The Reform of the Papacy: The Costly Call to Christian Unity (Ut Unum Sint) - Hardcover

Quinn, John R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0824518268 ISBN 13: 9780824518264

Publisher: Crossroad Pub Co, 1999

Synopsis

A prominent American archbishop examines the Pope's ministry of unity in the contemporary Church, offering proposals for reform in the way in which the papal primacy is exercised.

About this title

About the Author

John R. Quinn served as Archbishop of San Francisco and is a past president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishop.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION

This book is one bishop's attempt to respond to Pope John Paul II's request for bishops to engage with him in a patient and fraternal dialog about the papacy. Specifically, the pope initiates a dialog aimed at the reform of the papacy whereby it could become more a "service of love recognized by all concernced." He is clearly aware, and says so explicitly, that the papal ministry as it now exists constitutes something of an obstacle to Christian unity. It is with a great desire to remove the obstacle that the pope asks for a dialog on the papacy.

In a sense, then, this book is not my idea. It is the pope himself who has opened the question of the papacy in his landmark encyclical on Christian unity. It is the pope himself who has asked bishops to respond. In chapter I, I treat more fully what the pope says in that encyclical.

This book is written at what Karl Rahner has called the first level of reflection. It is not the work of a professional theologian who has spent his life in study, research and teaching. While it makes use of theology and history, it is more the reflections of a bishop which may need to be corrected, modified, augmented or confirmed by the work of theologians and scholars, as well as by my brother bishops.

It should be obvious that I profess the Church's ever new and ever ancient faith concerning the primacy of Peter and his successors. Without that faith this book would never have been written. At the same time, I also recognize the accepted Catholic teaching about the development of doctrine, nowhere more fully or compellingly set forth than in Cardinal Newman's "An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine." The petrine office, like all other doctrines of the faith, has undergone development. Among these doctrines are the mystery of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the creed, the canon of Scripture - and the primacy of the pope as Successor of Peter. If doctrinal development is not understood and assumed as an established principle in the Church, Ut unum sint and my effort to respond to it could never have been written.

The pope has raised a question. The dignity of his office, his personal integrity and the crucial nature of the question demand an honest response. To speak of new ways of exercising the primacy is necessarily to criticize past and present ways of its exercise as inadequate. Honesty can be painful. My goal is "to speak the truth in love". I state once again what I have said before: "I speak completely in fidelity to the Church, One and Catholic. Indeed, in the Second Vatican Council many cardinals and bishops said much of what I have said here..."

I could not have written this book alone. Here I want to express my gratitude to the Catholic, Orthdox and Anglican scholars, to the bishops and Catholic lay men and women who have read the manuscript and made valued and positive contributions to the work and directed me to sources I am not likely otherwise to have discovered.

My final thought. This book, like most others, will provoke both positive and negative reactions. I am grateful for both because it is my desire to emulate the example of Thomas Aquinas who, following the custom of the great theologians of his time, submited all his work to "better judgment," salvo meliori iudicio.

Augustine, too, experienced praise and censure for his work. In the third chapter of his great work on the Trinity, he provides me words with which to introduce this work:

The reader who takes up my book and says, 'This is not said well'...attacks my language not my faith...Indeed, it could perhaps have been done better. Even so, no human being has ever spoken in such a way that he could be understood on every point by everyone. If a reader should not like my book, he should set it aside or even throw it away...It is helpful, then, to have diverse writers but not diverse faith.

About this edition

• Publisher: Crossroad Pub Co
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0824518268
• ISBN 13: 9780824518264
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 189