Jacques Maritain Center :
On the Church of ChristI shall note just as they are, in this chapter, the things which have come to my mind in the course of a musing on authority among men, and on some texts of the Gospel concerning either the Prince of the apostles or the Precursor.
1. Popular intelligence takes pleasure in the oppositions of words. And if it is a question of the words "authority" and "liberty," the opposition between them is rendered terribly easy by the multitude of abuses which in the course of history men invested with authority have committed against the liberty of others (whereas in other respects the devotees of liberty have above all cultivated utopia or flirted with anarchy).
In themselves, however, authority and liberty are twin sisters who cannot do without each other, and authority in some is for liberty in others. The authority of the master over the disciple has for its end to enable the latter to exercise freely his mind in the search for truth and to adhere freely to the truth. The authority of the State{1} and of its laws (if they are just) has for its end to assure the liberty of the citizens in the conduct of their life and the exercise of their rights. The authority of the Church has for its end to liberate each man in the Truth, and to deliver him from the servitude with regard to sin and to the Prince of this world, and to introduce him into the liberty of the sons of God, whom the Spirit leads.
Authority is the right possessed by someone to be listened to or to be obeyed, -- for the good of those to whom he speaks or whom he commands. The misfortune is that this right requires normally a certain power, and that man asks only to confuse a responsibility heavy with anguish and with torments: the exercise of authority for the good of others, with the most tempting and the most blinding of pleasures: that of dominating another and of elevating oneself above him by a power which becomes consequently perversion of authority, -- compensation for frustrations caused by some humiliating traumatism, or mere satisfaction of the desire for power and for glory.
We should congratulate ourselves that the notion of authority as service has become one of the favorite commonplaces of the contemporary intelligentsia. It is a notion that the Gospel has taught us -- and with what nobility! Let us hope only that it will be well understood, and that a little demagoguery will not debase it, in having it be believed that in order to serve well those whom one is charged to command, one would not only have to take into account their wishes as much as possible, but to become the mere executant of the latter.
2. It is not always pleasant to obey authority. Moreover, it is inevitable, by reason of the wounds of nature, that the exercise of authority will be sometimes unjust, and that, even when it is just and benevolent, it will be subject to many practical errors. We must however obey legitimate authority, even at the cost of more or less great sufferings.
Nothing is more natural than to bear it a grudge then. But there are two very different ways of being subject to authority and of suffering from it. One can be subject to it slavishly, and suffer from it slavishly. A day will come then when one will revolt against it in letting explode a thousand long-repressed resentments, and when one will make it one's duty to overthrow the fundamental structures of authority, even of the most legitimate authority.
And one can be subject to authority as a free man, and suffer from it as a free man. It may be that then reason and courage require one to disobey an unjust order, or to rise up against an illegitimate authority, or to demand the change of certain poorly adapted secondary structures of a legitimate authority. Outside of these cases, however, someone who obeys authority -- I say legitimate authority -- as a free man does not try to set fire to the house when he has to suffer from authority. He no doubt does not deprive himself of inveighing against it, nor of seeking actively to change the situation with the means he has at his disposal. But in all of this it is in a kind of game that he engages with authority and around it, without thinking in the least of calling in question its principle or its fundamental structures.
At the time of Innocent II the means at one's disposal were rather harsh, and the game which one conducted rather brutal; people hurled at each other the most outrageous names, people were excommunicated, armies were raised, firm blows were dealt. If Anacletus was an antipope, he surely did not deserve obedience, and it was up to him to submit. It was necessary therefore that the sport around authority be harshly conducted, and intelligently. (The most intelligent of all was St. Bernard.){2} But as regards authority itself, one revered it, and treated it with as much respect as humor. In the most profound fibers of their temperament these men remained, if I may so speak, men of humor (and of honor, it goes without saying). A civilization without humor prepares its own funeral.
