Presbyterians Travel to The Vatican in Search of Unity With Roman Catholics

In a historic three-day meeting, Presbyterian and Roman Catholic officials inched closer to more visible unity between their churches.

The formal talks were sometimes simple and direct, sometimes as labyrinthine as the streets of this ancient city.

At their conclusion, on March 22, the 15-member delegation from the Presbyterian Church (USA) and five staff members from the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity issued a joint statement in which they pledged to continue working toward a theological agreement on three major issues:

* The doctrine of justification
* Mutual recognition of each other's baptisms
* A joint study of Reformation-era documents in which the churches condemned each other, culminating in a declaration "that they no longer reflect the reality of our views of each other."

The conversations here - concluding with a private audience with Pope John Paul II - followed the first-ever formal meeting between Vatican and PC(USA) representatives in Louisville in December.

That meeting was held at the suggestion of the Pope, who in a 1995 papal encyclical titled Ut Unum Sint invited other "Christian communities" to join him in a search for "a new way of exercising the primacy" in the cause of greater universal Christian unity. (The doctrine of primacy holds that the Pope is the supreme authority over all of Christendom, and that his teachings are "infallible.")

During the December meeting, the Presbyterian delegation - appointed by the General Assembly's Committee on Ecumenical Relations - presented a 24-page paper, The Successor to Peter, for discussion. The document was written primarily by theology professors Anna Case-Winters of McCormick Theological Seminary and Lewis Mudge of San Francisco Theological Seminary.

That paper underscored the Reformed understanding that authority is centered in Jesus Christ, Scripture, and the historic confessions of the church, in that order.

During the follow-up meeting here, participants reviewed that paper and a four-page response from the Pontifical Council.

Authority Of The Pope Is "Main Obstacle"

Both sides agreed, in the words of President Walter Cardinal Kasper of the Pontifical Council - who between December and March succeeded the retired Edwin Cardinal Cassidy - that "the primacy of the Bishop of Rome (the Pope) is the main obstacle to ecumenical relationships."

Kasper said the doctrine of papal supremacy grew out of the "crisis" of the mid- to late-19th century "when the church was threatened from all sides - secularization of society and fragmentation of the church." Under normal circumstances, he said, "more local autonomy is possible - the Pope is free to act or not to act."

Joe Small, the PC(USA)'s coordinator for theology and worship, agreed with that assessment. "The conversation is not advanced if we think of papal primacy only as an ecclesial instance of absolute monarchy," he wrote in a companion paper to The Successor to Peter.

Small said the Pope historically has served as a focal point for the communion of local churches; as the preserver of church tradition; and as "a primary guarantor of unity in the face of the centrifugal forces of regionalism and theological particularism."

Monsignor John Radano, an American on the Pontifical Council staff, noted that John Paul II has said that "the Petrine ministry (papacy) is only in service to the Gospel" - what Radano called "an evangelical approach."

A heightened understanding of authority as pastoral care for the whole church "can be a way forward," Mudge saide. "To view the task as producing unity, not uniformity, is our hope."

Kasper agreed. "Primacy is foremost spiritual," he said. "The Pope has to recognize and defend diversity of expressions (of spiritual leadership)."

Ministry of oversight: bishops, or councils?

While the nature and authority of the Pope is a key sticking point for
Presbyterians, Kasper said "the main and fundamental problem between us is the understanding and concept of the church." For Catholics, he said, "episcope and episcopacy (in which church authority and governance are vested in ordained bishops) are essential elements of the church."

Small noted that "jurisdictional (governing) claims are at the heart of Protestant objections to the papacy." Structural ecumenical dialogues - such as the Consultation on Church Union - have foundered over the issue of governance by councils (elected bodies of ministers and elders) vs. governance by bishops.

"The Presbyterian Church (USA) has a ministry of oversight, but ours is not lodged in a bishop," Winters said, referring to the governing-body system of oversight.

Eugene Turner, recently retired ecumenical officer for the Office of the General Assembly, was even more pointed. "We hope you hear," he told Kasper, "that our episcope (ministry of oversight) is just as strong, but it is not lodged in individuals. Is ours equally valid to you?"

"There are important episcopal elements outside the Catholic Church," Kasper responded. "We acknowledge a similar function in your communion, but not an equivalent one."

In future dialogues, said Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the General Assembly, the Catholic Church "has to help our church rediscover the New Testament concept of episcope and episcopacy. Our history has been to set episcope against conciliar understandings of oversight."

"The question we could ask is how we might conceive of papal primacy within a genuinely conciliar ecclesiology?" Small said.

Kasper noted that, since Vatican II (in the early 1900s), "though bishops still have the final say, the Catholic Church has adopted several conciliar models, such as a Synod of Bishops."

Praising such moves, Robina Winbush, the PC(USA)'s ecumenical officer, said, "The more we both emphasize the collegial role of bishops, the more progress we will make."

Next steps

While no future meetings were scheduled, both sides agreed on "next steps" in the rapprochement between the churches:

* The PC(USA) delegation will ask the upcoming 213th General Assembly to urge the World Alliance of Reformed Churches to meet with Catholic and Lutheran representatives this November to broaden the Catholic-Lutheran agreement on the doctrine of justification to include the Reformed family of churches. Kasper said he'd like to see such talks expanded to address the doctrines of sanctification and glorification as well, "because those doctrines are stronger in the Reformed tradition than in the Lutheran."

* The Pontifical Council urged the PC(USA) to meet with the U.S. Conference of Bishops to develop an agreement on full recognition of each other's baptisms. In a switch of policy, Kasper insisted that Presbyterians conduct such conversations with U.S. Catholics rather than with the Vatican.

* Both sides agreed to seek "an appropriate means" for studying Reformation-era documents in which the churches condemned each other. Kirkpatrick and Kasper acknowledged that amending such historical documents is probably out of the question; instead they will formally declare "that (such documents) no longer reflect the reality of our views of each other."

* In the most convoluted discussion of the meeting, the PC(USA) agreed to seek a declaration from the upcoming General Assembly that the Presbyterian and Catholic churches "are in real but incomplete communion." The PC(USA) delegation originally proposed a declaration of "in correspondence with" (the traditional constitutional language) the Catholic Church, but the Pontifical Council professed incomprehension of the term and suggested "real but incomplete communion" as terminology that will make sense to Catholics.

Kasper expressed "deep gratitude" for the visit of the PC(USA) delegation and called The Successor to Peter "an impressive statement . from brothers and sisters in Christ who stand in the Reformed tradition and with whom we share a profound degree of unity."


by Jerry L. Van Marter, PCUSA News