Pope Again Reaches Out to Orthodox Church

VATICAN CITY Pope John Paul II again reached out to the Orthodox Church on Sunday, saying his efforts at reconciliation weren't just "ecclesiastic courtesy" but a sign of his profound desire to unite the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches.

John Paul made the comments during his regular appearance to pilgrims and tourists in St. Peter's Square. Later Sunday, he welcomed a delegation from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople at a traditional Mass marking the feast day of St. Peter and St. Paul.

"The exchange of delegations between Rome and Constantinople, for the respective patron feasts, goes beyond just an act of ecclesiastic courtesy," the pontiff said. "It reflects the profound and rooted intention to re-establish the full communion between East and West."

John Paul has made improving relations with the Orthodox Church a hallmark of his nearly 25-year papacy, visiting several mostly Orthodox countries and expressing regret for the wrongs committed by the Catholic Church against Orthodox Christians.

Despite his efforts at healing the 1,000-year-old schism, he hasn't yet visited Russia because of objections from the Russian Orthodox Church.

During the Mass on Sunday, 42 new archbishops received the pallium, a band of white wool decorated with black crosses that symbolizes their bond with the Vatican. Two of the archbishops received the pallium in their home parishes; the rest took part in the Mass in St. Peter's Basilica.

from Russia and the Universal Church
by Vladimir Soloviev
(originally published in 1889)

Here is the second part of the classic of Soloviev in which he builds his "case" for the Papacy -- the heart of his book. Someday, God willing, I may make all of it available... but it is a true joy to present now this major portion. Pope John Paul II has said that the vision of Soloviev is "dear to my own heart." (How Soloviev might rejoice in this great Slavic Pope!)

PART TWO: THE ECCLESIASTICAL MONARCHY FOUNDED BY JESUS CHRIST

CHAPTERS (**use back button in browser to return here**)

OPENING COMMENTS OF PART TWO / I-THE ROCK OF THE CHURCH / II-THE PRIMACY OF PETER AS PERMANENT INSTITUTION, THE THREE ROCKS OF CHRISTENDOM / III-PETER AND SATAN / IV-THE CHURCH AS A UNIVERSAL SOCIETY. THE PRINCIPLE OF LOVE / V-THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM / VI-THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH. THE CENTER OF UNITY / VII-THE MONARCHIES FORETOLD BY DANIEL. 'ROMA' AND 'AMOR' / VIII-THE 'SON OF MAN' AND THE 'ROCK' / IX-ANCIENT AND MODERN WITNESS TO THE PRIMACY OF PETER / X-THE APOSTLE PETER AND THE KEYS -- XI-POPE ST. LEO THE GREAT ON THE PAPACY / XII-ST. LEO THE GREAT ON PAPAL AUTHORITY / XIII-THE APPROVAL OF ST. LEO'S IDEAS BY THE GREEK FATHERS. THE 'ROBBER COUNCIL' OF EPHESUS / XIV-THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON / FROM THE PREFACE: A PARABLE AND PROFESSION OF FAITH

Part Two: The Ecclesiastical Monarchy Founded by Jesus Christ

"Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, was one of the two who had heard what John said and had followed Jesus. He first found his brother Simon and said to him: We have found the Messiah (which means, the Anointed). And he brought him to Jesus. Jesus having looked upon him said: Thou art Simon, the son of Jona; thou shalt be called Cephas (which means, Rock)"
(John 1: 40-42).

The Greco-Russian Church, as we have seen, claims the special patronage of St. Andrew. The blessed apostle, inspired by goodwill towards his brother, brings him to the Lord and hears from the divine lips the first word of Simon's future destiny as the Rock of the Church. There is no indication in the Gospels or in the Acts of the Apostles that St. Andrew ever felt any envy towards St. Peter or questioned his primacy. It is because we would justify the claim of Russia to be the Church of St. Andrew that we shall try to imitate his example and to conceive the same spirit of goodwill and religious harmony towards the great Church which is especially connected with St. Peter.

This spirit will preserve us from local or national egotism, the source of so much error, and will enable us to examine the dogma of the Rock of the Church in the light of the very essence of the revelation of the God-Man, and so to discern in that revelation the eternal truths which this dogma expresses.

I--THE ROCK OF THE CHURCH

It would take too long to investigate here or even to enumerate all the existing doctrines and theories about the Church and its constitution. But anyone who is concerned to discover the plain truth about this fundamental problem of positive religion must be struck by the ease with which Providence has ordained that the truth may be learned. All Christians are in complete agreement on one point, namely that the Church was founded by Christ; the question is how and in what terms He founded it.

Now there is in the Gospels only one solitary text which mentions the founding of the Church in a direct, explicit and formal manner. This fundamental text becomes more and more clear as the Church itself grows and develops the permanent features of its organic structure; and nowadays the opponents of the truth can generally find no other way out but that of mutilating Christ's creative word in order to adapt it to their own sectarian standpoints (thus the text in question is mutilated even in the Orthodox Catechism of Mgr Philaret of Moscow).

"Jesus Christ, having come into the district of Caesarea Philippi, asked His disciples: Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?, And they answered Him: Some say, John the Baptist; others, Elijah; others again, Jeremiah or one of the prophets. He said to them: And who do you say that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said: Thou art the Christ, Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said to him: Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona, for it is not flesh and blood which have revealed it to thee, but My Father Who is in heaven. And I say to thee that thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build My Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." (Matt. 16: 13-I9).

