The Kingdom and the Papacy
McKenzie, John L.
BOOKS I THE KINGDOM AND THE PAPACY JOHN L. MeKENZIE The T r i p l e Crou~ VALERIE PIRIE Consortium, $12. A Pope For A l l C h r i s t i a n s PETER J. McCORD, ED. Paulist Press, $7.50 The...
...P. is the only historian I have seen (and church history is not my field) who renders such a favorable judgment on Clement XIV, celebrated only for the suppression of the Jesuits in 1773...
...To preserve some values they believe that unity of structure must be given a lower priority than Roman Catholicism has traditionally given it...
...A Pope /or _9 All Christians is a collection of essays written by some distinguished theologians of the major churches in the United States...
...they fear it in their own churches as well, but they believe that the Protestant church structure does not of itself tend to become a power structure...
...Many observers wiU find this simplistic...
...I think it was clear from the beginning of the enthusiasm which was generated by John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council that civil conversations between divided Christians must proceed...
...I am not being facetious...
...their objections are theological, and these must be addressed...
...Uncritical use of sources was not necessary to show that this is a sad story...
...Likewise I have seen no writer so hostile to Sixtus V, hardly the most amiable of Popes...
...It is only fair to say that no church except the local church is described in the New Testament...
...When their prejudices are known, they ought to be thrown into the balance...
...An introductory chapter was written by R. McAfee Brown (Presbyterian...
...If the role of the Pope is any more closely defined, they see the nose of the camel of the primacy of jurisdiction at the door of the tent...
...I have no new criticisms of Romanism to add to those already uttered...
...P.'s review of conclaves raised a new doubt in my min d , and, for what it is worth, I would like to share it...
...I am sorry to report that most of the contributors see no modification of the Papacy which will make it acceptable to them...
...If the papal elections had been conducted as cleanly and honestly as the elections in the city of Chicago, this book and others like it could not have been written...
...the work shows that she used the books listed in an appendix...
...She does produce a generally readable text...
...Peter J. McCord, the editor, is a Roman Catholic...
...As long as the church is administered by men, they believe "unity" (whatever it may mean) is a chimerical ideal...
...They are quite correct in this fear...
...Some will accept a role which can be called "leadership...
...Jonoah and the Green Stone HENRY DUMAS Random House, $7.95 Meridian ALICE WALKER Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, $7.95 GORDON BURNSIDE The word "meridian" covers a number of meanings...
...Write: ADULT VOCATIONS Box 41H, Commonweal Commonweal: 281...
...But there are other forms of power, power meaning here the capacity to impose your will upon others, of which the Papacy was not deprived and which it has shown no likelihood of renouncing...
...Being readable did not keep Pastor from being authoritative...
...P. eschews the conventional apparatus of erudition, such as expository footnotes and citation of sources...
...Most Catholics do not know that Protestants oppose the Papacy to something, not to nothing...
...Invalidity is a fact whether it is known or proved or not...
...And since the invalidly elected Pope could not appoint cardinals with a valid franchise to elect a Pope, in how many elections was the majority composed of men who had no vote...
...We ought to recognize that the Papacy is a postbiblical institution and that it is a product of history, often of the type of history summarized in the first volume reviewed here...
...The snap judgments of each Pope to which P. is compelled do not permit justice to be done to such an assortment of characters...
...the term is vague, but I believe the authors mean to keep it vague...
...I have engaged in some of these myself, and they were worth all the trouble and expense they demanded...
...What that can be or will be only the Roman See can decide...
...P.'s general thesis is that the temporal power of the Papacy was the root of all corruption...
...The scope of such a survey would discourage the most ambitious historian...
...Neither of them qualify as detached observers, although they were monumental gossips...
...It is an aesthetic concept, excellence, the highest point of development...
...But it was foolish to think that all we had to do was to present the beauties of Roman Catholicism to Protestants and they would form lines to present their homage to the Roman Pontiff...
...they believe the local church as described in the New Testament has all the resources of leadership it needs...
...I ought to point out that the Protestant theologians who wrote these essays spend no time in rehearsing the corruptions of Romanism...
...P. goes considerably beyond her chosen topic by including brief sketches of the government of each Pope elected...
...Catholics often thought Protestantism was a religious vacuum...
...I do not think this was a good idea...
...The Papacy lost only politicM power, which is fragile in the modern world anyway...
...It follows that the corruption was radically removed in 1870...
...It eliminated automatically all those unprincipled, ambitious candidates who coveted the triple crown merely ]or the immense riches and power it conferred on its wearer...
