2023-11-01 00:05:21
In the following article published in Timone, Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller reflects on the importance of the apostolic succession and the Magisterium of the Church as authentic interpreters of the Word of God. He underlines that the Church must remain faithful to Christ and his truth, since only in Christ is present the fullness of grace and truth. Müller states that the Church must not adapt to cultural or social trends, but rather serve the world through its sacramental mission:
The apostolic succession remains the bond of the necessary historical identity with the Church of the Apostles, with the primacy role of the successor of Peter.
Without Christ there is no Church
A Church that does not believe in Christ is no longer the Church of Christ. Bishops who betray their divine mission so as not to be accused of “proselytism” forget the purpose and reason for their very existence. In fact, the bishops appointed by the Holy Spirit to “paste the Church of God” (Acts 20.28) are none other than the legitimate successors of the Apostles (see I Letter of Clement, 42-44), to whom the risen Lord said : “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them: “Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you forgive, they will be forgiven; whoever you hold them back, they will be held back”” (Jn 20,21 ff.). Bishops and theologians who have forgotten that only in Christ have we been given the fullness of grace and truth should rediscover conversion in Paul’s words: “If I were still pleasing to men, I would not be a servant of Christ. I tell you, brothers, that the gospel which I have preached is not of human origin, for I neither received it nor learned it from men, but by revelation from Jesus Christ” (Gal 1:10 ff.).
Only because Christ revealed himself as “the way, the truth and the life” (Jn 14.6), the “Church of the living God” can be the “pillar and foundation of the truth” in the Holy Spirit (1 Tim 3.15). The “truth of the Gospel” (Gal 2:14), which Paul was forced to defend even against Peter, is not the expression of the changing spirit of the times according to Hegel’s theory of dialectical-procedural development. The truth that the Church proclaims and bears witness to is the person and work of Christ. In Him the unsurpassable newness of God and the fullness of his truth have reached the world irreversibly (see Irenaeus of Lyons, Adversus haereses, IV, 34.1). This is why believers in Christ are taught: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. Do not be carried away by complicated and strange doctrines” (Heb 13:8-9).
Bishops in the apostolic succession as servants of the truth of Christ
Sacred Scripture and apostolic tradition do not present the changing human views on God and the world, on which bishops and theologians must constantly keep themselves “up to date”. It is rather through these means that Christ is announced, who speaks to us with the “divine word of preaching” (Is 2:13) and who communicates his salvation to every believer through the seven sacraments of the Holy Church.
For this reason the Second Vatican Council teaches: “Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture constitute a single sacred deposit of the word of God, entrusted to the Church […]. But the office of authentically interpreting the written or transmitted word of God has been entrusted solely to the living Magisterium of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. This magisterium, naturally, does not place itself above the Word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been entrusted to it, by divine order and with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, listening to it with piety, guarding it with accuracy and expounding it faithfully, and from this single deposit of faith he draws what he proposes as the truth revealed by God to be believed” (Dei Verbum, 10).
The Second Vatican Council therefore does not start from a sociological-immanent determination of the Church in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, because the Pope and the bishops cannot respond to the loss of social meaning of the Church with a modernist adaptation, changing its mission for the salvation of the world in Christ and trying to justify its existence with a religious-social contribution to intra-worldly and immanentist goals and ideologies (such as the great reset of the atheo-philanthropic elite, eco-religion and the anti-rational woke movement which diametrically contradicts the natural and revealed anthropology). The Church is not a purely human organization that must demonstrate its usefulness to the world. Its essence and its mission are based on its sacramentality, which derives from the divine-human unity of Christ and makes it visible in the world (Ecclesia-Christus praesens).
For this reason, Vatican II states that the Church “is compared by notable analogy to the mystery of the incarnate Word, because just as the assumed nature serves the divine Word as a living instrument of salvation inextricably united with him, so the social structure of the Church serves the Holy Spirit , which vivifies her, for the increase of her body (see Eph 4:16).
This is the only Church of Christ, which we confess in the Creed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic, and which our Savior, after his resurrection, entrusted to Peter to guard (see John 21:17), he entrusted its diffusion and government to him and the other Apostles (see Mt 28,18ff), and has erected it perpetually as a pillar and foundation of the truth (see 1 Tim 3,15). This Church, constituted and organized in this world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, governed by the successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him” (Lumen gentium, 8). The apostolic succession of bishops is a constitutive element of the being and mission of the visible Church and guarantees its necessary historical identity with the Church of the Apostles.
Irenaeus of Lyon, officially proclaimed Doctor of the Church by Pope Francis, in his debate with the Gnostics developed its authentic meaning in broad terms, precisely by relating the Holy Scripture, the apostolic tradition and the magisterium of the bishops in the legitimate official succession of the Apostles. “For this reason the priests of the Church must be obeyed. They have the succession of the Apostles, as we have already shown, and have received, according to the Father’s approval, the charism of truth together with the episcopal succession. The others, however, who distance themselves from the original succession and gather everywhere, are to be considered suspects, heretics with perverse ideas, or schismatics full of pride and self-satisfaction, or hypocrites who seek only personal interest and vainglory in their actions . All these deviate from the truth.
Heretics offer profane fire before the altar of God, that is, foreign doctrines: the fire of heaven will consume them, as it did with Nadab and Abihu (Lev 10,1-2). Those who oppose the truth and incite others against the Church of God, the fissure of the earth will swallow them up and they will remain in hell, like all those who surrounded Korah, Dathan and Abiron (Num 16,33). Those who tear and separate the unity of the Church will receive from God the same punishment as Jeroboam (1 Kings 14,10-16)” (Against heretics, VM, 26.2).
Ithe definitive criterion of apostolic succession in the Roman primacy
The individual local Churches form the one Catholic Church of God in the communion of the Episcopal Churches. The local Church of Rome is one among many local Churches, but with the particularity that its apostolic foundation through the verbi et sanguinis martyrdom of the apostles Peter and Paul gives it primacy in the community of all the episcopal Churches in overall testimony and in unity of life of the Catholic communion. By virtue of this potentior principalitatis every local Church must be in agreement with the Roman Church (Adversus haereses, III, 3, 3).
Since the episcopal college is at the service of the unity of the Church, it itself must be responsible for the principle of its own unity, but this task can only be carried out by the bishop of a local Church, and not by the president of a federation of regional ecclesial associations and continental. And this task cannot be limited to the adoption of a purely objective principle (majority decision, delegation to an elected body, etc.). Since the internal essence of the episcopate is a personal testimony, the principle of the unity of the episcopate itself is embodied in one person, the Bishop of Rome. As an ordained bishop, and not simply a “non-bishop” appointed to this office, he is the successor of Peter, who, as the first apostle and first witness to the resurrection, embodied in his person the unity of the college of the Apostles.
What is crucial to a theology of primacy is the characterization of Peter’s ministry as an episcopal mission, as well as the recognition that this office is not a human but a divine right, in the sense that it can only be exercised with the authority of Christ by virtue of a charism in the Holy Spirit conferred personally on its bearer: “But so that the Episcopate itself was one and undivided, [Gesù Cristo, Pastore eterno] he placed blessed Peter at the head of the other Apostles and established in his person the perpetual and visible principle and foundation of the unity of faith and communion” (Lumen gentium, 18).
Published by Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller on The Rudder
#Card #Muller #importance #remaining #faithful #Christ #truth