The union of the Divine and the human, which is the goal of creation, was accomplished individually (or hypostatically) in the unique person of Jesus Christ, 'perfect God and perfect Man uniting the two natures in a perfect manner without confusion and without division (formula of Pope St Leo and the Council of Chalcedon). The historic work of God enters henceforward upon a new stage. It is no longer a matter of a physical and individual unity but of a moral and social union.

The God-Man desires to unite humanity with Himself in a perfect union. The human race is steeped in error and sin. How shall He set about it? Is He to approach each human soul separately and unite it to Himself by a purely interior and subjective bond? He answers, No: Oikodomhsw thn ekklhsia mou. 'I will build My Church.' It is a real objective work of which we are here told. But will He allow this work to be subject to all the divisions natural to the human race? Will He unite Himself to individual nations as such by giving them independent national Churches? No, He does not say: I will build My Churches, but: My Church.

Mankind united to God must form a single social structure and for this unity a solid basis must be found. Any genuine union is based on the mutual interaction of those who are united. The act of absolute truth which is revealed in the God-Man (or the perfect Man) must meet with the response of imperfect humanity in an act of irrevocable adherence which links us to the divine principle. God incarnate does not desire that His truth should be accepted in a passive and servile spirit.

In His new dispensation He asks of mankind a free act of recognition. But at the same time this free act must be absolutely true and infallible. Therefore there must be established in the midst of fallen humanity a single fixed and impregnable point on which the constructive activity of God may be directly based, a point at which human freedom shall coincide with divine Truth in a composite act absolutely human in its outward form but divinely infallible in its fundamental character.

In the creation of the individual physical humanity of Christ the act of the divine Omnipotence required for its realization only the supremely passive and receptive self surrender of feminine nature in the person of the Immaculate Virgin. The building up of the social or collective humanity of Christ, of His universal body, the Church, demands less and at the same time more than that: less, because the human foundation of the Church need not be represented by an absolutely pure and sinless individual, since there is no question in this case of creating a substantial and individual relation, or a hypo static and complete union, between two natures, but simply of forging a living moral bond.

If, however, this new link (the link between Christ and the Church) is less intimate and fundamental than the previous link (that between the Word of God and human nature in the womb of the Immaculate Virgin), it is humanly speaking more positive, and of more far-reaching influence: more positive, because this new bond between the Spirit and the Truth demands a virile will to respond to God's revelation and a virile intelligence to give a definite form to the truth which it accepts; moreover, this new link is of wider scope because, forming as it does the creative foundation of a collective entity, it cannot be confided to a personal relationship but must be extended through time as a permanent function of the society so formed.

It was necessary therefore to find in mankind as it is such a center of active coherence between the Divine and the human, which might form the base or rock foundation of the Christian Church. Jesus in His super-natural foreknowledge had already pointed out this rock. But in order to show us that His choice was free from all suspicion of arbitrariness, He begins by seeking elsewhere the human response to revealed truth.

He turns first of all to general public opinion; He wishes to see whether He cannot be recognized, accepted and acclaimed by the opinion of the mob, the voice of the people: For whom do men take Me? But Truth is ever one and the same, whereas the opinions of men are many and conflicting.

The voice of the people, which some claim to be the voice of God, only answered the question of the God-Man with its own erroneous and discordant opinions. There is no bond possible between Truth and such errors; mankind cannot enter into relation with God by the way of popular opinion; the Church of Christ cannot be founded on democracy.

Having questioned popular opinion and failed to find there man's response to divine truth, Jesus Christ turns to His chosen, the college of the Apostles, that first of all ecumenical councils: "Vos autem quem me esse dicitis? And for whom do you take Me?"

But the Apostles are silent. The moment before, when asked for the opinions of men, the twelve all spoke together: why do they leave the word to one of their number when it is a question of asserting divine truth? Possibly they are not quite agreed among themselves; possibly Philip does not perceive the essential relation of Jesus to the heavenly Father; possibly Thomas is doubtful of the Messianic power of his Master. The last chapter of St. Matthew tells us that even on the Galilean mountain, whither they were summoned by Jesus after His resurrection, the Apostles did not show themselves unanimous and firm in their faith: quidam autem dubitaverunt (Matt. 28: 17).

If it is to bear unanimous witness to the pure and simple truth, the council must be in absolute agreement. The decisive act must be an entirely individual act, the act of a single person. It is neither the multitude of the faithful nor the apostolic council but Simon Bar-Jona alone who answers Jesus. "Respondens Simon Petrus dixit: Tu es Filius Dei vivi." (Peter replied: Thou art the Son of the Living God)

He replies for all the Apostles, but he speaks on his own responsibility without consulting them or waiting for their consent.

When the Apostles had repeated a moment before the opinions of the crowd which followed Jesus they had only repeated what were errors; if Simon had only wished to voice the opinions of the Apostles, he would possibly not have reached the pure and simple truth.

But he followed his own spiritual impulse, the voice of his own conscience; and Jesus in pronouncing His solemn approval declared that this impulse for all its individual character came nevertheless from His heavenly Father, that it was an act both divine and human, a real co-operation between the absolute Being and the relative subject.

The fixed point, the impregnable rock has been discovered whereon to base the divine-human activity. The organic foundation of the universal Church is found in a single man who, with the divine assistance, answers for the whole world. It is fixed neither upon the impossible unanimity of all believers nor upon the inevitably hazardous agreement of a council, but upon the real and living unity of the prince of the Apostles.

And henceforward every time that the question of truth is put to Christian humanity, it will not be from the voice of the masses nor from the opinion of the elect that the fixed and final answer will come. The arbitrary opinions of men will only give rise to heresies; and the hierarchy separated from its center and abandoned to the mercy of the secular power will refrain from speaking or will speak through such councils as the robber-council of Ephesus. Only in union with the rock on which it is founded will the Church be able to assemble true councils and define the truth by authoritative formulas.