In the order of the temporal, 'divine right' monarchy has had its day. The regime of the totalitarian parties, -- whether they be of fascist type or of communist type, -- is still much worse; they push the principle and the methods of despotism to their extremes. In the democratic regime, which in the end is the best regime (or the least bad), authority comes from the people or "rises from the bottom." Still it is necessary to understand that, just as in giving to a friend a pipe or a bottle of whiskey I give him something of which I am not the author, so also, and with all the more reason, when the people confer authority on their rulers, while retaining through their elected representatives a serious control over them, they give to them somethings right, -- of which they are not themselves either the author or the principle; for every right is, as such, founded on the universal order which God had in view.
In the order of the spiritual{3} authority "comes down from above," which means that it not only has its foundation in God, but is conferred by the First Cause Himself on those who receive the fullness of the Sacrament of Holy Orders and are the successors of the apostles: it is so because it is God Who is the author of salvation through His Incarnate Son, Who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. "Christian life requires an organized community, a Church which is according to the thought of Christ; it requires an order, a free but sincere obedience; it requires therefore an authority which preserves and teaches the revealed truth (2 Cor. 10, 15); because this truth is the inmost and profound root of liberty, as Jesus has said: 'The truth will set you free' John 8, 32)."{4}
'And you,' he said to them, 'who do you say that I am?' 'You are the Messiah,' Simon Peter answered, 'the Son of the Living God!' Jesus replied, 'Blest are you, Simon son of John! No mere man has revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. I for my part declare to you, you are "Rock" (Kepha), and on this rock (kepha) I will build my church, and the jaws of death shall not prevail against it. I will entrust to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you declare bound on earth shall be bound in heaven; whatever you declare loosed on earth shall be loosed in heaven.'"{5}
The moment when these words were uttered, on the road of Caesarea Philippi, is the moment of the annunciatory dawn of the Church (of Christ come). She is still neither founded nor built ("on this rock I will build . . . "), it is at Pentecost that she will be founded and will begin to be built by Jesus-or (it is the same thing) to build herself{6} under His all-powerful hand, and to confess with Peter the savior God: Te per orbem terrarum tota confitetur Ecclesia. But the fundamental stone is already designated.
The absolute foundation, of the Church and of everything, -- it is the Incarnate Word, Who transcends the Church and all things. But the immanent foundation, the created foundation of this living created edifice which is the Church, -- it is Peter ("you are Peter, and on this rock I will build . . . "): Peter not as individual person, but Peter as confessing the Christ Son of God, Peter as illuminated by faith (it is "my heavenly Father" who "has revealed this to you") and as confessing the faith, this faith which as soon as it gushes up in the soul implies the gift of self, this faith which will be that of the Church one and universal, incorrupta, et casta, et pudica,{7} and which Peter -- as also those who will succeed him, and of whom the name-given-by-Christ will remain always Peter{8} -- will have for mission to "confirm" or to "strengthen" in his brothers{9} and to maintain intact in souls.{10}
It is here the supreme authority, on earth, of Peter as Doctor of the faith which is above all affirmed and guaranteed by the Lord.
But, it was just after having constituted him leader of the Church of the earth, with these magnificent words: "Blest are you, Simon son of John; you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church," that Jesus hurled at him other words, singularly harsh this time; it is exactly at the same part of his Gospel that Matthew reports them to us. The text concerning the you are Peter, which I have just commented on, is found in Chapter 16, verses 15 to 19. A verse further on (verse 21), the Evangelist continues: "From then on Jesus [the Messiah] started to indicate to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly there at the hands of the leaders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and to be put to death, and raised up on the third day. At this, Peter took him aside and began to remonstrate with him. 'May you be spared, Master! God forbid that any such thing ever happen to you!' Jesus turned on Peter and said, 'Get out of my sight, you Satan! You are trying to make me trip and fall." You are not judging by God's standards, but by man's.'"{l2}
What is more striking than the junction of these two texts in the Gospel! Only Jesus could speak in such terms to the future leader of his Church, because He is the Son of God, infinitely greater than every purus homo. St. Catherine of Sienna called the Pope "our gentle Christ on earth":{13} and who would begrudge a word of love its excess? The Pope is not Christ on earth, he is only his vicar there; and he is, alas, a man like us, although constantly aided from above in his mission. I do not think that what the Gospel signifies to us here relates to the human weakness to which Peter was exposed, -- the story of his three denials is quite sufficient for that. In taking into account the opposition which in reprimanding him Jesus makes between "man's standards" and "God's standards," it seems to me rather that that which is signified to us there relates to the dangers of every sovereignty here on earth, with the atmosphere of sycophancy, of authoritarianism and of love of prestige, of intrigues and of personal ambitions which it creates around it, in the ecclesiastical world no less than in the lay world.
