Videoconference April 28th 2004

The Hierarchical communion with the Pope and the Bishop – sentire cum ecclesia

Bishop Doctor Gerhard Ludwig Müller

Regensburg

THE EPISCOPATE

The Episcopate on one hand indicates the Episcopal office as a sacrament and on the other the universal church’s organised college of Bishops. The college of the apostles continues in the College of Bishops, since the Bishops exercise the apostles’ magisterial, pastoral and priestly ministry thanks to the Holy Spirit (LG, no. 22).

The episcopate is a ministry God has created within the Church forever (LG, no. 18). The Bishops, "appointed by the Holy Spirit" (At 20,28), preside over Christ’s flock in God’s place (LG, no. 19).

In the Holy Orders the Spirit ensures that "the bishops, in an eminent and visible way sustain the roles of Christ Himself as Teacher, Shepherd and High Priest, and that they act in His person" (LG, no. 21). In practicing their ministry they are "vicars and ambassadors of Christ" (LG, no. 27).

The fact that the Bishop is through the sacraments ordained by "Bishops of other neighbouring Churches" per se indicates the episcopate’s universal ecclesial dimension, not a self-appointed individual community and ministry. Through sacramental acts the Church instead receives the grace for personal redemption, the power to implement Her mission and in particular the Episcopal office. Episcopal consecration symbolically joins the bishop to the college of Bishops and entrusts him with responsibilities regards to the only Catholic Church spread all over the world and existing in the "communio ecclesiarum".

In his local Church the Bishop is the "the perpetual and visible principle and foundation of unity" (LG, no. 23), hence of the communion of all the faithful and of the college of ministers, therefore the priests, deacons and other ecclesial ministers. The single episcopate does not absorb the multiplicity of missions and ministries; the episcopate does not restrict its activities to preventing a disintegration of the individual ministries, but rather encourages their multiplicity within individual members and guarantees the unity of mission of the single Church in martyria, leiturgia and diakonia. Hence both the principle that God’s holy people take part in Christ’s priestly and prophetic ministry and that the totality of the faithful cannot err in their faith thanks to the anointment of the Holy Spirit (LG, no. 12), and the principle that the Bishops, who teach in communion with the Bishop of Rome, "are to be respected by all as witnesses to divine and Catholic truth" (LG, no. 25) are all valid.

The faithful must accept the judgement pronounced by their Bishop in the name of Christ on matters concerning the faith and morals, and give him their spirit’s religious assent (LG no. 25).

THE PRIMACY OF THE CHURCH AND OF THE BISHOP OF ROME

Because it is necessary for the unity of the Church, the college of Bishops must contain in itself the principle of its own unity. This cannot be a purely causal principle (a decision taken by the majority, a delegating of rights to a directive or elected council, etc.). Since the intimate essence of the episcopate and the principle of its unity is incarnated in one person. According to the Catholic concept, the personal principle of unity originally and also in its current implementation belongs to the Bishop of Rome. As a Bishop he is the successor of Peter who as the first apostle and first witness of the resurrection in turn incorporated in his own person the unity of the college of apostles. For a theology of the primacy characterising Peter’s office as an Episcopal mission is of fundamental importance, as is acknowledging that this function is not a human right, but a divine one, since it can only be exercised if ordered by Christ, in virtue of a charisma personally granted to the holder.