This is no mere opinion; it is a historic fact of such impressiveness that on the most solemn occasions it has been averred by the Eastern bishops themselves for all their jealousy of the successors of St. Peter. Not only was the wonderful dogmatic treatise of Pope St. Leo the Great recognized by the Greek Fathers of the fourth ecumenical Council as a work of Peter, but it was also to Peter that the sixth Council attributed the letter of Pope Agatho, who was far from having the same personal authority that Leo had. 'The head and prince of the Apostles,' declared the Eastern Fathers, 'fought with us ... The ink (of the letter) was plain to see and Peter spoke through Agatho.' (Kai melan efaineto, kai di agaqwnoV o PetroV efqeggeto) (Mansi, Concil. xi. 658)

Otherwise, if apart from Peter the universal Church can expressly declare the truth, how are we to explain the remarkable silence of the Eastern episcopate (notwithstanding that they have kept the apostolic succession) since their separation from the Chair of St. Peter? Can it be merely an accident? An accident lasting for a thousand years!

To anti-Catholics who will not see that their particularism cuts them off from the life of the universal Church we have only one suggestion to make: Let them summon, without the concurrence of the successor of St. Peter, a council which they themselves can recognize as ecumenical! Then only will there be an opportunity of discovering whether they are right.

Wherever Peter does not speak, it is only the opinions of men that find utterance--and the Apostles are silent. But Jesus Christ did not commend the vague and contradictory opinions of the mob nor the silence of His chosen disciples; it was the unwavering, decisive and authoritative utterance of Simon Bar-Jona upon which He set the seal of His approval. Clearly this utterance which satisfied our Lord needed no human ratification; it possessed absolute validity "etiam sine consensu Ecclesiae" ("even without the consent of the Church," the formula of the last Council of the Vatican).

It was not by means of a general consultation but (as Jesus Christ Himself bore witness) with the direct assistance of the heavenly Father that Peter formulated the fundamental dogma of our religion; and his word defined the faith of Christians by its own inherent power, not by the consent of others--"ex sese, non autem ex consensu Ecclesiae" ("of itself, and not from the consent of the Church" from Vatican I definition).

In contrast to the uncertain opinions of men, the word of Peter represents the stability and unity of the true faith; in contrast to the narrow national ideas of the Messiah to which the Apostles gave utterance, his word expresses the Messianic idea in its absolute and universal form. The idea of the Messiah which had sprung from the soil of Jewish national consciousness is already in the visions of the post-exilic prophets growing too large for these limits.

But the true meaning of these mysterious and enigmatic visions was hardly divined by the inspired writers themselves, while Jewish public opinion remained exclusively nationalistic and could see no more in Christ than a great national prophet such as Elijah, Jeremiah or John the Baptist or at the most an all-powerful dictator, liberator and leader of the chosen people such as Moses or David.

This was the highest idea which the mob which followed Jesus held of Him; and we know that even His chosen disciples shared these popular notions up to the end of His earthly life (Luke 24:19-21). Only in Peter's confession does the Messianic idea emerge freed from all its nationalistic trappings and invested for the first time in its final and universal form. "Thou art the Christ, Son of the living God." Here is no question of a national king or prophet; the Messiah is not a second Moses or David. Henceforward he bears the unique name of Him Who, though He is the God of Israel, is none the less the God of all the nations.

Peter's confession transcended Jewish nationalism and inaugurated the Universal Church of the New Covenant.

II--THE PRIMACY OF PETER AS A PERMANENT INSTITUTION, THE THREE ROCKS OF CHRISTENDOM

"And I say unto thee that thou art Peter..." Of the three attributes represented in this crucial passage as belonging by divine right to the prince of the apostles -- (1) the call to be the foundation of the Church by the infallible confession of the truth, (2) the possession of the power of the keys, (3) the power of binding and loosing--it is only the last that he shares with the other Apostles.

All Orthodox Christians are agreed that the apostolic power of binding and loosing was not conferred upon the Twelve as private individuals or in the sense of a temporary privilege, but that it is the genuine source and origin of a perpetual priestly authority which has descended from the Apostles to their successors in the hierarchy, the bishops and priests of the Universal Church.

But if this is true, then neither can the two former attributes connected particularly with St. Peter in a still more solemn and significant manner be individual or accidental prerogatives; the less so, in that it was with the first of these prerogatives that our Lord expressly connected the permanence and stability of His Church in its future struggle against the powers of evil.

If the power of binding and loosing conferred on the Apostles is not a mere metaphor nor a purely personal and temporary attribute, if it is on the contrary the actual living germ of a universal permanent institution comprising the Church's whole existence, how can St. Peter's own special prerogatives, announced in such explicit and solemn terms, be regarded as barren metaphors or as personal and transitory privileges? Ought not they also to refer to some fundamental and permanent institution, of which the historic personality of Simon Bar-Jona is but the outstanding and typical representative?

The God-Man did not establish ephemeral institutions. In His chosen disciples He saw, through and beyond all that was mortal and individual, the enduring principles and types of His work. What He said to the college of the Apostles included the whole priestly order, the teaching Church in its entirety. The sublime words which He addressed to Peter alone created in the person of this one Apostle the undivided sovereign authority possessed by the Universal Church throughout the whole of its life and development in future ages.

