A striking corrective to the traditional Catholic view that the Pope is the rock on which the church is built is contained in Leo XIV’s sermon at his Inauguration Mass, last week.
The sermon appears to contradict the title of the occasion: “Mass for the Inauguration of the Petrine Ministry of the Supreme Pontiff“, as it describes a much humbler picture of what this Bishop of Rome, and successor to Peter is about.
“The ministry of Peter is distinguished precisely by this self-sacrificing love, because the Church of Rome presides in charity and its true authority is the charity of Christ,” Leo preached, in a sermon believed to have been written by himself. ” It is never a question of capturing others by force, by religious propaganda or by means of power. Instead, it is always and only a question of loving as Jesus did.
“The Apostle Peter himself tells us that Jesus “is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, and has become the cornerstone” (Acts 4:11). Moreover, if the rock is Christ, Peter must shepherd the flock without ever yielding to the temptation to be an autocrat, lording it over those entrusted to him (cf. 1 Pet 5:3). On the contrary, he is called to serve the faith of his brothers and sisters, and to walk alongside them, for all of us are “living stones” (1 Pet 2:5), called through our baptism to build God’s house in fraternal communion, in the harmony of the Spirit, in the coexistence of diversity. In the words of Saint Augustine: “The Church consists of all those who are in harmony with their brothers and sisters and who love their neighbour” (Serm. 359,9).”
Christ is the rock, the cornerstone. Not Peter. The Catholic church still has beliefs that protestants will reject, but this description of the role of the Bishop of Rome, or pope, is a revolutionary.
Obadiah hopes that it takes hold. For this vision is truly a picture of rome as Primus inter pares, – the latin phrase often used by Anglicans to describe the Archbishop of Canterbury, a role with little international power, – to mean having perhaps an honourary first place, with respect, but no power over other Christians.
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As Psalm 62 reminds us:
Truly my soul finds rest in God;
my salvation comes from him.
Truly he is my rock and my salvation;
he is my fortress, I will never be shaken.
Leo is echoing Francis. UK Christian journo Jules Gomes identified a document isssued last year: “According to an ecumenical study document, The Bishop of Rome, published last November by the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity during the reign of Pope Francis, ‘“It is never forgotten that the first stone on which the Church is built is Christ himself.’
“The document warns Catholics against using “an anachronistic projection of all doctrinal and institutional developments concerning papal ministry into the ‘Petrine texts,’” particularly Matthew 16:18 (“You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church”).
“From the moment they appear in patristic literature at the beginning of the third century, the interpretations of Matthew 16:17–19 are multiple,” the document states in exploring how “theological dialogues have challenged confessional readings of the New Testament.”
“The authors agree with the Eastern Orthodox Churches that the pope did not enjoy universal jurisdiction in the first thousand years of Christianity, and quote Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI): ‘As far as the doctrine of the primacy is concerned, Rome must not require more of the East than was formulated and lived during the first millennium.’”
But Obadiah notes there is a real tension in the The Bishop of Rome document about the first Vatican Council, 1869-1870, which proclaimed the doctrine of Papal Infallibility.
As Obadiah reads The Bishop of Rome, the document is trying to walk that back. It quotes a Catholic Lutheran symposium, the Farfa Sabina Group, that responded to John Paul II’s call to find ways to restructure the papacy to make it ecumentically acceptable. “That Council had no
intention of either denying or rejecting the tradition of the first
millennium, to wit: the church as network of mutually
communicating churches. Although it may certainly be premature to
state that the divergences concerning the papal ministry have been
overcome, the new view of Vatican I allows Lutherans and others to
arrive at a new assessment of the conciliar definitions.”
Pope Leo, it seems to Obadiah seems to be pushing things along.
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