but, as regards the power of jurisdiction, two: the supreme pontificate or Papacy [851] and the subordinate pontificate or episcopate. "If the power of Peter and his successors is plenary and sovereign, "wrote Leo XIII in his Letter Satis Cognitum, of the 29th June 1896, "we are not to believe that there is no other power in the Church. He who established Peter as the foundation of the Church also chose twelve of them whom also he named Apostles (Luke vi. 13). And just as the authority of Peter was to be perpetuated in the Roman Pontiff, so the ordinary power of the Apostles passes to the bishops who succeed them, so that the episcopal order is a necessary part of the internal constitution of the Church. And although their authority is neither plenary [in the sense in which that of the Pope is plenary] nor universal, nor sovereign, they are nevertheless not to be regarded as simple vicars of the Roman Pontiff, for they possess an authority proper to themselves, and are very truly called the ordinary prelates of the peoples they govern."

To define the relations between the Papacy and the episcopate—that is between the two degrees of the fourth of the great divisions of the permanent jurisdiction—we must apply, on the supernatural plane, the general principle that the good of the part and the good of the whole differ not only quantitatively according to more or less, but also qualitatively according to species.[852] Then we shall be in a position to determine with some precision the relations between the episcopal jurisdiction, ordered immediately to the good of a particular Church, and the papal jurisdiction, ordered immediately to the good of the universal Church.

The other divisions of the power of jurisdiction do not arise from the divine law but from the ordinances of ecclesiastical law. Just as, in effect, the Church has extended the power of order of deacons, of the simple ministers, to several inferior functions (sub-diaconate and Minor Orders), so she has extended the power of jurisdiction to several inferior levels. The power of the sovereign pontificate, participated up to a point, has given birth to the power of the Cardinals, of the Roman Curia, of the Legates, of the Patriarchs, of the Primates, of the Metropolitans, of the Vicars and Prefects Apostolic, of the superiors of religious and so on. If the Patriarchs of Alexandria and of Antioch had, for example, according to the old ecclesiastical discipline, the right to appoint the bishops of their provinces and to exercise other functions of a general order, this was not in virtue of powers properly belonging to their episcopal office; it was in virtue of added powers, which they possessed, in reality, as vicars of Peter. The episcopal power is shared by the Vicars-General, for example, or, in a limited way, by the simple parish priests who can preach, administer the sacraments and grant certain dispensations. But the jurisdiction proper to the Pope is never devolved otherwise than partially—for example, on the Roman Congregations; hence, although it is ordinary, that is to say attached to their office, the jurisdiction of the Roman Congregations is not a proper but a vicarious jurisdiction. So also the jurisdiction proper to the bishops is only partially devolved on the parish priests; hence, although it is ordinary, i. e. attached to their office, their jurisdiction is not a proper but a vicarious jurisdiction. These secondary divisions of the jurisdictional power are studied in Canon Law.

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The regular powers of the Apostles passed to the episcopate which, in the beginning, was sometimes unitary, sometimes collegiate.[853] Where the episcopate was unitary, that is to say in numberless Christian communities, no difficulty arises. Where the episcopate appears as collegiate, three suppositions are possible. Either we may suppose that the presbyters, who, as the Epistles of St. Paul and St. James show, presided together in certain Churches, were all true bishops—and they certainly were so at Alexandria, where they replaced a deceased bishop not only by electing, but also by consecrating his successor—and then there is no difficulty about the transmission of the hierarchic powers. Or we may suppose on the contrary that they were simple priests, one only among them being truly bishop, and then the hierarchic succession was assured by the latter. Finally, supposing that none were more than simple priests, we should have to say that it was owing to authentic itinerant bishops—such as Timothy and Titus to some extent were—that the apostolic powers came down over their heads to us. Which of these suppositions was verified in fact may be left to the decision of the historian.[854]

The episcopate early appears as the authority instituted for a particular Church, a local Church. That applies also to the collegiate episcopate [855] no less than to the unitary. The seven angels to whom St. John addressed his Apocalypse represent the bishops—not really angels, since some of them are reprimanded—as identified with their respective local Churches. Later on, towards 110 St. Ignatius of Antioch refers to the bishop as exercising the supreme power in each local Church: "Be careful to partake of one Eucharist; for there is but one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, one cup to make us one in His blood, one altar, as there is but one bishop surrounded by the priests and deacons."[856] His power, according to St. Ignatius, is plenary: "Wherever the bishop appears there also let the people be; as wherever is Jesus Christ there is the Catholic Church. Without the bishop it is not lawful either to baptize or to celebrate the Agape, agapen. But all that he shall approve will be pleasing to God; and so all that is done will be sure and valid. . . A sound maxim is to keep God in view always and the bishop. He who honours the bishop is honoured of God; to act without the bishop is to serve the devil."[857] Here, clearly, we have the episcopal power, and limited to a local Church.

The bishops, says the Code of Canon Law, in a text already cited, "are the successors of the Apostles, and, in virtue of a divine institution, they are placed at the head of particular Churches, which they rule with an ordinary power, under the authority of the Roman Pontiff".[858]

The bishop is the shepherd of the flock assigned him. It can be said that, in the widest sense, the role of a shepherd is to attend to the preservation and propagation of life within the flock itself. In a narrower sense, the shepherd has to lead the sheep in the right path.

These two roles, that of looking after the preservation and propagation of spiritual life, and that of directing the belief and action of the faithful, belong to the bishop: the first in virtue of the power of order, and the second in virtue of the power of jurisdiction.

The bishop possesses the plenitude of the power of order. Ordinarily it is he who confirms Christians in the grace of their Baptism. Above all, he alone can ordain priests, and it is by their ministry that the waters of Christ's redemption spring up day by day in every place in the midst of the flock to preserve and propagate life—that is to say, grace.

Besides the episcopal power of order, the bishop possesses the episcopal power of jurisdiction. The bishop's jurisdiction over his local Church is plenary, immediate, proper or ordinary. It can be exercised even during a vacancy of the Holy See.[859]

a. The spiritual jurisdiction of the bishop over his flock is first of all plenary. He has authority to teach in the name of Christ the speculative truth to be believed. "A bishop. . . must be able to exhort in sound doctrine and to convince the gainsayers" (Titus i. g); and by way of comment on these words of St. Paul, St. John Chrysostom writes: "If he does not do it, all is lost. He who does not know how to resist the enemy, how to bring all minds captive to the obedience of Christ, how to dispose of false reasonings, he who is unable to teach according to true doctrine, let him not occupy the throne of doctrine. Other qualities may be found among the faithful. . . but the thing that characterizes the master is the power of making his word understood."[860] He has authority moreover to lay down, in Christ's name, the speculatively practical and practically practical truth to be observed. Or, to turn to another way of dividing the jurisdictional powers, the bishop, who is the guardian of faith and morals in his own diocese, has (1) to put the faithful in mind of the great revealed teachings of the Christian faith and the great revealed imperatives of Christian morals (primary message); (2) to hand on to them the general prudential measures promulgated for the universal Church (secondary message); and (3) to exercise the canonical power himself, on his own responsibility, with a view to assuring a better acceptance of the primary message and the universal secondary message in his own diocese; so that in the things that concern the salvation of souls—in those things alone, but in all of them—he has the sole authority to legislate, to judge, and to apply sanctions.[861] And if simple parish priests are called pastors, they are known to be so only in a vicarious way (their ordinary jurisdiction derives, by a provision of ecclesiastical law, from that of the bishops), and partially (they can preach, and administer the sacraments, grant certain dispensations, but not legislate). "Properly speaking," says St. Thomas, "the bishop alone is head of the Church, he alone wears the nuptial ring of the Church, he alone possesses as of personal right the full power of dispensing the sacraments and the judicial power that the others only borrow. The priests who have the cure of souls are not true rulers but coadjutors of the bishop: the weaker we are says the bishop when consecrating them, the more we have need of such aids. And that is why it does not belong to them to administer all the sacraments."[862] Thus when the bishop, thanks to the plenitude of the power of order, has given his flock Christ and the grace of Christ, he keeps them, by the power of jurisdiction, in unity of belief and unity of action." The bishops says the Code of Canon Law, "have the right and the duty of governing their dioceses in both spiritual and temporal matters, with legislative, judicial and coercive power, to be exercised according to the rule of the sacred canons."[863] And again: "Although the bishops either singly or sitting in local Councils have no doctrinal infallibility, they are, nevertheless, under the authority of the Roman Pontiff, true teachers and masters of the faithful committed to their care."[864]

b. The bishop's jurisdiction is immediate. He can reach every member of his flock directly without having to go through any intermediary. In the thirteenth century there were some who contested this truth. In their fierce struggle against the mendicant orders, Franciscans and Dominicans, William of St. Amour and Siger of Brabant denied that jurisdiction to preach and hear confessions could be delegated to these religious. They maintained that the bishops, having given this double jurisdiction to the priests, could no longer resume it and delegate it to others, and that they themselves had no longer any right to exercise it in the parishes of their dioceses save only with the assent of the parish priests. The archbishop, they said, does not directly intervene in the suffragan dioceses save only to deputise, and it is the same with the bishop in the parishes. It was then, in defence of the mendicant orders, that St. Thomas wrote his Contra Impugnantes Dei Cultum et Religionem, in which he recalled the traditional doctrine on the jurisdiction of bishops and of parish priests: "There is no parity," he says, "between the relation of the priest to his bishop and that of the bishop to his archbishop. For the archbishop has no immediate jurisdiction over the diocesans of another bishop, save in matter specially referred to him [nisi ex appellatione]; but the bishop has immediate Jurisdiction over the parishioners of his priests, so that he can cite any one of them before him and cut him off from communion. . . The difference arises from the fact that the power of the priest, being imperfect, is under the power of the bishop both by its own nature and by the divine law. The bishop is subject to the archbishop only in virtue of a provision of the ecclesiastical law and within its limits. The priest on the contrary, who is subject to the bishop in divine law, is subject to him in all things."[865]

c. Lastly, the bishop's jurisdiction is ordinary, and properly his.[866]