The fact that Christ did not see fit to make the formal foundation of His Church and the guarantee of its permanence dependent on the common authority of all the Apostles (for He did not say to the apostolic college: 'On you I will build My Church') surely goes to show that our Lord did not regard the episcopal and priestly order, represented by the Apostles in common, as sufficient in itself to form the impregnable foundation of the Universal Church in her inevitable struggle against the gates of hell. In founding His visible Church Jesus was thinking primarily of the struggle against evil and in order to ensure for His creation that unity which is strength, He crowned the hierarchy with a single, central institution, absolutely indivisible and independent, possessing in its own right the fullness of authority and of promise: 'Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church: and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it'.

All arguments in support of the supreme central authority of the Universal Church would in our view have but little weight if they were only arguments. But they rest upon a divine-human fact which remains essential to the Christian faith despite all the artificial interpretations by which men have attempted to suppress it.

It is not for us to demonstrate the abstract necessity of an institution to which Christ has given a living actuality. The arguments of Eastern theologians demonstrating that the whole hierarchical system is essential to the Church would not suffice to convince us, were it not for the original fact recorded in the Gospels, namely the choice of the twelve Apostles to teach all nations to the end of time. Similarly, when we wish to prove that an indivisible center is essential to this same hierarchy, it is the fact of the special choice of Peter to serve as a human point d'appui for the divine truth in its constant struggle against the gates of hell-it is the fact of this unique choice which provides a firm foundation for all our arguments.

If 'the Church' is taken to mean the perfect union of mankind with God, the absolute reign of love and truth, then there is no place in the Church for any power or authority. All the members of this heavenly Kingdom are priests and kings and, as such, equal with one another, and the one and only center of unity is Jesus Christ Himself But it is not in this sense that we speak of the Church, for it is not in this sense that Christ spoke of it. The perfect Church, the Church triumphant, the kingdom of glory -- all this implies that the power of evil and the gates of hell are finally vanquished, and yet it is to contend with the gates of hell that Christ builds His visible Church and gives it a center of unity which is human and earthly, though always divinely assisted.

If we would avoid the two opposite pitfalls of blind materialism and ineffectual idealism, we must admit that the needs of actual existence and the demands of the ideal coincide and harmonize in the order established by God. In order to show forth in the Church the ideal of harmony among men, Jesus Christ founded as the prototype of conciliar government the college or original council of the twelve Apostles equal with one another and united by brotherly love.

In order that this ideal unity might be effectually realized in every age and place, that the council of the hierarchy might always and everywhere prevail over discord and gather up the multiplicity of private opinions into uniform public decrees, that discussion might issue in the living manifestation of the unity of the Church, secure from the hazards to which the assemblies of men are exposed--in a word, that His Church might not be built upon shifting sands, the divine Architect revealed the firm impregnable Rock of ecclesiastical monarchy and set up the ideal of unanimity while basing it upon an actual living authority.

Christ, we are told, is the Rock of the Church. That is true; no Christian has ever disputed it. But it is hard to see the reasonableness, even if we admit the sincerity, of those who in their zeal to defend Christ from an imaginary insult persist in ignoring His express will and in repudiating the order which He established in so explicit a manner. For He not only declared that Simon, one of His Apostles, was the Rock of His Church, but in order to impress this new truth more forcibly upon us and to make it more evident and striking, He gave to Simon a distinctive and permanent name derived from this very call to be the Rock of the Church.

We have here, then, two equally indisputable truths: Christ is the Rock of the Church, and Simon Bar-Jona is the Rock of the Church. But the contradiction, if there be one, does not stop here. For we find this very Simon Peter, despite the fact that he alone received from Christ this unique prerogative, declaring in one of his epistles that all thefaithful are living stones in the divine-human building (1 Pet 2: 4,5).

Jesus is the one and only Rock of the Church; but, if we are to believe Jesus, the prince of the Apostles is the Rock of His Church par excellence; and again, if we would believe Peter, every true believer is the Rock of the Church.

Confronted with the apparent inconsistency of these truths, it is enough for us to observe their actual agreement in logic. Jesus Christ, the unique Rock of the Kingdom of God on the purely religious and mystical plane, sets up the prince of the Apostles and his permanent authority as the fundamental Rock of the Church in the social order for the Christian community; and each member of this community, united to Christ and abiding in the order established by Him, becomes an organic individual element, a living stone of this Church whose mystical and (for the time being) invisible foundation is Jesus Christ, and whose social and visible foundation is the monarchical power of Peter.

The essential distinction between these three factors only serves to throw into stronger relief the intimate connection between them in the Church's actual existence, in which Christ, Peter, and the multitude of the faithful each play an essential part. The notion of such a threefold relationship can appear inconsistent only to those who presuppose such inconsistency by interpreting the three fundamental factors in an absolute and exclusive sense which is entirely inappropriate to them.

What they forget is that the expression, 'rock (i.e. foundation) of the Church' is a relative expression, and that Christ can only be the Rock of the Church in that definite union of Himself with mankind which forms the Church; and since this union is primarily brought about in the social order through a central point of contact which Christ Himself associated with St. Peter, it is obvious that these two Rocks--the Messiah and His chief Apostle--so far from being mutually exclusive, are simply two inseparable factors in a unique relationship.

As regards the rock or stones of the third order--the multitude of the faithful -- though it is said that each believer may become a living stone of the Church, it is not said that he may do so by himself or in separation from Christ and the fundamental authority set up by Him.

The foundation of the Church, speaking in general terms, is the union of the Divine and the human. This foundation (the Rock) we find in Jesus Christ inasmuch as He unites the Godhead hypostatically with sinless human nature; we find it also in every true Christian inasmuch as he is united to Christ by the sacraments, by faith and by good works.

