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Papal primacy, also known as the primacy of the bishop of Rome, is an ecclesiological doctrine in the Catholic Church concerning the respect and authority that is due to the pope from other and their . While the doctrine is accepted at a fundamental level by both the Catholic Church (Eastern and Latin Church) and the Eastern Orthodox Church, the two disagree on the nature of primacy.
English academic and Catholic priest Aidan Nichols wrote that "at root, only one issue of substance divides the Eastern Orthodox and the Catholic Churches, and that is the issue of the primacy." French Eastern Orthodox researcher Jean-Claude Larchet wrote that, together with the Filioque controversy, differences in interpretation of this doctrine have been and remain the primary causes of East-West Schism between the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. In the Eastern Orthodox churches, some understand the primacy of the bishop of Rome to be merely one of greater honour, regarding him as primus inter pares ("first among equals"), without effective power over other churches. A prominent 20th century Eastern Orthodox Christian theologian, Fr. Alexander Schmemann, envisioned a primacy that sums up rather than rules over: "Primacy is power, but as power it is not different from the power of a bishop in each church. It is not a higher power but indeed the same power, only expressed, manifested, and realized by one."
The Catholic Church attributes to the primacy of the pope "Papal supremacy, a power which he can always exercise unhindered," a power that it attributes also to the entire body of the bishops united with the pope. The power that it attributes to the pope's primatial authority has limitations that are official, legal, dogmatic, and practical.
In the Ravenna Document, issued in 2007, representatives of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church jointly stated that both accept the bishop of Rome's primacy at the universal level, but that differences of understanding exist about how the primacy is to be exercised and about its scriptural and theological foundations.
In canon 331, the "bishop of the Roman Church" is both the "vicar of Christ" and "pastor of the universal Church on earth". Knut Walf, in New commentary on the Code of Canon Law, notes that this description, "bishop of the Roman Church", is only found in this canon, and the term Roman pontiff is generally used in . Ernest Caparros et al's Code of Canon Law Annotated comments that this canon pertains to all individuals and groups of faithful within the Latin Church, of all rites and hierarchical ranks, "not only in matters of faith and morals but also in all that concerns the discipline and government of the Church throughout the whole world". Heinrich Denzinger, Peter Hünermann, et al. Enchiridion symbolorum (DH) states that Christ did not form the Church as several distinct communities, but unified through full communion with the bishop of Rome and creed with the bishop of Rome.
The bishop of Rome is a subject of supreme authority over the sui iuris Eastern Catholic Churches. In canon 45, the bishop of Rome has "by virtue of his office" both "power over the entire Church" and "primacy of ordinary power over all the eparchies and groupings of them" within each of the Eastern Catholic Churches. Through the office "of the supreme pastor of the Church," he is in communion with the other bishops and with the entire Church, and has the right to determines whether to exercise this authority either personally or collegially. This "primacy over the entire Church" includes primacy over Eastern Catholic patriarchs and eparchial bishops, over governance of institutes of consecrated life, and over judicial affairs.
Primacy of the bishop of Rome was also codified in the 1917 Code of Canon Law (1917 CIC) canons 218–221.
While acknowledging that "the New Testament contains no explicit record of a transmission of Peter's leadership; nor is the transmission of apostolic authority in general very clear," it considers that its doctrine has a developmental history and that its teaching about matters such as the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, and the union of his two natures in a single person developed as the result of drawing out from the original revealed truth consequences that were not obvious at first: "Thanks to the assistance of the Holy Spirit, the understanding of both the realities and the words of the heritage of faith is able to grow in the life of the Church 'through the contemplation and study of believers who ponder these things in their hearts'; it is in particular 'theological research which deepens knowledge of revealed truth.'"
Accordingly, it would be a mistake to expect to find the modern fully developed doctrine of papal primacy in the first centuries, thereby failing to recognize the Church's historical reality. The figure of the pope as leader of the worldwide church developed over time, as the figure of the bishop as leader of the local church seems to have appeared later than in the time of the apostles.
That the Christian scriptures, which contain no cut-and-dried answers to questions such as whether or not there is forgiveness for post-baptismal sins, and whether or not infants should be baptized, gradually become clearer in the light of events, is a view expressed, when considering the doctrine of papal primacy, by Cardinal John Henry Newman, who summed up his thought by saying:
Modern Eastern Orthodox writers such as Nikolay Afanásiev and Alexander Schmemann have written that the phrase "presiding in agape", used of the Church of Rome in the letter that Ignatius of Antioch addressed to it in the early 2nd century, contains a definition of that Church's universal primacy; but the Catholic writer Klaus Schatz warns that it would be wrong to read this letter and the even earlier First Epistle of Clement (the name of Clement was added only later), in which the Church of Rome intervenes in matters of the Church of Corinth, admonishing it in authoritative tones, even speaking in the name of God, as statements of the developed Catholic teaching on papal primacy. It was only later that the expression of Ignatius of Antioch could be interpreted as meaning, as agreed by representatives of both the Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Churches, that "Rome, as the Church that 'presides in love' according to the phrase of St Ignatius of Antioch ( To the Romans, Prologue), occupied the first place in the taxis lit. 'arrangement,, and that the bishop of Rome was therefore the protos lit. 'first') among the patriarchs".