The temporal power of the Papacy has made heavier this atmosphere. It was a historical necessity imposed by the defence of the independence of the Church against the incessant menaces of the princes and of the leaders of State (which had begun with the Emperor of Byzantium, then the Emperors of the West), but it put the Pope in the rank of the "powerful of the earth." There where I see especially the "man's standards" which clouded for a moment the mind of Peter, -- it is the court manners and the court mentality which have long reigned in Rome, and to which certain popes have shown themselves complacent. Since the end of the pontifical States things have improved. I take the liberty of adding that from this point of view there is still in Roman circles a good deal of progress to be made.
Here again is affirmed the primacy of Peter, and, this time, above all as Vicar of Christ and sovereign Pastor here on earth of the people of God. The Vicar of Christ and sovereign Pastor here on earth has not only supreme magisterium in matters of faith and of morals, he has also full and supreme authority of jurisdiction over the whole Church in order to direct and govern her amid the vicissitudes of history, and in the midst of the circumstances and contingencies of time, ceaselessly changing and requiring incessant particular decisions.
Nothing is more striking than the insistence with which Jesus Himself indicated the dependence in which this supreme authority, and all authority in the Church, finds itself with regard to the love of charity. The question addressed to Peter is posed three times. And no doubt this implies secretly, as Père Lagrange remarks{16} so to speak an echo of the three denials which Peter has certainly not forgotten (this is why, at the third question, "Peter was hurt"), -- and this is also a sign that they are entirely pardoned, and that the confidence of the Lord in His apostle is absolute. He asked the heavenly Father that the faith of Peter not fail, and He knows that His~ prayer has been heard.
~ L
But the insistence with which the question is put: do you love me? has above all as its aim to imprint in our minds this will of Christ that the love of charity, love of God above all, and fraternal love, be the essential character of authority in the Church. This is what the sovereign Master expects of His bishops and of His priests.
Authority in the temporal order as in the spiritual order is in order to serve the good and to assure the liberty of those who are subject to it. But in the spiritual order there is much more still: it is given by reason of the supernatural love of charity, and it is in this love that it has to exercise itself, in order to serve the eternal good of souls and in order to have them attain to the liberty of the sons of God.
2. The first of the three questions posed by the Lord was: "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?" It did not belong to Peter to know and to say whether he loved Jesus more than the other disciples, so he replied simply, humbly: "Yes, you know that I love you." But the "more than these" was in the question, and Jesus knew that it was implied in the answer, He Who knew the depth of hearts.
May I be permitted a short digression here. Peter loved Jesus more than these," -- more therefore than John himself, who was present at the conversation. And yet John, -- ille discipulus quem diligebat Jesus, qui et recubuit in coena super pectus ejus," -- John was "the disciple whom Jesus loved," that is to say loved more than all the others. Shall I venture, after the admirable considerations of St. Augustine on this subject,{17} to attempt to compare the love of Peter and the love of John?
It seems to me that it is fitting to distinguish between the most characteristic quality of a love and its degree of ardor or of intensity. For, as regards the most characteristic quality, there is toward God and His Christ a love which is above all total gift of self in which the Faith exults, and which I shall call love of devotion (then the soul gives itself up wholly to its love for Jesus). And there is, on the other hand, a love (more elevated than the first as to the most characteristic quality) in which, in addition to the devotion of the Faith, there blossom out the highest Gifts of the Holy Spirit, and which I shall call of mutual confidence and intimacy, or of mystical union (then the soul is completely given up to the sovereign love of Jesus for it). And Peter like John, John like Peter, had each a sublime Faith and lived each under the regime of the Gifts. But cannot one think that the charity of Peter was above all love of devotion, in which his Faith exulted, whereas the charity of John was above all love of mutual intimacy and mutual confidence, and mutual tenderness, in which the gift of Wisdom and the other contemplative Gifts blossomed out?