But is it not clear that these two modes of union between the Divine and the human (the hypostatic union in the person of Christ, and the individual union of the believer with Christ) are not in themselves sufficient to constitute the specific unity of the Church in the strict sense of the word -- that is, as a social and historic entity? The incarnation of the Word is a mystical fact and not a social principle; nor does the individual religious life provide an adequate basis for Christian society; man may remain alone in the desert and live a life of holiness.

And yet if in the Church, besides the mystical life and the individual life, there exists the social life, this social life must have a definite form based upon a unifying principle peculiar to itself. When we maintain that this specific principle of social unity in the Church is in the first place neither Jesus Christ nor the mass of the faithful but the monarchical authority of Peter, by means of which Jesus Christ has willed to unite Himself to man as a social and political being, we find our opinion confirmed by the remarkable fact that only in the case of the prince of the Apostles has the attribute of being the Rock of the Church carried with it the tide to a distinctive and permanent name. He alone is the Rock of the Church in the special and strict sense of the term, that is to say, the unifying basis of the historic Christian society.

Three times only in the whole of sacred history recorded in the two Testaments did it happen that the Lord Himself changed a man's name. When Abraham by an act of unlimited faith vowed himself to the living God, God changed his name and pronounced him to be the father of all believers ('father of the multitude'). When Jacob in that mysterious struggle pitted the whole spiritual energy of man against the living God, God gave him a new name which marked him out as the direct parent of that peculiar and unique race which has striven and still strives with its God.

When Simon Bar-Jona, the descendant of Abraham and Jacob, combined in himself the powerful initiative of the human soul and the infallible assistance of the heavenly Father in the affirmation of the divine-human truth, the God-Man changed his name and set him at the head of the new believers and the new Israel.

Abraham, the type of primitive theocracy, represents humanity in devotion and self-surrender to God; Jacob, the type of the national theocracy of the Jews, represents humanity beginning its struggle with God; and lastly Simon Peter, the type of universal and final theocracy, represents humanity making its response to its God, freely avowing Him and cleaving to Him in mutual and indissoluble adherence.

That boundless faith in God which made Abraham the father of all believers was in Peter united to that active assertion of the power of man which distinguished Jacob-Israel; the prince of the Apostles reflected in the earthly mirror of his soul that harmony between the Divine and the human which he saw brought to perfection in his Master; and he became thereby the first-born and principal heir of the God-Man, the spiritual father of the new Christian race, the foundation-stone of that Universal Church which is the fulfillment and perfection of the religion of Abraham and of the theocracy of Israel.

III--PETER AND SATAN

It was not Simon's apostleship that involved his change of name, for the change, though already predicted, was not made at the time of the choice and solemn sending forth of the Twelve. All with the single exception of Simon retained their own names in the apostleship; none of them received from our Lord a new and permanent title of wider or higher significance. (I am not speaking of surnames or of casual, incidental epithets such as that of Boanerges, given to John and James).

Apart from Simon, all the Apostles are distinguished from one another solely by their natural characteristics, their individual qualities and destinies as well as by the varieties and shades of personal feeling shown towards them by their Master. On the other hand, the new and significant name which Simon alone receives in addition to the apostleship shared by all, indicates no natural trait in his character, no personal affection felt for him by our Lord, but refers solely to the special place which the son of Jona is called to fill in the Church of Christ. Our Lord did not say to him: Thou art Peter because I prefer thee to the others, or because by nature thou hast a firm and stable character (which, incidentally, would hardly have been borne out by the facts), but: Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build My Church.

Peter's confession, which by a spontaneous and infallible act of allegiance established the bond between mankind and Christ and founded the free Church of the New Covenant, was not just a piece of characteristic behavior on his part. Nor can it have been a casual and momentary spiritual impulse. For is it conceivable that such an impulse or moment of enthusiasm should involve not merely a change of name for Simon as for Abraham and Jacob in times past, but also the prediction of that change long previously as something which would infallibly come about and which held a prominent place in our Lord's plans?

Was there in fact any part of the work of the Messiah more solemn than the foundation of the Universal Church which is expressly connected with Simon under his new name of Peter? Moreover the notion that the first dogmatic decree of St. Peter came from him merely in his capacity as an individual human being is totally excluded by the direct and explicit witness of Christ: It is not flesh and blood which have revealed it to thee, but My Father Who is in heaven.

This confession of Peter's is then an act sui generis, an act whereby the moral being of the Apostle entered into a special relationship with the Godhead; it was this relationship which enabled human utterance to declare infallibly the absolute truth of the Word of God and to create an impregnable foundation for the Universal Church.

And as though to remove all possible doubt on the subject, the inspired record of the Gospel at once goes on to show us this very Simon, whom Jesus has just declared to be the Rock of the Church and the key-bearer of the Kingdom of Heaven, forthwith left to his own resources and speaking--with the best intentions in the world no doubt, but without the divine assistance--under the influence of his own individual and uninspired personality. 'And thereafter Jesus began to show His disciples that He must needs go to Jerusalem and suffer much at the hands of the elders and the scribes and the chief priests and be put to death and rise again the third day. And Peter, taking Him aside, began to rebuke Him, saying: Far be it from Thee, Lord; this shall not happen unto Thee. And turning about He said to Peter: Get thee behind Me, Satan, thou art an offence unto Me, for thou understandest not that which is of God, but that which is of men' (Matt. 16: 21-23).

Are we to follow our Greco-Russian controversialists in placing this text in opposition to the one before it and so make Christ's words cancel one another out? Are we to believe that the incarnate Truth changed His mind so quickly and revoked in a moment what He had only just announced? And yet on the other hand how are we to reconcile 'Blessed' and 'Satan'? How is it conceivable that he who is for our Lord Himself a 'rock of offence' should yet be the Rock of His Church which the gates of hell cannot shake? Or that one who thinks only the thoughts of men can receive the revelation of the heavenly Father and can hold the keys of the Kingdom of God?

