Friday, October 30, 2020

Some Excerpts from G. Van Noort, Dogmatic Theology, Volume II: Christ’s Church

 

 

The privilege of infallibility is not merely actual absence of error, but the impossibility of erring. It is of course a supernatural gift, and since it works not to the advantage of the recipients themselves, but to that of the whole Church, it is a gratia gratis data or charism. It is often called “the charism of truth.” (G. Van Noort, Dogmatic Theology, Volume II: Christ’s Church [trans. John J. Castelot; Cork: The Mercier Press Limited, 1961], 119)

 

Assertion 3: With the exception of the Roman pontiff, no bishop possesses authority over other bishops by divine right.

 

The body of bishops continues the college of the apostles. Now among the apostles no one was placed in authority over the rest of them by Christ, except St. Peter. The conclusion is obvious. Consequently, all the degrees of hierarchical rank factually existing between the papacy and the episcopacy—patriarchal, primatial, and archiepiscopal—are ecclesiastical in origin. From this it follows that: (a) the office of patriarch, primate, etc., considered precisely as an office, consists in a kind of participation in the papal office; (b) the supra-episcopal authority possessed by patriarchs, etc., over bishops within their orbit is bestowed upon them by the pope. The fact is symbolized by the cloak (pallium) which “taken from the body of St. Peter,” is sent to them as a sign of their sharing in a supra-episcopal jurisdiction” (See Pontificale Romanum, p. 1, De pallio).

 

Assertion 4: Bishops to be able to exercise jurisdiction over their flocks, must be adopted by the authority of the pope.

 

The way in which individual bishops are established must now be discussed. Even though the episcopal office is something established by God, it is quite obvious that individual rulers of individual dioceses are directly established not by God, but by men. At this juncture we are not inquiring from whom the bishops proximately receive their jurisdiction . . . but what is required for them actually to function as pastors of their diocese and to exercise their jurisdiction there. To be able to do this, we state, they must be adopted by the authority of the supreme pontiff. Adoption (assumption) is a short form standing for “adoption or assumption into the corporate body of the pastors of the Church.” It designates the factor by which the formal admittance of a selected or elected candidate is brought to its final conclusion. We use the phrase, “by the authority of the people” to indicate that a direct, personal intervention by the people is not necessarily required. So long as the adoption be done by someone to whom the people has entrusted the task (regardless of the precise way in which the pope commissions him to do so), or in accord with regulations already established or approved by the pope, in saying that papal adoption is necessary, we do not mean it is merely necessary because of ecclesiastical law currently in force; we mean it is necessary by the divine law itself. Even though this necessity has never been explicitly defined, it follows absolutely from Catholic principles.

 

It is a fact that a bishop cannot act as a pastor of the Church unless he is a member of that body which is a continuation of the apostolic college. Now the Roman pontiff, as Christ’s vicar, presides over that college with full and supreme authority. It would be ridiculous, therefore, to think that someone could be constituted a member of that body in such fashion as not to need to be acknowledged or adopted in any way by the very head of that body, i.e., the Roman pontiff. Again, the Roman pontiff is the supreme shepherd of the entire Church to which the bishops may be compared as subordinate shepherds for each individual part of the Church. Clearly it would be nonsensical to think someone would take charge of part of the sheepfold without the agreement of the one who rules the universal sheepfold with complete authority.

 

The objection is raised: in ancient times the peoples did not intervene in any way at all in the selection of bishops. That they did not always intervene directly and by explicit consent, is granted; that they did not intervene at all, not even mediately and by legal consent, we deny. In the absence of historical testimony, it is admittedly impossible to prove this statement directly.

 

Still, keeping in mind Catholic principles, it is fair enough to reconstruct the process somewhat as follows. The apostles and their principal aides, in accord with Peter’s consent and will, both selected the first bishops, and decreed that thereafter when sees became vacant the vacancy should be taken care of in some satisfactory way, and in a way which at the very least would not be without the intervention of the neighboring bishops. As often, therefore, in accord with this process, established with Peter’s approval, a new bishop was constituted in the early Church, Peter’s authority ratified that selection implicitly. Later on, when ecclesiastical affairs were arranged more precisely by positive law, the patriarchs in the Eastern churches and the metropolitans in the Western churches used to establish the bishops; but they did so only in virtue of the authority of the Apostolic See by which they themselves had been established, even though in a variety of ways. Finally, in later centuries the matter of establishing bishops was set up in different fashion; indeed in such a way that in the Latin church especially, the direct intervention of the Roman pontiff was required. (Ibid., 322-24, italics in original)