The same agreement stated:
The presence of Peter in Rome, not explicitly affirmed in, but consistent with, the New Testament, is explicitly affirmed by Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus of Lyon and other early Christian writers – and no other place has ever claimed to be the location of his death. The same witnesses imply that Peter was the virtual founder of the Church of Rome, though not its founder in the sense of initiating a Christian community there. They also speak of Peter as the one who initiated its episcopal succession, but speak of Pope Linus as the first bishop of Rome after Peter, although some hold today that the Christians in Rome did not act as a single united community under a single leader until the 2nd century.
In their The See of Peter (1927), non-Catholic academic historians James T. Shotwell and Louise Ropes Loomis, noted the following:
In the aftermath of the Decian persecution, Pope Stephen I (254-257) was asked by Cyprian of Carthage (d. 258) to resolve a dispute among the bishops of Gaul as to whether those who had lapsed could be reconciled and readmitted to the Christian community. Cyprian stressed the Petrine primacy as well as the unity of the Church and the importance of being in communion with the bishops. For Cyprian, "the Bishop of Rome is the direct heir of Peter, whereas the others are heirs only indirectly", and he insisted that "the Church of Rome is the root and matrix of the Catholic Church". Cyprian wrote Pope Stephen asking him to instruct the bishops of Gaul to condemn Marcianus of Arles, (who refused to admit those who repented) and to elect another bishop in his stead. Mann, Horace. "Pope St. Stephen I." The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. 14. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912. 11 February 2020
It was to Pope Damasus I (366–384) that Jerome appealed in 376, to settle a dispute as to who, among three rival claimants, was the legitimate Patriarch of Antioch. "Letter of Jerome to Pope Damasus", 376, The Nicene Fathers (Schaff & Wace, ed.) T.&T. Clark, Edinburgh
In the strictest sense of the word, "decretal" means a papal rescript ( rescriptum), an answer of the pope when he has been appealed to or his advice has been sought on a matter of discipline. The oldest preserved decretal is a letter of Pope Siricius (r. 384-399) in response to an inquiry from Himerius, Bishop of Tarragona (floruit 385), in which Siricius issued decisions on fifteen different points, on matters regarding baptism, penance, church discipline and the celibacy of the clergy. Kirsch, Johann Peter. "Pope St. Siricius." The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. 14. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912
In 155, Pope Anicetus, bishop of Rome, presided over a church council at Rome that was attended by a number of bishops including Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna. Although the council failed to reach agreement on the issue, ecclesiastical communion was preserved. A generation later, synods of bishops in Syria Palaestina, Pontus and Osrhoene in the east, and in Rome and Roman Gaul in the west, unanimously declared that the celebration should be exclusively on Sunday. In 193, Victor, bishop of Rome, presided over a council at Rome and subsequently sent a letter about the matter to Polycrates of Ephesus and the churches of the Roman province of Asia.
In the same year, Polycrates presided over a council at Ephesus attended by several bishops throughout that province, which rejected Victor's authority and kept the province's paschal tradition. Thereupon, Victor attempted to cut off Polycrates and the others who took this stance from the common unity, but later reversed his decision after bishops, that included Irenaeus of Lyon in Gaul, interceded and recommended that Victor adopt the more tolerant stance of his predecessor, Anicetus.
This incident is cited by some Orthodox Christians as the first example of overreaching by the Bishop of Rome and resistance of such by Eastern churches. Laurent Cleenewerck suggests that this could be argued to be the first fissure between the Eastern and Western churches. According to James McCue, Victor's threatened excommunication was an "intradiocesan affair" between two local churches and did not pertain to the universal church.
The increasing involvement of Eastern emperors in church matters and the advancement of the see of Constantinople over the sees of Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem led successive bishops of Rome to attempt a sharper definition of their ecclesial position vis-a-vis the other bishops. The first documented use of the description of Saint Peter as first bishop of Rome, rather than as the apostle who commissioned its first bishop, dates from 354, and the phrase "the Apostolic See", which refers to the same apostle, began to be used exclusively of the see of Rome, a usage found also in the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon. From the time of Pope Damasus, the text of ("You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church") is used to support Roman primacy. Pope Innocent I (401–417) claimed that all major cases should be reserved to the see of Rome and wrote: "All must preserve that which Peter the prince of the apostles delivered to the church at Rome and which it has watched over until now, and nothing may be added or introduced that lacks this authority or that derives its pattern from somewhere else." Pope Boniface I (418–422) stated that the church of Rome stood to the churches throughout the world "as the head to the members", a statement that was repeated by the delegates of Pope Leo I to the Council of Chalcedon in 451.
The historical and juridical development of the "primacy of the Roman Pontiff" from Pope Gregory I (590–604) to Pope Clement V (1305–1314) was a doctrinal evolution in fidelity of the depositum fidei ( deposit of faith).