...One is not sure about the uncritical use of such sources as the letters of the Venetian ambassador or the diaries of Cardinal de Retz...
...Nevertheless, he must say to himself and to P. that the use of the apparatus did not keep Ludwig von Pastor from writing one of the most readable histories produced in modern times...
...There is a genuine Protestant fear that church unity may become a vehicle of power...
...The representatives of the more "congregational" churches do not even see any use in a role of leadership...
...The sainted Pius V comes off rather poorly, as it seems he deserves...
...Ross Mackenzie and J. Robert Wright see more possibilities than the other contributors...
...It seems incredible that anyone acquainted with the scandalous intrigues, the simony, the unbridled display o/ human passions seething behind the closed doors o[ papal conclaves, should still uphold or wish to see restored a state o] things which caused, by the discredit it brought on the Roman Church, such a religious upheaval as the Re]ormation with its ensuing trail o[ bloodshed and persecutions...
...The contributors were invited to set forth the teachings of their own churches on church authority, to show how this teaching confronted the Roman Catholic idea of authority and Papacy, and to suggest some modifications which might make the idea of the Papacy acceptable to Protestant churches...
...but one must notice that Rome has shown no inclination whatever to move in the Perhaps the greatest blessing that was ever bestowed upon the Church o[ Rome was the loss o/ her temporal power...
...They do not fear this only from the Papacy...
...In any case, the materials for such judgments are simply not presented...
...If P. thinks that there is no longer room for ambition in the Roman Catholic Church, she has much to learn...
...It is the place where Albert Camus wound up The Rebel: a hot, lazy region of the mindmsomething like his own French Algeria--a place where the body reigned, politics were in disrepute, and ideological murder was unthinkable...
...This reader, at least, felt some uneasiness at P.'s somewhat casual use of sources...
...The doubt which arose in my mind was a doubt about the number of years in the period surveyed by P. in which the Roman Catholic Church by its own standards had no visible head...
...In fact, when Protestants say they can accept a Papacy which has a role of leadership and not of government, they do not realize that leadership is the one thing which the Papacy has most rarely shown...
...This reviewer is in no position to find fault for the missing apparatus...
...The politicians of the First Ward could learn from this b o o k - - except that they would almost surely get arrested if they tried it...
...The New Left of the 1960s began at Camus's idea of the meridian...
...But it seems that the Roman See, if it wishes to be the representative of Christ (I do not like the word "vicar" to designate a role which was once filled by Alexander VI and Leo X), will have to think of what it can yield, what it can give, rather than what it must demand, what it must impose...
...T h e Triple Crown directions which they indicate...
...Canonical laws invalidating simoniacal elections go back to Gregory VII (1073-1085...
...There is a certain power rooted in wealth, with which the Papacy is endowed to a degree which it has not disclosed...
...The essays are very models of intelligent theological discussion, well 29 April 1977:280 mannered and free of the ancient language of controversy, perceptive of the beliefs of others, and unusually clear--unusually, that is, for theologians, who sometimes seem to cultivate the obscure for its own sake...
...It is a town in Mississippi...
...Paulist Press, $7.50 The two titles here are both concerned with the Papacy, but they have little else in common...
...It is a geophysical concept, the great circle that connects the earth's two poles...
...There is a certain power enjoyed by one who is believed by several hundred million people to be the Vicar of Christ...
...I hope we have learned that it is not...
...This all seems to put the ball in the ecumenical game right into the Roman Catholic court...
...None of the contributors is happy with the present state of church disunity, even those who seem to think that unity will be achieved only in the eschatological church...
...Love should be sought first, and from love unity can proceed...
...She knows them...
...Nothing will happen ecumenically until the Roman See does something...
...Pirie professes to write the history of the papal elections from 1455 (Calixtus I I I ) to 1878 (Leo X I I I ) . The survey is prefaced by a full and rather interesting study of the electoral procedures, viewed both in law and in practice...
...Joseph Burgess (Lutheran), Avery Dulles (Roman Catholic) ; C . B . Hastings (Baptist), Ross Mackenzie (Presbyterian), John Meyendorff (Orthodox), J. Robert Nelson (Methodist), J. Robert Wright (Anglican...
...The laws meant that the man whose election is bought simply is not Pope...
...Catholic readers will find this book an excellent exposition of Protestant theologies of church authority, a topic on which we Romans are generally misinformed...
...We ADULT VOCATIONS special program for men over twenty-one...
...The history of papal elections turns into a handbook of papal history over more than four hundred years...
Vol. 104 • April 1977 • No. 9