With the Code of Canon law [867] we may call a jurisdiction "delegated" when it is merely lent to a person, and "ordinary" when it is affixed to an office. Ordinary jurisdiction is called "proper" when the office is exercised as by a second cause, and "vicarious" when exercised as by a mere transmitter in the name of another.[868]

The full and immediate power we have thus defined is held by bishops appointed to a diocese (residential bishops) in a proper way. The vicars and prefects apostolic, on the contrary, appointed to mission fields where as yet no hierarchy has been set up, hold it only, even when they are bishops (titular bishops, or in partibus infidelium), in a vicarious way. The residential bishops act in their own name as true second causes; the vicars and prefects apostolic act in the name of the Sovereign Pontiff as instruments and legates. Hence, while the vicarious jurisdiction of the vicars and apostolic prefects, which is of ecclesiastical law, can be made and unmade according to the will of the Sovereign Pontiff, the ordinary jurisdiction of residential bishops, which is of divine law, cannot be repealed. Christ who is "the shepherd and bishop of your souls" (1 Pet. ii. 25) wished to give His sheep dispersed through the world something more than mere itinerant missionaries, legates simply transmitting instructions from afar; he wished to give them responsible rulers, who should prepare them suitable daily nourishment, live with their life, partake of their destiny both spiritual and temporal, and share all their sufferings and joys. These are the true pastors of whom the Vatican Council speaks, whose jurisdiction carries on the permanent jurisdiction committed long ago to the Apostles by which each is to feed and rule—the particular flock assigned him, "episcopi qui positi a Spiritu sancto in apostolorum locum successerunt, tanquam veri pastores, assignatos sibi greges singuli singulos pascunt et regunt".[869] They are bound too, either in one way or in another, to give their lives for their sheep.

We may now understand what tradition means when it calls the episcopal state a state of perfection. According to St. John Chrysostom the episcopal life is more difficult, but also more perfect, than the monastic life; for all the purity which the monk preserves in the desert and which enables him to say with St. Paul: "I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. ii. 20), must be brought by the bishop into the midst of the world, so that, with all his sheep behind him, he may stem the current of the world.[870] St. Thomas takes up this noble doctrine. For him, the episcopal life demands perfection, at least initial, for its end is to bring souls to perfection; religious life demands only the desire for perfection. "Perfection is a prerequisite for the episcopal state and that is why the Lord, before committing the pastoral charge to Peter, asked him whether he loved Him more than the others. It is not a prerequisite for the religious state, since this is meant to lead souls to perfection; wherefore the Saviour did not say: If thou art perfect, go and sell all that thou hast, but: If thou wouldst be perfect. . . The reason for this difference is, according to Dionysius, that whereas perfection belongs to the bishop in an active sense, and as in one who brings others to perfection, it belongs to the monk only in a passive sense, as in one who is to be made perfect. To lead others to perfection one must be perfect, but this is not needed in order to be led to perfection."[871] We recognize here the spirit of Christianity, calling upon man to be more than himself; the episcopal state of life is above the life of many of the bishops, the sacerdotal state of life is above the life of many of the priests, the Christian state of life is above the life of many of the baptized. It is only the saints who rise to the height of their vocation; and yet they suffer more acutely than any from their own unworthiness. As for the others, it remains for them to recognize their defects, to repudiate them unceasingly in their hearts and in their lives, and to throw themselves, when they come to die, on the infinite mercy of God.

The head of the Church is the bishop; the head of the Church is Christ. Some appear to be puzzled when we confess both these truths. They find them irreconcilable, as though we gave the word "head "the same meaning in both propositions. So they offer us the choice, the bishop or Christ. And when we declare for both they talk of a bicephalous or a polycephalous Church. Scripture, however, which says that Jesus Christ is the foundation (1 Cor. iii. 11), also says that the Church is founded on the Apostles (Eph. ii. 20); it says that Christ is the Shepherd (John x. II), and the prince of shepherds (1 Pet. v. 4), and it also says that the elders are shepherds (1 Pet. V. 2). And did not Christ Himself say to the Apostles: "Whoso heareth you, heareth me" (Luke x. 16)? Where these people say "juxtaposition", all traditional Christianity along with the Scriptures says "subordination".

Consider, for example, the Epistles of St. Ignatius of Antioch. He writes to the Ephesians: "Every steward, sent by the master to govern his house, should be received as if he were the sender; wherefore the bishop should be regarded as the Lord Himself" (vi. I). And to the Magnesians: "It is the very power of God the Father that you should reverence in your bishop. Such, I believe, is the conduct of your holy priests: they have not taken advantage of his apparent youth; but full of the wisdom of God they are subject to him; or rather not to him but to the Father of Jesus Christ, the universal Bishop" (iii. I). And to the Ephesians again the beautiful words so often cited: "You ought to have but one mind with your bishop, and so indeed you have. Your venerable presbyterium, truly worthy of God, is fitted to the bishop as the strings to a harp, and so from the perfect accord of your thoughts and your charity a chorus of praise goes up to Jesus Christ. Let each of you enter this choir; then in the harmony of your hearts the very note of God will sound in your unity, and you will all sing together with one voice, through Jesus Christ, the praises of the Father; who will hear you, and by your good works will recognize you as members of His Son. Thus it is profitable for you to keep unbroken unity; and so enjoy a never-failing union with God Himself" (iv).

All is not yet said on the jurisdiction of the bishops. For besides their episcopal jurisdiction which is particular, and held as proper to themselves, the bishops, taken together and as a college, have always since the earliest days of the Church, participated in the papal jurisdiction which is universal.

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The whole jurisdictional order of a particular or local Church, explains St. Ignatius, derives from the bishop. At Antioch the bishop was Ignatius himself; at Smyrna, it was Polycarp; at Ephesus, Onesimus; at Magnesia, Damasus; at Tralles, Polybius. But these local Churches were not independent; they were parts of a whole, members of a body, portions of the universal Church, of the Katholike: "Where the bishop appears, there let the people be; as wherever is Jesus Christ, there is the Catholic Church."[872]

By thus comparing the local community gathered round its bishop with the universal Church gathered round Christ, St. Ignatius shows that the unitary episcopate, precisely because it reflects the law that gathers the universal Church round Christ, the Prince of Pastors (1 Pet. v. 4), is more deeply stamped on the ecclesiastical structure than the collegiate episcopate; that it, and it alone, answers to the need for a definitive jurisdictional organization. In point of fact the plural or collegiate episcopate, which might have answered special needs, very quickly disappeared and gave place to the unitary and monarchical form; and this change may be seen to have begun during the lifetime of St. Paul.[873]

But St. Ignatius indicates another truth at the same time. The local Church is not a whole, a collective person in the strict sense, a perfect society. It exists only as a member of the universal Church, which latter alone is strictly a whole, a collective person, a perfect supernatural society. The universal Church, the Katholike, that is the first object of the divine solicitude. This is what Jesus calls "my Church" (Matt. xvi. 18), the "one flock" (John X. 16), "my kingdom" (John xviii. 36) which is to cover all nations (Matt. xxviii. 20). It is a single people gathered up from Jews and Gentiles (Eph. ii. 14). Behind the seven particular Churches of Anatolia to whom his Apocalypse is addressed, St. John personifies the unity of her historical existence in the image of the Woman fighting against the Dragon. For she is indeed a Person, the Spouse of Christ (Eph. v. 23; Apoc. xxi. 2 and 9), His Body (Eph. i. 23). She alone has the promise of indefectibility (Matt. xvi. 18), and not the local Churches; for as to these, by reason of their laxity, their candlestick may be removed out of its place (Apoc. ii. 5).