There is only one way to harmonize these passages which the inspired Evangelist has with good reason placed side by side. Simon Peter as supreme pastor and doctor of the Universal Church, assisted by God and speaking in the name of all, is the faithful witness and infallible exponent of divine-human truth; as such he is the impregnable foundation of the house of God and the key-bearer of the Kingdom of Heaven.

The same Simon Peter as a private individual, speaking and acting by his natural powers and merely human intelligence, may say and do things that are unworthy, scandalous and even diabolical. But the failures and sins of the individual are ephemeral, while the social function of the ecclesiastical monarch is permanent. 'Satan' and the 'offence' have vanished, but Peter has remained.

IV--THE CHURCH AS A UNIVERSAL SOCIETY. THE PRINCIPLE OF LOVE

Since the existence of every human society is determined by its ideals and institutions, it follows that social progress and well-being depend primarily on the truth of the predominant ideals of the society and on the good order which prevails in its administration. The Church as a society directly willed and founded by God must possess these two qualities to an outstanding degree: the religious ideals which she professes must be infallibly true; and her constitution must combine the greatest stability with the greatest capacity for action in any direction desired.

The Church is above all a society founded on Truth. The basic truth of the Church is the union of the Divine and the human in the Word made Flesh, the recognition of the Son of Man as the Christ, the Son of the living God. Therefore in its purely objective aspect the Rock of the Church is Christ Himself, Truth incarnate. But if she is to be actually founded on the truth, the Church as a human society must be united to this truth in a definite manner.

Since in this world of appearances truth has no existence which is directly manifest or externally necessary, man can only establish contact with it through faith which links us to the interior substance of things and presents to our intelligence all that is not externally visible.

From the subjective point of view, then, it may be asserted that it is faith which constitutes the basis or 'rock' of the Church. But what faith, and on whose part? The mere fact of a subjective faith on the part of such and such a person is not sufficient. Individual faith of the strongest and most sincere kind may put us in touch not only with the invisible substance of Truth and the Sovereign Good but also with the invisible substance of evil and falsehood, as is abundantly proved by the history of religion. If man is to be truly linked by faith to the desirable object of faith, namely, absolute truth, he must be conformed to this truth.

The truth of the God-Man, that is to say, the perfect and living union of the Absolute and the relative, of the Infinite and the finite, of the Creator and the creature -- this supreme truth cannot be limited to a historic fact, but reveals through that fact a universal principle which contains all the riches of wisdom and embraces all in its unity.

Since the objective truth of faith is universal and the true subject of faith must be conformed to its object, it follows that the subject of true religion is necessarily universal. Real faith cannot belong to man as an isolated individual but only to mankind as a complete unity; and the individual can only share in it as a living member of the universal body.

But since no real and living unity has been bestowed on the human race in the physical order, it must be created in the moral order. The limits of natural egoism, of finite individuality with its exclusive self-assertion, must be burst by love which renders man conformable to God Who is Love. But this love which is to transform the discordant fragments of the human race into a real and living unity, the Universal Church, cannot be a mere vague, subjective and ineffectual sentiment; it must be translated into a consistent and definite activity which shall give the inner sentiment its objective reality.

What then is the actual object of this active love? Natural love, which has for its object those beings who are nearest to us, creates a real collective unity, the family; the wider natural love which has for its object all the people of one country or one tongue creates a more extensive and more complex, but equally real, collective unity, the city, state or nation. (The fact of dwelling in the same country or speaking a common language is not sufficient in itself to produce the unity of the fatherland; that is impossible without patriotism, that is to say without a specific love).

The love which is to create the religious unity of the human race, or the Universal Church, must surpass the bounds of nationality and have for its object the sum total of mankind. But since the active relationship between the sum total of the human race and the individual finds no basis in the latter in any natural sentiment analogous to that which animates the family or the fatherland, it is (for the individual subject) inevitably reduced to the purely moral essence of love, that is, to the free and conscious surrender of the will and the individual egoism of family or nation.

Love for one's family or for one's country are primarily natural facts which may secondarily produce moral acts; love for the Church is essentially a moral act, the act of submitting the particular will to the universal will. But the universal will, if it is to be anything more than a fiction, must be continually realized in a definite being. The will of all humanity is not a real unity, since all men are not in direct agreement with one another; some means of harmonizing them must therefore be found, that is to say, one single will capable of unifying all the others.

Each individual must be able to unite himself effectively with the whole of the human race (and thus give positive witness to his love for the Church) by linking his will to a unique will, no less real and living than his own, but at the same time a will which is universal and to which all other wills must be equally subject. But a will is inconceivable apart from one who wills and expresses his will; and inasmuch as all are not directly one, we have no choice but to unite ourselves to all in the person of one individual if we would share in the true universal faith.

Since each individual man cannot be the proper subject of universal faith any more than can the whole of mankind in its natural state of division, it follows that this faith must be manifested in a single individual, representative of the unity of all.

Each individual, by taking this truly universal faith as the criterion of his own faith, makes a real act of submission to, or love for, the Church, an act which makes him conformable to the universal truth revealed to the Church.

In loving all in one individual (since it is impossible to love them otherwise) each one shares in the faith of all, defined by the divinely assisted faith of a single individual; and this enduring bond, this unity so wide and yet so stable, so living and yet so unchanging, makes the Universal Church a collective moral entity, a true society far more extensive and more complex but no less real than nation or state.