On 29 June 1274 (the Feast of Peter and Paul, the patronal feast of popes), Gregory X celebrated Mass in St John's Church where both sides took part. The council declared that the Roman church possessed "the supreme and full primacy and authority over the universal Catholic Church."
The council was seemingly a success, but did not provide a lasting solution to the schism. Michael's death in December 1282 put an end to the union of Lyon. His son and successor Andronikos II Palaiologos repudiated the union.
Luther's rejection of the primacy of the Pope led to the start of the Protestant Reformation, during which numerous Protestant sects broke away from the Catholic Church. The Church of England also broke away from the Catholic Church at this time, although for reasons different from Martin Luther and the Protestants.
The First Vatican Council's dogmatic constitution Pastor aeternus declared that "in the disposition of God the Roman church holds the preeminence of ordinary power over all the other churches." This council also affirmed the dogma of papal infallibility, deciding that the "infallibility" of the Christian community extended to the pope himself, at least when speaking on matters of faith.
Vatican I defined a twofold Primacy of Peter — one in papal teaching on faith and morals (the charism of infallibility), and the other a Papal supremacy involving government and discipline of the Church — submission to both being necessary to Catholic faith and salvation.
Vatican I rejected the ideas that papal decrees have "no force or value unless confirmed by an order of the secular power" and that the pope's decisions can be appealed to an ecumenical council "as to an authority higher than the Roman Pontiff". Paul Collins argues that "(the doctrine of papal primacy as formulated by the First Vatican Council) has led to the exercise of untrammelled papal power and has become a major stumbling block in ecumenical relationships with the Orthodox (who consider the definition to be heresy) and Protestants."
Forced to break off prematurely by secular political developments in 1870, Vatican I left behind it a somewhat unbalanced ecclesiology. "In theology the question of papal primacy was so much in the foreground that the Church appeared essentially as a centrally directed institution which one was dogged in defending but which only encountered one externally", according to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI).
The Eastern Orthodox point out that Jesus gave the power to "bind" and "loose" not only to Peter but to all the Apostles equally (Matthew 18:18). Many Church Fathers noted Jesus' giving this authority more broadly: Tertullian, Hilary of Poitiers, John Chrysostom, and Augustine.
It has been argued that church councils did not consider papal decisions binding. The Third Ecumenical Council was called, even though Pope Celestine I condemned Nestorius as a heretic which Michael Whelton, Catholic convert to Orthodoxy, argues shows that the council did not consider the papal condemnation as definitive.
Catholic Cardinal and theologian Yves Congar stated
The document "draws an analogy among the three levels of communion: local, regional, and universal, each of which appropriately has a 'first' with the role of fostering communion, in order to ground the rationale of why the universal level must also have a primacy. It articulates the principle that primacy and conciliarity are interdependent and mutually necessary." Speaking of "fraternal relations between bishops" during the first millennium, it states that "these relations, among the bishops themselves, between the bishops and their respective protoi (firsts), and also among the protoi themselves in the canonical order ( taxis) witnessed by the ancient Church, nourished and consolidated ecclesial communion." It notes that both sides agree "that Rome, as the church that 'presides in love' according to the phrase of St Ignatius of Antioch, occupied the first place in the taxis (order) and that the bishop of Rome was, therefore, the protos (first) among the patriarchs. They disagree, however, on the interpretation of the historical evidence from this era regarding the prerogatives of the bishop of Rome as protos, a matter that was already understood in different ways in the first millennium"; and "while the fact of primacy at the universal level is accepted by both East and West, there are differences of understanding with regard to the manner in which it is to be exercised, and also with regard to its scriptural and theological foundations".
Discussions continued at Aghios Nikolaos, Crete, (a drafting committee) in September–October 2008; at Paphos, Cyprus, in October 2009; and Vienna, Austria in September 2010. Hegumen Filipp Ryabykh, the deputy head of the Russian Orthodox Church Department for External Church Relations said:
A 2008 draft text on "The Role of the Bishop of Rome in the Communion of the Church in the First Millennium" topic prepared by the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue Between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church was leaked in 2010, which the Vienna meeting asked to be revised and amplified. This document states that "Catholics and Orthodox agree that, from apostolic times, the Church of Rome has been recognised as the first among the local Churches, both in the East and in the West." Both sides agree that "the primacy of the see precedes the primacy of its bishops and is the source of the latter". While in the West, "the position of the bishop of Rome among the bishops was understood in terms of the position of Peter among the apostles ... the East tended rather to understand each bishop as the successor of all the apostles, including Peter"; but these rather different understandings "co-existed for several centuries until the end of the first millennium, without causing a break of communion".
In his book Repair My House: Becoming a "Kingdom" Catholic, Michael H. Crosby, author and Capuchin Franciscan friar, points out that Matthew 18:18 shows that the power of "binding" and "loosing" was not given to Peter alone, but to all the Apostles. Some Church Fathers, like St. John Chrysostom, considered Peter's proclamation of faith, rather than Peter himself, to be the "rock" Jesus praised and said he would make the foundation of the faith. Other Christian writers say that, even if Peter is the "rock", it does not mean he has exclusive power over the Church.
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