Thus the local Church lives within the universal Church as a part within its whole, as a member in the body. In consequence a very natural induction presents itself. If it is a structural law of each local Church, a law attested in the letters of St. Ignatius, and later in the De Unitate Ecclesiae of St. Cyprian,[874] that the supernatural unity of belief and action cannot be maintained save by the grouping of all the people around the bishop who, in all that concerns jurisdiction, manifests the authority of Christ and is, as it were, a continuation of His visible and corporeal presence—if this fundamental law is valid for the part, how should it not be valid for the whole? Obviously we must transpose it from the plane of the local Church to that of the universal Church; for the universal Church is no merely material juxtaposition but the organic assembly of all the local Churches: and a much vaster, richer, and more complex unity of belief and action can be maintained by the grouping of all around a single pastor; in all that concerns jurisdiction, he is a still higher manifestation of the authority of Christ than the bishop, and, as it were, a continuation of His visible and corporeal presence.[875]

The fundamental reason for having a single visible head is that the Church was from the first gathered together by the authority of a single visible Pastor, Christ. Thus she could retain her primitive structure after His bodily presence was withdrawn, only if He placed her under the authority of a single visible head, and gave him the assistance he would need to be the age-long foundation on which she would stand, the depositary of the jurisdictional power which would open her doors or close them, and the sovereign pastor who was to rule her. Here we penetrate to the roots of the whole Christian hierarchy. The law of the Incarnation is always valid; Christ continues to save us as He began, by bodily contact with His sanctity. But, after His ascension into heaven, where He lives under His own appearances, He could maintain a sensible corporeal contact with us only by means of appearances not His own. So, just as He continues to make contact with us by His substance, under the appearances of bread and wine, so He continues to make contact with us by His action, under the appearances of the hierarchy. To be more precise still, He continues to make contact by exercising among us His external and sensible authority as Prince of Pastors; no longer directly in Himself as once He did, but through the ministry of a vicar, of a supreme visible pastor sufficiently assisted by Him to be, in all that concerns the jurisdictional order, the embodiment of His authority and the continuation of His sensible and corporeal presence.[876]

That is why Jesus, having come to the regions of Caesarea Philippi, said to that disciple who, speaking for the rest, had just confessed Him for the first time to be the Son of the living God,[877] that to him, to Simon son of John, an office would be entrusted; that he was to be the basis of the work that He would build in the world and would call His Church, not to be overthrown by all the powers of hell; that he should keep the keys that open and close here below the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven; that he should bind and loose consciences in the name of heaven: "And I say unto thee that thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth shall be bound also in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed also in heaven" (Matt. xvi. 18-19).

That again is why, later on, having appeared to the disciples on the shores of the Lake of Tiberias, and having eaten with them a little bread and fish, Jesus, turning again to Peter, appointed him supreme pastor of His sheep and of His lambs: "When they had eaten Jesus saith to Simon Peter: Simon, son of John, lovest thou me more than these? He saith to him: Yea Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. He said to him: Feed my lambs. He saith to him again: Simon, son of John, lovest thou me? He saith to him: Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. He saith to him: Feed my lambs. He saith to him the third time: Simon, son of John, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved because he had said to him the third time, Lovest thou me? And he said to him: Lord, thou knowest all things: thou knowest that I love thee. He said to him: Feed my sheep" (John xxi. 15-17). We must either throw doubt on the Gospel or else admit that Peter is the foundation and supreme pastor of the universal Church for as long as it shall endure upon earth.[878]

What do we see on passing from the Gospels to the Acts of the Apostles, from the regime which preceded the Ascension to that which followed it? In the earlier regime, one Person only counts, one around whom the Church is built up, the Person of Jesus. In the later, another appears at the Church's centre, he to whom the promises were made, the person of Peter. It is he and none other who rises up "in the midst of the brethren "to pass sentence on Judas in their name, and to prompt them to choose a successor (i. 15-22). It is he who explains to the Jews the meaning of the life and death of Jesus, and of the events of Pentecost (ii. 14-36). It is he who exhorts them to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit through repentance and Baptism (ii. 38-41). It is he, Peter, and not John, who heals the lame beggar at the gate of the Temple (iii. 6). He explains to the people how all the Messianic prophecies have been fulfilled in Jesus (iii. 24). He asserts before the Elders of Israel that apart from Christ there is no salvation (iv. 12). He discovers the double lie of Ananias and Sapphira (v. 1-11). His mere shadow heals the sick who lie in wait for him (v. 15-16). In the name of the Apostles he proclaims that God must be obeyed rather than men (v. 29). He deals with Simon the Magician (viii. 20-24). He is warned by the Lord in a vision that the time has come for him to open the doors of the Church to the Gentiles (x and xi). He takes up the defence of Paul and Barnabas against those who reproached them for relying on the grace of the Lord Jesus alone and not on circumcision (xv. 7-11). And if Paul, in order to convince the Galatians of the excellence of his gospel and the absolute confidence it deserves, boasts of having resisted Peter himself at Antioch, on account of conduct that seemed to defer to the Judaizers (Gal. ii. 11-14), that is surely an indirect testimony to the prestige that surrounded Peter in the primitive Church. Peter's pre-eminence could have been recognized from the beginning only because it was founded on the Gospel promise.

Jesus, who announced the pre-eminence of Peter, also foretold the coming of the Holy Spirit. The book of the Acts of the Apostles shows us the simultaneous fulfilment of these two promises. The age of the Holy Spirit, which is to be the last age of the world, will also be that of the primacy of Peter. Can we discover the reason for this economy? It has been remarked that we can divide the world's history into three great epochs according to the three divine Persons, provided that we recognize that the age of the Spirit began with the Apostles, whereas the heresies have postponed the great outpouring of the Spirit that Jesus promised till long after Pentecost. But if we distinguish three successive ages it is not therefore to be thought that the reign of the Father was to disappear before the reign of the Son began, nor that of the Son before that of the Spirit. How are we to reckon these three ages?

With some of the ancients we can say [879] that the age of the Father preceded the Fall. Then God governed His people without visible intermediary and the Church was not yet constituted.

The age of the Son began after the Fall and continued till the death of Jesus: God then decided to gather His people round a Mediator, and the Church, which is the Body of Christ, came to birth. But first of all the Mediator has to be hoped for, awaited: and so we have the long preparatory period of the age of the Son which we have called the first regime of the Church.[880] Then the Mediator appeared: God governed His people through the human nature of Christ coming among us visibly to effect our redemption and to organize His Church. It was the epoch par excellence of the age of the Son. It was very short. It prepared the imminent coming of the Spirit.

The last age of the world is the age of the Spirit. God governs His people through the human nature of Christ, who has now entered into the spiritualizing light of glory,[881] and preserves contact with us through the hierarchy. This is the present regime of the Church. It is important to note that the second age came to add new benefits to the first: the providential action by which God had begun to sanctify the world did not grow weaker; on the contrary, it was intensified, when the Mediator appeared. And the third age in its turn will add new benefits to the second: "It is expedient for you that I go: for if I go not, the Paraclete will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you" (John xvi. 7).[882] The Holy Spirit is the supreme mystical personality of the Church; He continues to rule her in the third and last age of the world, through the heart and mind of this Christ whom God "has raised from the dead and set on his right hand in the heavenly places" to make Him Head over all the Church (Eph. i. 20, 22). The supreme unity of the Holy Spirit, as also the unity of the glorified Christ, both hidden from our eyes, must be externally expressed, so that their single voice may be audible to the senses of men. And they could not have chosen a simpler instrument, a clearer "sacrament" of their single and sovereign but invisible jurisdiction, than by investing with the supreme visible jurisdiction a single head who should gather all the Church around himself. Surely we have here the reason why the Gospel, which announces the age of the Spirit, the last age of the world, tells of the pre-eminence of Peter and his successors. We have here also the reason why the Acts of the Apostles, which relates the inauguration of the age of the Spirit, relates also the inauguration of the primacy of Peter and his successors. In a word, the age of the Spirit does not suppress the law of salvation by corporeal contact with Christ, and what has once been given us is not to be withdrawn: "Behold I am with you all days to the consummation of the world. "But, for immediate contact with the passible Body of Christ, it substitutes a mediate contact with His "spiritual Body", which is in heaven under its proper appearances and becomes accessible to us only under the veil of borrowed appearances.

The particular Churches are portions of the universal Church. They live only when they share the rhythm of the universal Church. When isolated or separated from her, their condition rapidly changes and they fall under an alien law. The regular pulse of life slows down, narcosis sets in, even decomposition. But the jurisdiction of their local bishops benefits them in that these Churches are kept in close union with the supreme source of jurisdiction in the universal Church. The bishops exercise their jurisdiction in dependence on that of Peter.

Christ, as we have said, bestowed on the Apostles immediately, besides certain exceptional and temporary powers of which they were the sole depositaries, the regular and permanent powers of which they were the first depositaries. However, although it was conferred on them immediately by Christ, the regular jurisdiction proper to each of the Apostles, which they would hand on to their successors, did not belong to all of them in the same degree or by the same right. Not in the same degree, for in Peter it was sovereign and universal while in the others it was subordinated and particular. Not by the same right, for in Peter it dwelt as in a fountainhead, in the others as something derived. It was by a special favour, as we have seen, that Christ Himself bestowed on the Apostles a jurisdictional power which, normally, was to reach them through Peter as intermediary.[883] The consequence of this doctrine is that as time went on the jurisdictional power would devolve differently on the Pope and on the other bishops. On the Pope it is bestowed immediately by Christ as soon as he is validly elected.[884] To the bishops it is given mediately, through the Pope: the Saviour, says Cajetan, sends down His power first on the head of the Church, and thence to the rest of the body.[885] When a Pope is created the electors merely designate the person, and it is Christ who then confers on him immediately his dignity and power. But, when the Sovereign Pontiff, either of himself or through others, invests bishops, the proper jurisdiction they receive does not come to them directly from God, it comes directly from the Sovereign Pontiff to whom Christ gives it in a plenary manner, and from whom it comes down to the bishops: somewhat after the manner of the life-pulse that begins in the heart and is transmitted thence to the other organs. And that is why the Sovereign Pontiff must not be conceived as merely designating bishops who then receive directly from Christ their proper and ordinary authority; but as himself conferring the episcopal authority, having first received it from Christ in an eminent form.[886]

The Encyclical Satis Cognitum of the 29th June 1896 confirms all this. Two passages are cited from St. Leo the Great on the eminent dignity of the Apostle Peter: "The divine condescension. . . if it willed that the other princes [of the Church] should have certain privileges in common with him, has never given save through him what it has not refused to the others [nunquam nisi per ipsum dedit quidquid aliis non negavit] [887] and "Although he received many things for himself alone, nothing was granted to any other without his participation [cum multa solus acceperit, nihil in quemquam sine ipsius participatione transierit]". Then Pope Leo XIII attaches to this principle the common doctrine according to which schism, in itself, deprives the bishops of all jurisdiction.[888] "Whence we see clearly that the bishops would lose the right and the power to govern if they willfully separated themselves from Peter or his successors."