Love for the Church is manifested in a constant adherence to her will and her living thought represented by the public acts of the supreme ecclesiastical authority. This love which is originally nothing but an act of pure morality, the fulfillment of a duty on principle (obedience to the categorical imperative, according to ' the Kantian terminology) can and must become the source of sentiments and affections no less strong than filial love or patriotism.

Those who agree with us in founding the Church upon love and yet see world-wide ecclesiastical unity only in a fossilized tradition which for eleven centuries has lost all means of actual self-expression, should bear in mind that it is impossible to love with a living and active love what is simply an archeological relic, a remote fact, such as the seven ecumenical councils, which is absolutely unknown to the masses and can only appeal to the learned. Love for the Church has no real meaning except for those who recognize perpetually in the Church a living representative and a common father of all the faithful, capable of being loved as a father is loved in his family or the head of the state in a kingdom.

It is of the nature of truth to draw into a harmonious unity the manifold elements of reality. This formal characteristic belongs to the supreme truth, the truth of the God-Man, which embraces in its absolute unity all the fullness of divine and human life. The Church which is a collective being aspiring to perfect unity must correspond to Christ the one Being and Center of all beings. And inasmuch as this interior and perfect unity of all is not realized, inasmuch as the faith of each individual is not yet in itself the faith of all, inasmuch as the unity of all is not directly manifested by each, it must be brought about by means of a single individual.

The universal truth perfectly realized in the single person of Christ draws to itself the faith of all, infallibly defined by the voice of a single individual, the Pope. Outside this unity, as we have seen, the opinion of the masses may be mistaken and the faith even of the elect may remain in suspense. But it is neither false opinion nor a vacillating faith, but a definite and infallible faith which unites mankind to the divine truth and forms the impregnable foundation of the Universal Church.

This foundation is the faith of Peter living in his successors, a faith which is personal that it may be manifest to men, and which is (by divine assistance) superhuman that it may be infallible. We shall not cease to challenge those who deny the necessity of such a permanent center of unity to point to any living unity in the Universal Church apart from it, to produce apart from it a single ecclesiastical act which concerns the whole of Christendom, or to give without appealing to it a decisive and authoritative reply to a single one of the questions which divide the consciences of Christians. It is of course obvious that the present successors of the Apostles at Constantinople or at St. Petersburg are imitating the silence of the Apostles themselves at Casarea Philippi.

To summarize shortly the foregoing reflections: The Universal Church is founded on truth affirmed by faith. Truth being one, true faith must be one also. And since this unity of faith has no present and immediate existence among the whole mass of believers (for in religious matters all are not unanimous) it must reside in the lawful authority of a single head, guaranteed by divine assistance and accepted by the love and confidence of all the faithful. That is the rock on which Christ has founded His Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

V-THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM

It seems as if Jesus wished to leave no possible doubt as to the intent and bearing of His words regarding the rock of the Church. He therefore completed them by explicitly committing the power of the keys and the supreme government of His Kingdom to that fundamental authority of the Church which He established in the person of Simon Peter. 'And I will give thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven.'

And here we must first of all clear tip a contradiction which our 'orthodox' controversialists ascribe to Jesus Christ. In order to eliminate as far as possible the distinction between Peter and the other Apostles it is asserted that the power of the keys is nothing else but the power of binding and loosing; after saying 'I will give thee the keys', Jesus is supposed to have repeated the same promise in other words.

But in speaking of keys the words 'shut' and 'open' should have been used and not 'bind' and 'loose', as in fact (to confine ourselves solely to the New Testament) we read in the Apocalypse: 'He who has the key of David, who opens and no one shuts, and shuts and no one opens' - Apoc. 3: 7.)

A room, a house or a city may be shut and opened, but only particular beings or objects situated within the room or house or city can be bound and unbound. The Gospel passage in question is a metaphor, but a metaphor is not necessarily an absurdity. The symbol of the keys of the Kingdom (of the royal dwelling--beth-ha-melek) must necessarily represent a wider and more general authority than the symbol of binding and loosing.

The special power of binding and loosing having been bestowed upon Peter in the same terms as those in which it was conferred later on the other Apostles (Matt.18: 8), it is plain from the context of the latter chapter that this lesser power only concerns individual cases ('if thy brother sin against thee', etc.), which is in entire agreement with the sense of the metaphor used in the Gospel.

Only personal problems of conscience and the direction of individual souls fall under the authority to bind and loose which was given to the other Apostles after Peter; whereas the power of the keys of the Kingdom conferred solely on Peter can only refer to the whole of the Church (if we are to follow not only the exact sense of our text but general Biblical analogy) and must denote a supreme social and political authority, the general administration of the Kingdom of God on earth. The life of the Christian soul must neither be separated from the organization of the Universal Church nor confused with it. They are two different orders of things though closely interconnected.

Just as the teaching of the Church is no mere compound of personal beliefs, so the government of the Church cannot be reduced to the direction of individual consciences or of private morality. Founded on unity of faith, the Universal Church as a real and living social organism must also display unity of action sufficient to react successfully at every moment of her historic existence against the combined attacks of those hostile forces which would divide and destroy her.

Unity of action for a vast and complicated social organism implies a whole system of organic functions subordinate to a common center which can set them in motion in the direction desired at any given moment. As the unity of the orthodox faith is finally guaranteed by the dogmatic authority of a single individual speaking for all, so unity of ecclesiastical action is necessarily conditioned by the directing authority of a single individual bearing sway over the whole Church.

But in the One Holy Church, founded upon truth, government cannot be separated from doctrine; and the central and supreme power in the ecclesiastical sphere can only belong to him who by divinely aided authority represents and displays in the religious sphere the unity of true faith.

