Walter Kasper on the danger of downplaying the true humanity of Jesus

As the significance of Jesus’ humanity in mediating salvation was forgotten, the intercessory salvation-mediatorship of the saints—especially Mary—became more prominent. The consequences appeared also in ecclesiology where the one-sided emphasis on the divinity of Christ meant that excessive importance was attached to the authority of the Church’s ministry. The more it was forgotten that Christ was our brother, the more the fraternal dimension in the Church was ignored and the authoritative factor was stressed exclusively. These consequences were naturally most obvious in the Christology generally prevailing in the minds of ordinary Christians. Here Apollinarism has persisted even to the present time as a subliminal heresy, not as a theological slip but as a temptation to devout but ignorant Christians who are every surprised when they are told that Christ was a man like us. In connexion with the Redemption they think only of Jesus’ physical pains and scarcely of his personal obedience and his complete surrender to the Father. In this respect there has evidently been a failure on the part of the catechetical and homiletic instruction has evidently failed in this regard. (Walter Kasper, Jesus the Christ [trans. V. Green; New York: Paulist Press, 1977], 211