However, to say that the bishops' jurisdiction comes down to them from the Sovereign Pontiff is not to say that it comes down to them by the mere will of the latter or in virtue of a free canonical provision. The power to bind and to loose committed to Peter alone, the supreme pastor of the Church, as in its source—"Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven" (Matt. xvi. 19)—is, by a constitutional provision, to come down to the secondary pastors—"Whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven" (Matt. xviii. 18). The power of these last is doubtless derived, but they hold it by the express will of Christ. Their jurisdiction, although fully subordinated to that of the Sovereign Pontiff, belongs to them nevertheless by divine law, not merely by ecclesiastical law; in an ordinary and proper way, not in a delegated and vicarious way; as an indispensable degree of the hierarchy, not as an institution revocable by the Sovereign Pontiff. It is therefore impossible to imagine the Papacy without the episcopate; both institutions will endure as long as the Church endures, that is to say as long as the world endures.

Thus the jurisdiction of the Pope and the jurisdiction proper to the bishops are bound up with each other. They are simply two forms, the one supreme and extending over the universal Church, the other dependent and limited to a local Church, of one same power coming from Christ, ordered to the eternal salvation of souls, and, of its nature, spiritual. Interfere with one, and whether you want to or not you interfere with the other. Obviously, if with the Presbyterians you reject the jurisdictional power of the bishops, you reject also the jurisdictional power of the supreme bishop, of the Sovereign Pontiff. It is rather less evident perhaps, but none the less certain, that if you reject the supreme jurisdiction of the Pope, with the Anglican or Oriental Episcopalians, you attack the indivisible scheme laid down by Jesus, apparent in Scripture and stamped on the life of the primitive Church, by which the bishop in the local Church is as the Pope in the universal Church. But if it is true, as we have admitted, that the bishops receive their proper and ordinary jurisdiction from the Pope, it becomes possible to give its full significance to the truth announced by the Vatican Council when, having asserted the primacy of the Roman Pontiff, it adds: "Far from being an obstacle to the ordinary and immediate jurisdiction by which the bishops established by the Holy Spirit as successors of the Apostles feed and rule, as true pastors, the flocks respectively committed to them, the power of the Sovereign Pontiff recognizes, confirms and defends it, according to the words of Pope St. Gregory the Great to the Bishop of Alexandria: My honour is the honour of the universal Church. My honour is the strength and prosperity of my brothers. Then am I truly honoured when the honour that belongs to each Of them by right is not refused them."[889]

The subordination of the jurisdictional power proper to bishops will explain the limitations that sometimes affect its exercise. It can, in fact, happen that what is needed for the general good of the Church as a whole, runs counter—up to a point, or for a certain time—to the immediate good of a local Church. Here again the universal outweighs the particular, the interest of the whole body that of one of the members, the glory of the Kingdom of God in the world, its glory in a diocese or province. Hence in certain circumstances the supreme spiritual power can partially restrain, in view of a greater good, not indeed the episcopal power itself, but its exercise. At the Council of Trent, for example, certain fully orthodox Bohemian bishops considered, that in their own dioceses they would be better able to contend with the Hussite heresy by re-establishing the custom of communion in both kinds for the laity; but the Council, having in view the needs of the whole

Church, adopted a different opinion. Similarly, the Pope can for the general good reserve to himself the granting of certain dispensations, the infliction or removal of certain sanctions, or the exemption of certain religious orders from episcopal jurisdiction and so on. The tendency of this general overseeing will naturally vary with the times; sometimes making for greater centralization, sometimes for less. But the essential characters of the hierarchy can in no case be changed.

The infinite power of the Father sustains the power of Christ the eternal Pastor to whom all things have been committed in heaven and on earth; Christ's power sustains the power of Peter, the universal pastor of all the sheep; and this in its turn sustains on the visible plane, the power of the bishops, each the pastor of the particular flock committed to him. There we have the apostolicity of jurisdiction, a law announced in Scripture and stamped on the origins of Christianity. It is a law of hierarchy, of subordination.

Christ is the foundation, and none other can be laid (1 Cor. iii. 11), and Peter too, representing Christ, is the foundation on which the Church rests. Christ carries the Key of David, and none other can open or shut (Apoc. iii. 7), and Peter also has the keys that open and shut the Kingdom of Heaven. Christ is the Good Shepherd (John x), and Peter also is the shepherd of the same sheep and the same lambs.

The Pope is the head and ruler of the Church, but only on the visible plane, in the jurisdictional order, and in so far as he is assisted by Christ during the limited duration of his pontificate; on account of all these restrictions the Church cannot call herself the body of Peter, the body of the Pope.[890] The Son of Man, hidden in the glory of the Spirit, is Head and Ruler of the Church for all time, in an excellent and incomparable manner, bestowing on her not only truth, but also grace: hence the Church is truly His Body. And God Himself, in a still higher sense, is Head and Chief at once of Christ and of the Church: "The head of Christ is God" (1 Cor. xi. 3); and the Church is truly the Mystical Body of the divine Word.[891]

To say that Peter, who was a man and could be only in one place at a time, was chosen for head of a Church which is divine and universal, seems to involve a union of contradictory attributes. But in Christianity, this saying is neither isolated nor strange. It has a familiar ring. It formulates a great mystery, but no new mystery; it is but a particular application of the astonishing mystery of which Christianity consists: God's will to envelop divine things in weakness, and to enclose infinite things in space and time. He began by demanding faith in the revelation that the fullness of the Godhead dwelt in a true Man—corporeally, and that the Creator of heaven and earth was born on our planet as a baby. Reconsider for a moment those two verses of St. Luke (i. 26-27) in which, to announce the descent of eternity into time, immensity into space, and spiritual liberty into the constraints of matter, every kind of geographical and genealogical detail has been intentionally accumulated. Later on came other words declaring that His Flesh would be true meat and His Blood true drink: words uttered to unite, but seeming to some to be intolerable, and thus dividing. Lastly, as if to keep in step with all this, He proposed another mystery, inferior no doubt but analogous, and chose, we will not say for His successor—that would be blasphemous—but for His Vicar, that is to say for authorized spokesman of His teaching and for depositary of an hitherto unexampled power, a frail man whose inadequacy He dragged to light, and whose denials He published in advance.[892] The Incarnation, the Eucharist, the primacy of Peter—these are the ordered manifestations, and as it were the successive levels, of one and the same revelation. There is a wisdom of the world that turns away from it at once. But there is also a wisdom that begins by being Christian, which begins to believe in the Incarnation, and then soon, when faced with the mystery of the Eucharist, or the mystery of the primacy of Peter, becomes disconcerted and goes no farther. It seems to forget that God is God, that He passes through matter without being diminished, rather turning it to His purposes and transfiguring it. When it comes face to face with integral and authentic Christianity it is quite ready to abuse it as materialism and paganism. Sometimes, by an obvious blunder, it opposes to belief in the Eucharist the words of Jesus on "the flesh which profiteth nothing"; it opposes the Western Church as Peter's to the Eastern Church as John's, as if the Evangelist par excellence of the Word made flesh (John i. 14), of a new birth by water and the Spirit (iii. 5), of the communication of life by the eating of Jesus' Flesh (vi. 58) could have revealed to the world a Christianity that dispensed with the Incarnation, with sacramentality, and with the visible primacy.

The jurisdictional power is "proper" both in the Sovereign Pontiff and the bishops. It descends from the Sovereign Pontiff, who possesses it as its source, to the bishops, who possess it as a proper power no doubt, but derivatively.

At the stage of the sovereign pontificate as at the stage of the episcopate, the jurisdiction is wholly spiritual, wholly ordered to the same supernatural salvation of souls. So that whether it be found at the one stage or the other, it keeps its profound generic unity.