And if this is true, cannot one think also that the love of John was, considered in its most characteristic quality, or as love of~ mutual intimacy and mutual confidence and mutual tenderness, greater in ardor and intensity, and, if I may say, in immensity than the love of Peter? Whereas the love of Peter, considered in its most characteristic quality, or as love of devotion, was greater in ardor and intensity, and, if I may say, in immensity, than the love of John? Peter gave his life for Jesus; at Rome he "extended his arms" and suffered martyrdom; he wished (if this is a legend, it shows at least what memories the first Christians kept of him) to be crucified head downward. John was certainly altogether ready to be crucified for Him Whom he loved, -- Christ had expressly indicated His will, and that of the Father, that the occasion was not to be given to him.{19}
But it is a function of authority and of government, and of magisterium in the Faith, the function of supreme authority and government, and of supreme magisterium in the Faith over the Church of the earth, that Christ conferred on Peter. It was the greatest love of heroic devotion, which was required for this of the prince of the apostles, the most ardent love in which the Faith has ever exulted, together with the special help of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit that the exemplary exercise of such an authority called for in him.
"After he had washed their feet, he put his cloak back on and reclined at table once more. He said to them: 'Do you understand what I just did for you? You address me as 'Teacher' and 'Lord,' and fittingly enough, for that is what I am. But if I washed your feet -- I who am Teacher and Lord -- then you must wash each other's feet. What I just did was to give you an example: as I have done, so you must do.'"{21}
"You may not realize now what I am doing but later you will understand." These things, -- one is never finished understanding them, even after centuries. The second Council of the Vatican understood them in all truth, it had the assistance of the Holy Spirit. There are those who imagine, some in order to reproach the Council for it, others to congratulate it for it, that in recalling to mind that, in the Church, the more exalted one is in authority the more one must humble himself, through love, it meant that the more exalted one is in authority the more one must abdicate practically the latter, in falling into step with the good little or big lambs communitarianly gathered together whom one is thought to lead.
However it was in the very instant in which He had just washed their feet that Christ most clearly declared to His disciples His authority, over them, of Lord and of Master: ego Dominus et Magister. The matter has absolutely nothing to do with a juridical conception minimizing the role and the necessity of authority in the Church. It has everything to do with the inspiration which is in the heart of anyone who holds any authority in the Church, and, consequently, with the mode, -- humble and breathing brotherly love, even to the point of showing that one would willingly wash their feet, -- according to which this authority must exercise itself over those who are subject to it. The unction of good formulas certainly doesn't suffice for it. But if it is true love which is required, it is not for all that weakness.
As to those who are subject to authority, is it not desirable that for their part they do not think themselves dispensed from the duty of fraternal charity toward those who hold it? This would ease a little the difficulties of each day in which these latter are engaged.
"I solemnly assure you, history has not known a man born of woman greater than John the Baptizer. Yet the least born into the kingdom of God is greater than he. From John the Baptizer's time until now the kingdom of God has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force. All the prophets as well as the law spoke prophetically until John. If you are prepared to accept it, he is Elijah, the one who was certain to come. He who has ears to hear, let him hear."{22}
Who would dare to say that he has ears to hear? Commentators however have not been in short supply, and this text of the Gospel has given rise to many interpretations. I venture therefore, in spite of my bad ear, to advance in my turn an opinion. It seems to me that if John is less great than the least in the kingdom of Heaven, it is that being the last -- and the greatest -- of the prophets, he scarcely commenced to see himself, -- he died just at the threshold, -- the age which he predicted, and in which the Incarnate Son revealed the love of the Father.
