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