However, it appears in the bishops and in the Pontiff under forms that are clearly distinct. The jurisdiction proper to the Pope is universal. The jurisdiction proper to the bishops is particular. These two forms do not differ only in a quantitative way, according to more or less. They differ also in a qualitative way, in species. The universal Church is not simply a sum-total of particular Churches; and the jurisdictional order of the universal Church is not simply a sum-total of particular orders.[893]

If therefore each bishop, in virtue of his episcopate, possesses properly only a particular jurisdiction, it follows that the sum of the bishops possess, in virtue of their episcopate alone, only a sum of particular jurisdictions; which sum in no wise amounts to a universal jurisdiction. Supposing even, as Cajetan does, that after the death of a Pope all the bishops in the world meet and agree in a universal synod, there will then be a quantitative and cumulative jurisdictional universality; but, between that and the qualitative and essential universality of the supreme pastor there remains an abyss.[894] No decision, for example, belonging to the proper power of the Pope could be taken, no truth implicitly revealed could be explicitly defined.[895] And the dissident Graeco-Russian Churches, whatever fragments of authentic jurisdiction the Church in fact allows them and they still retain, seem to admit, in their own way, the justice of this doctrine by officially condemning themselves to dogmatic stagnation.

We must not think of the Church, when the Pope is dead, as possessing the papal power in act, in a state of diffusion, so that she herself can delegate it to the next Pope in whom it will be re-condensed and made definite. When the Pope dies the Church is widowed, and, in respect of the visible universal jurisdiction, she is truly acephalous.[896] But she is not acephalous as are the schismatic Churches, nor like a body on the way to decomposition. Christ directs her from heaven. There is no one left then on earth who can visibly exercise the supreme spiritual jurisdiction in His name, and, in consequence, any new manifestations of the general life of the Church are prevented. But, though slowed down, the pulse of life has not left the Church; she possesses the power of the Papacy in potency, in the sense that Christ, who has willed her always to depend on a visible pastor, has given her power to designate the man to whom He will Himself commit the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, as once He committed them to Peter.[897]

I have mentioned the proper jurisdiction of the bishops. It is distinct from the jurisdiction of the Supreme Pastor. The first is ordered to the good of a particular Church, the second to the good of the universal Church. And we know that the good of a whole and the good of a part differ qualitatively as to species, and not merely quantitatively according to more or less. However, the jurisdiction proper to the bishops derives from the jurisdiction of the Sovereign Pontiff. It is contained in the supreme jurisdiction as the lesser perfection is contained in the greater. It can therefore add nothing to it intensively; it can do no more than diffuse and refract its virtue. The power proper to the bishops and the power of the Sovereign Pontiff are indeed many powers, but they do not together make up a higher power: "Papa cum residuo Ecclesiae non est majoris potestatis jurisdictionis spiritualis quam ipse solus. . . Papa cum Ecclesia reliqua non facit majus in potestate, sed plures potestates", writes Cajetan.[898] In another field we should say similarly that the creation of the universe adds nothing to the divine perfection, that it does no more than refract it; so that after creation there is no more "being", more perfection, than there was before, although there are more "beings", more existing subjects.

But, besides this particular jurisdiction which they possess as properly theirs, the bishops, taken as a college, in virtue of their close union with the Sovereign Pontiff, participate in the universal jurisdiction proper to the Pontiff. And just as we distinguish, in the case, for instance, of a harp, the beauty of the sound it gives out at the touch of the strings, from the spiritual beauty lent it by the mind of the artist; or, in the case of a human arm, its mechanical from its intelligent activity; or in the case of Socrates' disciples or Napoleon's marshals, their own personal qualities from the added powers they gain from the genius of their master; so we must distinguish in the bishops the power of particular jurisdiction which finds in each of them its proper subject, from the power of universal jurisdiction which finds in them a supplementary subject. I have said that the particular jurisdiction of the bishops is distinct from the universal jurisdiction of the Pope; it is superadded to it, not so as to make up more power, "majus in potestate", but many powers, "plures potestates". On the other hand, the collegiate jurisdiction of the bishops is not numerically added to the universal jurisdiction, but is one with it.

In other words, the power to rule the universal Church resides first of all in the Sovereign Pontiff, then in the episcopal college united with the Pontiff; and it can be exercised either singly by the Sovereign Pontiff, or jointly by the Pontiff and the episcopal college: the power of the Sovereign Pontiff singly and that of the Sovereign Pontiff united with the episcopal college constituting not two powers adequately distinct, but one sole supreme power—considered on the one hand in the head of the Church teaching, in whom it resides in its wholeness and as in its source, and on the other hand as at once in the head and in the body of the Church teaching, to which it is communicated and in which it finds its plenary and integral subject.[899]

The great words in which Jesus laid upon His disciples the duty of preaching the Gospel to every creature were too pregnant with meaning to communicate all of it from the outset, and time alone could bring out distinctly the multiple powers they conferred. Apart from the transapostolic power promised to Peter personally, they assured the Apostles of: (1) the extraordinary powers of founding the Church; (2) the ordinary and transmissible powers of ruling her (a) by collegiate participation in the universal jurisdiction of the Sovereign Pontiff (b) by exercising a particular jurisdiction over the local Churches, as these appear in the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles and the Apocalypse.

The second power, the regular, permanent, collegiate power to rule the universal Church, is not solely, but certainly comprised in Jesus' promise to all the Apostles: "Whatsoever you shall bind upon earth shall be bound also in heaven, and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth shall be loosed also in heaven" (Matt. xviii. 18). These words had previously been addressed to Peter (Matt. xvi. 19). They were addressed now to the whole apostolic college. What does that mean if not that the apostolic college was to share in Peter's power, that it was to share with Peter the supreme jurisdiction over the universal Church, and that this supreme jurisdiction was to be given first to Peter and to his successors, so as to devolve next on the Apostles and on their successors? [900]

The same thing emerges from Luke xxii. 31-32: "Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you that he may sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not: and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren. "Perseverance in the faith was therefore to find its principle in Peter and thence to be communicated to the others. And so it was to be down the ages.[901]

Lastly, the Acts of the Apostles show us the whole of the apostolic college at work, and solemnly assembled in the first Council. For the sake of the universal Church they have to fix the discipline governing the reception of converts from paganism. The decision is taken not by Peter alone, but simultaneously by all: "For it hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us. . ." (Acts xv. 28). These are the words of the Apostles and the presbyters.

Thus, the episcopate taken alone—for example during a vacancy of the Holy See, even though all its members are assembled and all are unanimous—and on the other hand this same episcopate in actual union with the Sovereign Pontiff to share in the government of the universal Church, represent two specifically distinct forms of the jurisdictional power. In the first the bishops perform only acts of particular jurisdiction. In the second they exercise, conjointly with the Pope, the acts of the supreme jurisdiction. They are not, as Melchior Cano remarks, mere theologian-consultors.[902] They have authority to decide. They declare the speculative truth to be believed and the practical truth to be observed by the whole Church.

The episcopate—the orthodox and legitimate episcopate of course—has made frequent pronouncements in the past on questions concerning the life of the universal Church; on many occasions, for example, it has defined the faith and imposed a uniform discipline. The episcopate owed its oecumenical prestige throughout history, not to its own proper power but to the virtue of the See of Peter, whose authority, either tacit or express, never ceased to sustain it, lift it above itself, enlarge it and enlighten it. This consideration, whose scriptural basis we have seen, provides the key to the misconception into which those have fallen who, neglecting the distinction between what the episcopate has of itself and what it has from the See of Peter, have thought it possible to set up an opposition between the power of the See of Peter and the power of oecumenical Councils.

The oecumenical activity of the episcopate in union with the actually reigning Pope, can have (the difference is merely accidental) a double character: regular when the bishops remain dispersed over the world, each in his own Church; and exceptional, when the bishops are assembled in Council.

The bishops scattered over the world rule their local Churches. They do more. Because they are closely united to the Supreme Pastor and act with his tacit or expressed consent, they contribute to the preserving and explaining of the deposit of revealed truth all over the world, to the maintaining and formulating of the rules of the common discipline, and, in a word, to the ruling of even the universal Church. If, for example, there is question of the declaratory power, the episcopal body, in so far as accordant with the Sovereign Pontiff, becomes an organ by which the ordinary and daily teaching of the Church can be given to the world with true and absolute infallibility. The divine and Catholic faith, according to the Vatican Council, embraces all truths contained in the word of God, whether written or traditional, and proposed to our faith by the Church as divinely revealed, whether by way of a solemn judgment or by the ordinary and universal magisterium;[903] and Pius IX adds precisely that the exercise of the ordinary magisterium may be found in dispersion all over the earth: "Divine faith is not to be restricted to matters expressly defined by oecumenical Councils, or the Roman Pontiffs, or the Apostolic See: but extends also to matters set forth as divinely revealed by the ordinary magisterium of the whole Church dispersed throughout the world".[904] If now there is question of the canonical power, the episcopal body, inasmuch as it is united to the Sovereign Pontiff, will lay down in each epoch and each civilization, both doctrinal points arising in connection with the revealed deposit, and authentic moral and social duties; and it will establish customary usage.

But by what signs are we to recognize the true episcopal body?

The answer belongs to the treatise De Locis Theologicis. The most important sign is communion with the Sovereign Pontiff—since Peter was made perpetual head of the apostolic college.