It seems to me also (and it is this I wanted to come to) that if this Kingdom of God, which is "within you,"{23} suffers violence since the days of John the Baptist, it is because in order to enter into it it does not suffice to observe the Law; it is necessary also to pass beyond, by the violence of love. And if this is true of the Mosaic Law, it is also true, and more still, of the law, -- the universal divine law in all its rigor, -- which Jesus did not come to abolish, but to complete, and of which not one iota will pass away. In order to enter truly into the kingdom it is necessary and will always be necessary to force the gates of it by the violence of love.
"Jesus on the Cross, and very particularly at that moment of total dereliction, suffered the full rigor of the law of the transmutation of one nature into another -- as if he had not been God; it was his humanity as such, taken from the Virgin, which had to feel the full weight of this law. For the head must experience the law that he imposes on his members. Because, having assumed human nature, he had to experience this supreme law to which human nature, called to participate in the divine nature, is subject.
"And if he had not suffered from the rigor of this law, it would not have been possible to say that the Word took a heart like our own in order to feel for our sufferings.
This law of the transformation of natures -- which comprises in it all moral and divine laws -- is something necessary, physical, ontological if you like -- God himself cannot abolish it, just as he cannot produce the absurd.
"But this law -- the Law -- is not He -- He is Love. "So when a soul suffers, and suffers from this inexorable Law of transmutation of a nature into a higher nature (and this is the meaning of all human history) -- God is with this nature which he has made and which is suffering -- he is not against it. If he could transform that nature into his own by abolishing the law of suffering and death, he would abolish it -- because he takes no pleasure in the spectacle of pain and death. But he cannot abolish any law inscribed in being . . . .
"Thus Abraham, too, knew the hard law of the transformation of the natural man into the spiritual and divine man -- but with a wide zone of human liberty in which many laws, left in shadow by God, were put in parenthesis.
"And, as for us, he has revealed to us all the terrible demands of the divinization of man.
"But in order to reveal them to us, he came himself -- not with the blood of goats and bulls -- but with the Blood of Christ through which his Love for us is made visible.
"Thus the new Law is harsher than the old Law.
"But at the same time the love of God (which softens everything) is more widespread . . .
"The law -- all the laws -- having become so clearly, and so terribly visible, the face of the love of God thus risks being obscured.
"This is why it is more necessary than ever to distinguish between Love and the Law . . . :
"The law is just. The law is necessary -- with the very necessity of transformation for salvation, that is to say, for eternal life with God.
"But the law is not God.
"And God is not the Law. He is Love.
"If God has the face of the law for men -- men draw back because they feel that love is more than the law -- in this they are wrong only because they do not recognize the salutary necessity of the law.
"But the observation of the Law without love would be of no avail for salvation.
"And love can save a man even at the last second of a bad life -- if, in that second, the man has found the light of love perhaps if he has always believed that God is Love . . . .
"Law is, in a certain manner, opposed to love. God has made it insofar as he is the Creator of being. But insofar as he is our end and our beatitude, he calls us beyond it.
"The law is proposed externally, it implies a subjection -- in itself -- it seems to have nothing to do with mercy -- nor with the equality of friendship -- nor with familiarity.
"It is truly a necessity; only a necessity.
"Love gives over the head of the Law."{24}
Because the violence of love enables one to pass infinitely beyond the Law, right to the heart of subsisting Love.
{1} Cf. Ch. Journet, L'Église du Verbe Incarné, t. II, p. 163, note 1, apropos of Karl Barth. At the end of this particularly important note, Cardinal Journet writes: "The distinction which Scripture makes between that which we call the 'Christian spiritual' and the 'Christian temporal,' and which Barth notes, without being able to interpret fully the bearing of it, results from the distinction between, on the one hand, natural reason, which exists more or less impaired in the conscience of peoples, and, on the other hand, the order of the evangelical revelation, of which one of the tasks is to specify, to correct, to ratify, to purify the data of the natural order. As it sanctions the primary data of reason concerning the existence of God, because they are normally praeambula fidei christianae, Christianity sanctions likewise the data of reason concerning the order of cultural life, because they are normally praeambula vitae christianae."
{2} Cf. the beautiful book of Pè e Irénée Vallery-Radot, Le Prophète de l'Occident, Paris, Descl~e, 1969.