Will a majority of bishops be a sufficient assurance? It is clear in any case that the majority as such is far from being a criterion of truth: "Scimus frequenter usuvenire ut major pars vincat meliorem, scimus non ea semper esse optima quae placent pluribus", says Cano.[905] Even in the case of a majority of bishops, good theologians think that they can go astray, contradict the Sovereign Pontiff, and even persevere in error. Thus Cano, and also Benedict XIV: "From the fact that the bishops assembled in General Council are true judges, it is not to be concluded that the Roman Pontiff is bound to decide in conformity with the majority of the judges and to approve their doctrine. For, as Melchior Cano remarks, if all the bishops are true judges, the Lord Christ has nevertheless committed the final judgment to His Vicar on earth and it is he who is charged with the duty of recalling all who waver, whether few or many, to the true faith: I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not, and thou, being converted, confirm—not just this one and then that, but whether a minority or a majority—confirm thy brethren. The four hundred prophets of Achab did not prevail against the single prophet Micheas; so also the Arian Council of Rimini did not prevail against Vincent of Capua and those few bishops who remained faithful to the Bishop of Rome."[906] Clearly enough, in the canon of orthodoxy of St. Vincent of Lerins, "In the Catholic Church herself we must be careful to hold what has been believed everywhere, always and by all", the last clause, quod ab omnibus, must be understood only of those who make up the flock of Christ under the guardianship of Peter. It remains that, since the Church of Christ is always to endure, and since there is no Church of Christ without an episcopal body, it is absurd to imagine that the Pope can stand alone over against the bishops. Certain theologians even consider that Christ's promise to the episcopal body "Behold I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world", imply that the majority of this body will never desert the Sovereign Pontiff: "It is impossible that a majority of the bishops having jurisdiction in the Church, that is to say of the Catholic bishops, should teach anything which the Sovereign Pontiff does not teach either expressly or at least tacitly. It cannot therefore fall into error and break with the Holy See."[907] As for the future, we may recognize that if this eventuality does not appear "impossible" it seems at any rate highly unlikely.

The day-to-day relations of the episcopal body dispersed through the world with its head the Sovereign Pontiff, are now facilitated by the development of the means of communication; our modern techniques, like the old Roman roads, being no less serviceable for the expansion of the Kingdom of God than for that of the powers of evil.

However, the unity of the teaching Church is most effectively asserted when, exceptional circumstances demanding it, the episcopal body assembles in Council; above all in General or Oecumenical Council.[908]

The law ruling the relations between the Sovereign Pontiff and the bishops, between the head and the members, is the same that will rule the proceedings of the Oecumenical Council. The rightful authority for calling them to council is the Sovereign Pontiff. Supposing the Council's inception to be irregular, it would not become a valid Council until authorised by the Sovereign Pontiff, whether expressly, or at any rate tacitly. Its decisions will not be decisive unless issued in actual collaboration with the Sovereign Pontiff, or unless ultimately ratified by him.

It follows that between the ordinary jurisdiction of a dispersed magisterium and the solemn jurisdiction of an Oecumenical Council, there are but accidental differences. But they are worth noting.

The first new element, where a Council is concerned, is a more solemn supplication to draw down on the Church a superabundant outpouring of the divine wisdom. Jesus Himself spoke of the virtue of collective prayer: "Again I say to you, that if two of you shall consent upon earth concerning anything whatsoever they shall ask, it shall be done to them by my Father who is in heaven. For where there are two or three gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (Matt. xviii. 19-20).[909] That is addressed to all Christians, not the faithful alone but also their pastors. It is there to sustain them on their journey towards the truth and to welcome them in the truth at each halting-place.

Next, we shall find a better and more sustained effort to prepare and arrange the speculative and practical statements to be defined. The Church here does not act as a pure instrument but as a responsible second cause entrusted with initiatives, and she can, in consequence, propose matters for infallible sanctions that vary in extension, complexity and subtlety. It would, for example, have been difficult for the Sovereign Pontiff to prepare by his own sole efforts such an organic whole of propositions, such a considerable body of doctrine, as that which was submitted for infallible definition at the Council of Trent.

There is, thirdly, a more evident and impressive collaboration when the final resolutions have to be promulgated and an unanimous and simultaneous profession of faith made by the whole teaching body of the Church. Their example is eminently calculated to win the whole-hearted adhesion of the faithful. And it is, finally, the pledge of a more speedy promulgation, a more even and exact application of measures taken for the higher welfare of the Church and the world.

Abundant fruits, said the Vatican Council, flow from Oecumenical Councils: "There it is that the sacred dogmas of religion are defined with the greatest depth, expressed with the greatest breadth, that ecclesiastical discipline is restored and more firmly established. . . that head and members are knit together and the vigour of the whole Mystical Body of Christ renewed. . . that our zeal is nourished to extend, even were it with our blood, the reign of Christ over all the earth."[910] More than fourteen centuries earlier, in 451, the Fathers of the Council of Chalcedon had written to Pope St. Leo the Great: "You have come to us, you have been the interpreter for all of us of the voice of the Blessed Peter, and have procured for all of us the blessing of his faith. And so, having profited from you as from our head in good things, we have been able to manifest the heritage of the truth to the children of the Church, not each elaborating a doctrine for himself in secret, but making confession of faith in one Spirit, in one impulsion, in one thought. And we formed a single choir, making our delights, as at a royal banquet, of the spiritual food which Christ, by your letters, had prepared for His guests. And we seemed to see the heavenly Spouse dwelling in our midst: for where two or three are gathered together in His name, there, He says, is He in the midst of them. How close then He must have been to the five hundred and twenty bishops who preferred the knowledge and confession of the faith of Christ to the quiet of their homes, and whom you, through those who took your place [the two legates of the Pope to Chalcedon] led with benignancy as the head leads his members. As for the faithful princes, they presided for the sake of decorum [ad ornatum, pros eukosmian like Zorobabel beside Joshua [I Esdras. iii. 2], and desirous, in his footsteps, to build up the dogmatic edifice of the Church like another Jerusalem."[911]

Whether assembled in council or dispersed through the world the bishops hold their supreme and oecumenical jurisdiction from the Sovereign Pontiff. In either case they are subject to the same ordinance. They do not come to the council to inject any law of numbers, of proportional representation, of majorities, into the government of the Church. Whether they are primates, archbishops or simple bishops, whether they hold the smallest or the largest dioceses, they sit in council with complete parity of rights. They are not mandatories of populations. They are Christ's bishops, Catholic bishops. If there are many Christian countries in Asia or in America, and consequently many Asiatic or American bishops at an Oecumenical Council, it may happen—but merely accidentally—that disproportionate attention is given to the ecclesiastical affairs of Asia or America. What is certain in any case is that these questions will be settled, not by the help of a temporal light but by that of a divine light. It is not impossible for the law of numbers to play its part in drawing up the list of problems to be considered, and thus to intervene in the order of material causality. That, too, will be merely indirectly, and without power to prevail even in this sphere; for true bishops will always be Catholic before being of such and such a culture or colour, and the Sovereign Pontiff will well know how to recognize the general interests of the Church. But the law of numbers, though it may affect the list of problems, will never dictate the answer to these problems; it will never come into play in the order of formal causality.

Neither will prince or emperor give the law. They may receive all the honours. But you cannot judge the spirit of a true Oecumenical Council by the importance of the honours voted to the potentate who made it possible, or even perhaps convoked it or presided. I do not think anyone would maintain that the Fathers of Nicaea, the Roman See, or the Church herself, were spiritually governed by Constantine; or that if the Emperor had chosen to turn Arian the Council and the whole Church would have followed suit.[912]

The great orthodox Councils appear on the stage of history as confronting errors in faith and deviations in morals with the most striking reminders, the most solemn proclamations that the Church could make of the imprescriptible exigencies of the Gospel. They were not indispensable for the purpose of dissipating heresies. "Was a Council required, "writes St. Augustine, "to condemn the manifest error of the Pelagians? As if no heresy had ever been condemned without resort to a Council! Very few indeed, on the contrary, are the heresies in which recourse to such a thing was needed, whereas those which were condemned on the very spot where they appeared and notified at once to all the world as noxious, are incomparably more numerous. But Pelagian pride which exalts itself so haughtily against God that it would glory no longer in God but in its own free-will, is ambitious into the bargain to assemble East and West in council."[913] However, at certain moments when all was in doubt and confusion was spreading everywhere—even perhaps, as in the Arian conflict, in the hearts of the bishops themselves—the Church felt the need for gathering her forces and counting her children: "When they judged it useful, especially in times of grave perturbations and calamities for our holy religion and for civil society, the Roman Pontiffs, "says Pius IX, "have not neglected to convoke General Councils and to confer with the bishops of the whole Catholic world, whom the Holy Spirit has chosen to rule the Church of God, to concentrate energies, to decide prudently and wisely on all that can help to define the dogmas of the faith, to unmask new errors, to defend, illustrate and develop Catholic doctrine, to preserve and tighten the bonds of ecclesiastical discipline, to strengthen the relaxed morals of peoples."[914] It was the East that took the initiative in assembling General Councils [915] but the practice spread over the whole Church. The Church of the Roman Pontiffs is still today, as in the past, the Church of the holy Oecumenical Councils.[916]

Our Lord said: "Simon, son of John, feed my sheep. "He did not say: feed your sheep. They were always to be Christ's. They are not to change masters. "I am the good Shepherd, "He says again, "and I know my sheep and my sheep know me. . . The shepherd calls his own sheep by name and leads them out" (John x). It is therefore Christ's sheep, not his own, that Simon Peter is to feed. It is in Christ's name, not his own, that he is to lead them out. That is the point to be recalled when one hears it said that Peter is the Vicar of Jesus Christ; since a vicarious power, as we all know, is a power exercised in the name of another.

Peter is the Vicar of Christ; not of the Church or of Christians. Jurisdiction does not come up from the Church to him, but comes down from him to the Church. Christ gives it directly and immediately to him, not first to the Church that she may hand it over to him.[917] And furthermore, He gave it him prior to any choice of a constitution by the Church.

Certain theologians at the end of the Middle Ages, who wanted to put the Council above the Pope, contended that under the natural law every perfect society can choose, control and depose its own head. That is true of civil society, and, they went on to say, it should be true of the religious society, since it is a perfect society and since grace does not destroy nature but rather confirms it.[918]

They reason rightly of civil society. This latter arises neither out of an optional contract like a sports club or an art society; nor from a simple act of nature like a community of bees or ants. Neither artificialism nor physicism is valid here. It comes from a consensus of wills in conformity with the fundamental inclinations of human nature. Just as a profound inclination prompts men to marriage, although the domestic society ordered to the transmission of life is founded freely, so, all due proportions being observed, a profound inclination prompts men to live in society, although the political society ordered to the development of humanity, to the perfecting of the properly human values, material and moral, and, in a word, to the common good, is nevertheless freely constituted. The political community is willed in the last resort by God: first because He wishes the full development of the higher human values and of this "common good "which is "more divine "than that of each particular individual; and next because He urges men towards this common good by an inner impulse preceding all deliberation, an impulse which it will be for them to bring freely to fruition. But if the political community is willed by God, its management and conduct is left to human freedom. And God, who chooses the social form of life for man, makes no pronouncement in favour of any particular form of social life, for any particular political regime. The community, to be sure, must needs adopt a monarchical, or aristocratic or democratic or some other kind of regime; but there is no divine law that favours one rather than another; it remains free to choose its own fundamental constitution and even to change it when evident social necessity demands—for example when, the ancien regime being destroyed, the new one was sufficiently consolidated to be irreversible without grave disorders. If therefore, on the one hand, God Himself is the Author of society, and if, on the other, He leaves it the right to choose its own constitution and, on due occasion, to modify it, then it is true to say (1) that the "prince", the government, is the vicegerent or representative of the multitude (gerit vicem, gerit personam multitudinis,[919] (2) that he holds his authority from God without doubt, but indirectly, and thanks to the multitude which could have chosen, and could still on due occasion choose, another regime, and (3) that if the political community is of natural, that is to say of divine law, the various forms it can take—royal, aristocratic, republican—are due (even in the case of the Hebrew people) to none but human law, the jus gentium, the law of nations.

But if civil society chooses its own constitution and thereby decides the condition of its head, the Church is in a different position. "To understand her regime, "says Cajetan, "you have only to look at her beginnings. She did not emerge from any collectivity or community whatever. She was formed around Jesus Christ her Head, her Ruler, from whom all her life, perfection and power came to her. You have not chosen me, He said, but I have chosen you. Thus from the birth of the Church her constitution clearly appears. Authority does not reside in the community; it never passes, as in the civil order, from the community to one or to several heads. By its very nature, and from the very outset, it resides in a single recognizable prince. Since this prince is the Lord Jesus, who is to live and to reign yesterday, today, and for ever, it results that in natural right it was for Him and not for the ecclesiastical community to choose for Himself a vicar, whose role it would not be to represent the ecclesiastical community, born to obey not to command; but to represent a Prince, the natural Lord of this community. That, then, was what Our Lord Himself deigned to do when, having risen, before ascending to heaven, He chose, as St. John tells us, the Apostle Peter alone for His Vicar. And just as in natural right the Prince of the Church does not draw His authority from the Church, so neither does His Vicar, who depends upon Him and not upon the Church."[920] We conclude: (1) that the Pope is the Vicar of Christ, not of the Church; (2) that he holds his authority directly from God, the Church's election merely going to designate a successor for Peter; (3) that of all existing governments the Papacy is the sole government by divine right, the only one which is sovereign in the strict sense [921]

The jurisdiction of the Pope is truly pastoral, truly episcopal; vere episcopalis est.[922] It is, in the universal Church, what the jurisdiction of the bishop is in a local Church: plenary, immediate, proper or ordinary.

a. First, it is plenary. Christ asks the Pope to feed all the sheep of His fold, to keep them in peace and protect them, to gather them together and rule them throughout the universe, and to lead them into the ways of truth both absolute and prudential, both speculative and practical. And for those of Christ's sheep who are not of the sheepfold, Christ would have them enter it so that there may be one flock and one shepherd (John x. 16); He died, as Caiaphas prophesied "for the nation, and not only for the nation but to gather together in one the children of God that were dispersed" (xi. 51-52).

The plenary jurisdiction of the bishops, taken simply as bishops, is restricted to a particular Church; it is exercised in dependence on that of the Pope; and it even derives from that of the Pope. But the plenary jurisdiction of the Vicar of Christ extends in act to the universal Church and in potency to the whole universe, omni creaturae; it is exercised in dependence on Christ alone and the Spirit; and it derives uniquely from Christ and from the Spirit. It is therefore plenary in a much larger sense.

The whole jurisdictional power is found first in the Pope alone. From him it passes over to the bishops. So that if the Pope in his own person, in his own inner life "quoad personam et merita" is certainly a part of the universal Church, yet the power of jurisdiction deposited in him is not a part added to other parts so as to constitute the Church's total jurisdiction. The power of the Pope is the whole power of the universal Church; the others are its participations, and designed to support it.[923]

And yet, continues Cajetan, all this power is given to the Pope for no other end than the service of the Church. She is greater than he, not in authority, but in worth and nobility. The Papacy is for the Church, not the Church for the Papacy: the end is always a nobler thing than the means. Hence the Pope calls himself the "Servant of the servants of God", and, so doing, he stands in the truth, "et sic est in veritate".[924]

b. The spiritual jurisdiction of the Pope is, furthermore, immediate. It is exercised on the whole body of the Church, and yet it can be exercised immediately over each one of the faithful, and is not bound to go through any intermediary whatsoever. In the thirteenth century, William of St. Amour and Siger of Brabant maintained that a bishop, in various important matters, has to go through his parish priests to reach his lay subjects, over whom he has therefore only a mediate jurisdiction; and similarly later on it was asserted that the Pope has to go through the bishops to reach the faithful, over whom again he has only mediate jurisdiction. But just as the virtue of the first cause is participated by the second causes without losing any of its privileges, so the jurisdiction of the Sovereign Pontiff is participated by the bishops without itself being in any way alienated or diminished; and Peter, who received the power to feed all the sheep of Christ without distinction, retains the right to feed each one of them directly.

c. Finally, the Pope's spiritual jurisdiction is ordinary and belongs to him in a proper way. It is not a "delegated" jurisdiction, that is to say one attached to a particular person for the time being, but an "ordinary" jurisdiction, that is, permanently attached to an office.

Ordinary jurisdiction is called "proper "in one who exercises an office in his own name; and "vicarious "in one who does so in the name of another. What is to be said of the jurisdiction of the Pope?

If we compare the Pope, visible on earth, with Christ, hidden in heaven, the Pope's power is, in divine law, "vicarious"; for he exercises it in the name of Christ. But if we ask where, in this world, the supreme spiritual jurisdiction resides, the answer will be, to complete the previous reply, that it resides, by "proper" title, first and in itself in the Pope alone; and then secondarily and by participation, in the episcopal college united to the Pope as body to head: and that it can reside "vicariously", but only in a partial measure as determined by Canon Law, in other subjects, such as the Roman Congregations.

The spiritual power of the Pope is undoubtedly unique and unparalleled. But it becomes unintelligible only when we cease to look at it in the light of the Christian mystery. I have said that if it be true that the fullness of the Godhead could dwell, as from a determinate moment of history, in a human nature like our own, it is no new mystery, but only an extension of the old one, which presents us with the Body and Blood of Jesus under the appearances of a little bread and wine, and with His external power to teach faith and morals behind the voice of a Galilean fisherman, a man from the ordinary run of men.

The Church has no power to change the form of her government, nor to control the destiny of him who, once validly elected, is no vicar of hers but Vicar of Christ. Consequently she has no power to punish or depose her head. She is born to obey. This truth may seem hard, but the best theologians have never attenuated it; rather, they have accentuated it. To make us aware of all that we ought to be ready to suffer for the Church, of how much heroism she can ask of us, they have proposed extreme cases. They have supposed a Pope who shall scandalise the Church by the gravest sins; they have supposed him to be incorrigible; and then they ask whether the Church can depose him. Their answer is, no. For no one on earth can touch the Pope.

In his Summa de Ecclesia (lib. II, cap. cvi) Cardinal Turrecremata pointed out several remedies for such a calamity: respectful admonitions, direct resistance to bad acts, and so forth. All these could, of course, prove useless.