{3} I mean by this the Church of Christ come, founded and built by Him. She was preceded by thousands of centuries of human history. The Adamic state, which theologians call "the age of the Father," and which lasted from the creation of man to the Fall, was an age anterior to the Church. The latter began to sketch herself (as Church of Christ to come) only after the Fall; from that moment, indeed, and to begin by our first parents, man had to be redeemed by the grace of Christ, received at first, and during what an immense duration, by anticipation. From the point of view of the history of salvation, there have therefore been "the age of the awaited Son," with "the economy of the law of nature," followed by "the economy of the Mosaic Law," then "the age (very short in duration, but of an unparalleled importance) of the temporal presence of Christ," and finally "the age of the Holy Spirit," with the Church in her definitive status, or that which I call the Church of Christ come, which alone occupies me here. (Cf. Charles Journet, L'Église du Verbe Incarné, t. III.)
{4} Paul VI, Address to the General Audience of July 9, 1969 (Docum. Cath., August 1, 1969, p. 707).
{5} Matt. 16, 15-19. Heaven will declare bound or loosed that which Peter will have bound or loosed on earth. Cf. the Jerusalem Bible, note to this verse.
{6} Like every living organism. Cf. Ephes. 4, 15-16: "Through him the whole body grows, and with the proper functioning of the members joined firmly together by each supporting ligament, builds itself up in love."
{7} Cyprian, Epist. 73, c. 11 (quoted by H. de Lubac, La Foi chrétienne, 2nd ed., Paris, Aubier-Montaigne, 1970, p. 223).
{8} It is indeed clear that in this text of Matthew, as in the "feed my sheep" of John 21, 15-17, the words of Jesus aim not only at Peter but also at his successors, since it is a question of the Church of Christ whom the latter will build in the course of time, and in whom all along the course of the centuries that which will be bound or loosed on earth will be bound or loosed in Heaven, just as all along the course of the centuries Peter, in his successors, will feed in her the lambs and the sheep of the Lord.
{9} "Ego autem rogavi pro te ut non deficiat fides tua: et tu aliquando conversus confirma fratres tuos." Luke 22, 32.
{10} Let us quote here a text of St. Augustine to which Father de Lubac (op. cit., p. 224) refers apropos of the confession of Peter. It is taken from De Civitate Dei, 1. 8, c. 54, n. 1: "We therefore, who are Christians and whom one designates by this name, we do not believe in Peter, but in Him in whom Peter believed, and we are thus 'constructed' by the words of Peter announcing Christ." [Bibliothèque augustinienne t. 36, pp. 686-688 -- Tr.]
{11} Others translate: "you are an obstacle to me."
{12} Matt. 16, 21-23.
{13} Letter 185.
{14} One reads in the Vulgate: " . . . et filii Zebedaei, et alii ex discipulis ejus." Cf. M. J. Lagrange, L'Évangile de Jésus-Christ, Paris, J. Gabalda et Cie, 1948, p. 597, n. 1: "We think that 'the two other disciples,' at first unnamed, according to the discreet manner of John, were rightly explained as the sons of Zebedee in a gloss which afterwards passed into the text."
{15} John 21, 15-17.
{16} Op. cit., p. 600.
{17} John 21, 20.
{18} Cf. the Tractatus in Joannem.
{19} To Peter he had said: "I tell you solemnly: as a young man you fastened your belt and went about as you pleased; but when you are older you will stretch out your hands, and another will tie you fast and carry you off against your will" (John 21, 18). Of John he had said: "Suppose I want him to stay until I come, how does that concern you?" (John 21, 22. Which it is necessary to understand: until I come to take his soul with Me, when he will die in My love.).
{20} During the first course, which preceded the Pascal meal properly so called. Cf. Jerusalem Bible, Matt. 26, 21, note c.
{21} John 13, 4-7; 13, 12-15.
{22} Matt. 11, 11-15.
{23} Luke 17, 21.
{24} Journal de Râissa, pp. 365-366; 367-368; 369; 370: "Le Vrai Visage de Dieu ou l'Amour et la Loi." This text is reproduced in extenso at the end of The Peasant of the Garonne.