There remains a supreme resource, never useless, terrible sometimes as death, as secret as love. This is prayer, the resource of the saints. "See that I do not have to complain of you to Jesus crucified, "wrote Catherine of Siena to Pope Gregory XI; "there is none other to whom I can appeal, since you have no superiors on earth. "And again, a little earlier in the same letter: "Take care, as you value your life, that you commit no negligence."

To the bad theologians who thought that the Church would be defenceless if not allowed to depose a vicious Pope, Cardinal Cajetan, who had seen the reign of Alexander VI, had but one answer: he reminded them of the power of prayer. For never has it such power as in such crises. We must always have recourse to prayer, as one of the purest weapons a Christian can use. But here it is not only a "common" means, i. e. one to be used along with others, it is the "proper" means, the proper instrument for the use of the Church in distress. "If you tell me that prayer is but a common remedy to be used against all the ills that afflict us, and that for the special evil that troubles us here we need a proper remedy—since every effect comes of a proper cause, not merely from general causes—I reply, in a general way, that the highest causes, although they play the part of common causes in respect of lower effects, play in fact the part of proper causes in respect of higher effects. And that is why prayer, which is to be put among the highest of supernatural second causes, is only a common cause of lower effects; but it is a proper cause and the proper remedy for the highest effects, such as would be—since it is matter reserved for God—the removal from this world of a still believing but incorrigible Pope."[925] The same author sufficiently indicates the sort of prayer to be offered when he reproaches his contemporaries for their manner of reciting the Divine Office and of celebrating Mass. Here he shows both the clarity of his genius and the charity of his heart. "The divine Wisdom, "he says, "who in the natural order governs lower things through the higher and these last through the highest second causes, acts in a similar way in the supernatural order, to which belong grace and faith, and the Church based on the faith. On the other hand, causes are proportionate to their effects, the highest causes having the highest effects. If then, on the one hand, the means available to human effort [providentia humana], even if super-elevated by the authority of the Church, are a force inferior to prayer, appointed as the highest of second causes by God, to whom all creatures, corporeal or spiritual, are subject; and if, on the other hand, a remedy against a bad but still believing Pope [926] is among the highest effects in the Church, it follows that God, in His wisdom, must have given the Church for remedy against a bad Pope, not now any of these merely human means which may avail for the rest of the Church, but prayer alone. And can the prayer of the Church, when she perseveringly asks things needful for her salvation, be any less efficacious than merely human means? Is not the fervent prayer of an individual soul who asks such things for himself, already efficacious and infallible? [927] If then the salvation of the Church demands that such and such a Pope should be removed, then undoubtedly the prayer we have mentioned will remove him. And if it be not necessary, why question the goodness of the Lord, who refuses what we wish and gives us what we ought to prefer?. . . But alas, it seems that we are come to the days announced by the Son of Man when He asked whether, on His return, He should find faith on the earth. For the promises relating to the highest and most efficacious of second causes are held to be of nothing worth. They say that we must depose a bad Pope by human means; that one cannot be content with resort to prayer and to divine providence alone! But why do they say that, if not because they prefer human means to the efficacy of prayer, because the animal man does not perceive the things of God, because they have learnt to trust in man, not in the Lord, and to put their hope in the flesh? So, if a Pope hardened in evil ways appears, his subordinates, without leaving their own vices, content themselves with daily murmurings against the evil regime; they do not seek to avail themselves, save perhaps in a dream and without faith, of the remedy of prayer; so that what Scripture predicts comes about by their fault, namely that it is due to the sins of the people that a hypocrite reigns over them, holy in respect of his office, but a devil at heart. . . We have become blind to the point of refusing to pray as we ought, while yet desiring the fruit of prayer; of refusing to sow, while still wanting to reap. Let us not call ourselves Christians any longer! Or if we do, let us turn to Christ; and the Pope, were he frantic, furious, tyrannical, a render, dilapidator and corrupter of the Church, would be overcome. But if we do not know how to overcome ourselves, what right have we to complain of being unable to break through the evils that surround us by prayers that not only fail to rise through our roofs, but do not even mount as far as our heads? And the worst of all is this: God of old upbraided His people for honouring Him with their lips while their hearts were far from Him; but in the days of the revelation of grace, God is not even honoured with lips, for nothing is less intelligible than the recitation of the divine office, nothing said more quickly than the Mass; the time given to these seems long, too long, but time enough is found for play, business and worldly pleasures, and for loitering over them endlessly."[928]

Thus, even though his private life should be grievously sinful, the Pope cannot be deposed. Immense scandal might be given, but his doctrinal infallibility would be unaffected. And it remains true that no temptation is superhuman. God, who is faithful, will suffer none who seeks Him to be tempted beyond his strength, and to each He offers inwardly the help that will enable him to overcome (cf. 1 Cor. x. 13).

On this subject I shall first set out an intermediate thesis which seems to me to be preferable. Then I shall mention two divergent and extreme positions, both represented by theologians of repute.

If it be expressly revealed that the Church is to be visibly based on Peter and his successors till the end of time, it is ipso facto revealed that the line of Peter's successors will be recognizable till the end of time; and it is also implicitly revealed that Peter, by an exceptional privilege which he held till his death, could determine the conditions that would make the line of his succession recognizable. Whence arises a twofold question: what steps did he take to make it so; and how are we to know, with complete certainty, the significance of these steps?

1. What did Peter do to point out the line of his successors in advance?

He fixed his See at Rome, thus setting up a permanent bond between the pastoral power over the Church of Rome, and the pastoral power over the universal Church; so that those who should succeed him as Bishops of Rome would succeed him in the supreme apostolic authority. In other words, that Peter indissolubly wedded the Roman episcopate and the supreme apostolic authority appears in the light of a dogmatic fact. We believe it not only in virtue of a human certitude based on historical documents, but we believe it with divine faith. And if we are asked how it is contained in the revealed deposit we reply that it is a concrete determination of the Gospel revelation that the Church is to rest till the end of time on the visible and recognizable line of the successors of Peter.[929]

2. But how are we to know that Peter, when linking up the Roman and the universal episcopates, really willed the bond to be necessary and indissoluble?

The only enlightenment which we have to show us the real nature of it is that which Christ provides as He aids the magisterium of His Church. If it be asked whether this link is one of fact only—destined to be broken one day—or one of right, the second alternative is (it seems to me) better authorized, more in conformity with the declarations of the magisterium, and thus should be retained—with certain precisions which I shall indicate.

The Church's divine certitude that the Bishop of Rome is her universal Pastor has left numerous traces all down the Christian ages—in the measure indeed in which chance allows the survival of the documents of the past, but clearly enough for historians to grasp. Later on it received repeated solemn expression, for example in the Bull Unam Sanctam (1302): It is necessary for salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff; at the Council of Florence (1439): The Roman Pontiff is the successor of Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, he is the head of the whole Church, the Father and Teacher of all Christians; at the Vatican Council: [930] By the will of Christ, and therefore by divine law, the Blessed Peter, to whom was committed the primacy of jurisdiction over the universal Church, will always have a successor; the Roman Pontiff is this successor.[931]

If the fact of the conjunction of the universal pastorate with that of Rome is dogmatic, and to be held with divine faith, the explanation of the fact raises several questions. With what kind of necessity was the conjunction effected by Peter? What is its intimate nature? To what extent will it be permanent? The answers of the theologians to these three questions will enable us to see clearly what is meant by saying that the Church of Christ is Roman.

1. Supposing that Peter had lived, as he did at the outset, without fixing his Chair, his See, in any local Church: then his successor, in the same way, would not necessarily have had a Chair in any particular Church. Suppose that he had died at Antioch after having (as Origen, Eusebius, St. Jerome and St. John Chrysostom report) set up his Chair there: then his successor would have been Bishop of Antioch and the Church of Christ would have been Antiochene. Suppose once more that after transferring his Chair from Antioch to Rome he had taken it away from Rome to fix it elsewhere—that he had ceased, I do not say to have his residence at Rome, but his Chair, that is to say the episcopal See to which he would attach the sovereign pontificate: then his successor would have been Bishop elsewhere, at Alexandria, say, or Jerusalem, and the Church of Christ would have been Alexandrine or Jerusalemite.[932] If we look at the metaphysical possibilities alone, the supreme jurisdiction might either have been unattached to any particular See or might have been attached to some See other than that of Rome. The union effected by Peter was therefore due to no metaphysical necessity but to an unforeseeable decree of Providence.

2. In point of fact Peter united the universal episcopate to the Roman. How is the union to be conceived?

The episcopate of the universal Church and the episcopate of the local Church at Rome must not be imagined as two powers which, although coexisting in the same subject, would yet be actually distinct. For the local episcopate of Rome is absorbed into that of the universal Church somewhat as the king's capital town is into his kingdom; so that the Pope has but one episcopate. This episcopate is exercised simultaneously, on the one hand over the universal Church in which it is the generator of all the other particular and subordinate episcopates—the jurisdiction of all the bishops emanates, as we have said, from that of the Pope—and on the other hand over the particular Church of Rome, in which it is, on the contrary, exclusive of every particular episcopate: Rome can have no other Bishop than the Pope. Undoubtedly, if Peter had not united them, the universal pontificate and the Roman pontificate would have counted as two distinct pontificates: but