This is why the keys of the Kingdom have been given to none other than him who is by his faith the Rock of the Church.

VI--THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH. THE CENTER OF UNITY

The Church is not only the perfect union of mankind with God in Christ, but it is also the social order established by the Divine Will in which and through which this union of the Divine and the human may be accomplished. Founded on eternal Truth, the Church is not only the perfect Life (in the future) but it has also always been in the past and still is in the present the Way which leads to this ideal perfection.

Man's social existence upon earth cannot be excluded from the new union of the human and the Divine which is accomplished in Christ. If the elements even of our material life are transformed and sanctified in the sacraments, how can the social and political order, which is an essential form of human existence, be left a prey to the warfare of selfish ambitions, the clash of murderous passions and the conflict of erroneous opinions?

Since man is essentially a social being, the ultimate aim of the working of God in mankind is the creation of a perfect universal society. But it is not a creation ex nihilo; for the material of the perfect society is given us, namely society in its imperfect state, mankind as it is; and this is neither excluded nor suppressed by the Kingdom of God but drawn into the sphere of the Kingdom, to be regenerated, sanctified and transfigured.

The religion which seeks to bind man's individual being to Christ is not content with an invisible and purely spiritual communion; it desires that man should communicate with his God throughout his entire being, even by the physical act of feeding. In this mystical but real communion the matter of the sacrament is not simply destroyed and annihilated, it is transubstantiated, that is to say, the 'interior and invisible substance of the bread and wine is lifted into the sphere of Christ's ascended bodily nature and absorbed by it, while the phenomenal reality or outward appearance of these objects remains without sensible change that they may act in the given conditions of our physical existence and so establish a link between that existence and the Body of God.

So also must the collective, common life of mankind be mystically transubstantiated while retaining the species or outward forms of earthly society, and these very forms must be duly ordained and consecrated to serve as the actual foundation and visible instruments of the social activity of Christ in His Church.

The ultimate aim of the work of God in mankind, regarded from the Christian standpoint, is not the manifestation of the divine power--that is the Moslem conception -- but the free, mutual union of mankind with God. And the proper means of accomplishing this work is not the hidden operation of Providence aiding individuals and nations by unknown ways to uncomprehended ends; such a purely and exclusively supernatural operation, though always necessary, is not sufficient in itself.

Moreover, since the actual historic union of God and Man in Christ, Man must himself play a positive part in his appointed destiny and as a social being communicate in the life of Christ. But if mortal men here below are actually to have a real share in the invisible and supernatural government of Christ, then that government must assume visible and natural social forms.

Some social institution, whose origin, end and powers are divine, while its means of action are human and adapted to the needs of historic existence, is essential to represent and minister to the perfection of divine grace and truth in Jesus Christ that this perfection may operate in, and co-operate with, imperfect human nature.

If the Church is to guide the common life of mankind towards the goal of divine love, and to direct public opinion on the road to divine truth she must possess a universal government divinely authorized. This government must be clearly defined so as to be recognizable to all, and permanent so as to form a standing court of appeal; it must be divine in substance so as to be finally binding upon the religious conscience of every instructed and well-intentioned person, and it must be human and imperfect in its historic manifestation so as to admit the possibility of moral resistance and allow room for doubts, struggle, temptations and all that constitutes the merit of free and genuinely human virtue.

Though the supreme authority of the Church may admit of various administrative forms according to differences of time and place, yet if it is to form the primary basis of union between the social conscience of mankind and the providential government of God and to share in the divine Majesty while adapting itself to the realities of human life, it must always as the center of unity preserve its purely monarchical character. if the supreme authority of the Universal Church were vested solely in the collective administration of a council, the unity of her human activity linking her to the absolute unity of divine truth could only be based on one of two things: either on the perfect unanimity of all its members, or else on a majority of opinions, as in secular assemblies.

The latter supposition is incompatible with the majesty of God, Who would be obliged constantly to accommodate His will and His truth to the chance convergences of human opinion and the interplay of human passions. As for unanimity or complete and permanent harmony, such a condition of the social conscience could, by its intrinsic moral excellence, undoubtedly correspond to the divine perfection and infallibly manifest the action of God in mankind.

But while the political principle of a majority vote comes short of the dignity of God, unfortunately the ideal principle of immediate, spontaneous and permanent unanimity is equally far in advance of the present state of man. That perfect unity which Jesus Christ in His high-priestly prayer held up before us as the final objective of His work cannot be assumed as the present and obvious starting-point of that work. The surest way never to achieve the desired perfection is to imagine that it is already achieved.

Conscious unanimity and solidarity, brotherly love and free agreement, such is the universally accepted ideal of the Church. But the difference between an idle dream and the divine ideal of unity is that the latter has an actual foundation (the doV moi pou stw of social mechanics) from which to gain ground little by little on earth and to achieve gradual and successive conquests over all the powers of discord.

A real and indivisible principle of unity is absolutely necessary to counteract the deep-seated and active tendency to division in the world and even in the Church itself. The principle of that universal religious unity of grace and truth, which is eventually to become the very essence of the life of each individual believer and the perfect and indissoluble bond between him and his neighbor, must none the less in the meantime have an objective existence and act everywhere under the 'species' of a visible and definite social authority.

The perfection of the one universal Church consists in the harmony and unanimity of all its members; but its very existence amid actual disharmony requires a unifying and reconciling power immune from this disharmony and in continual reaction against it, asserting itself above all divisions and gathering to itself all men of goodwill, denouncing and condemning whatever is opposed to the Kingdom of God on earth.

Whoever desires that Kingdom must desire the only way that will lead mankind collectively to it. Between the hateful reality of the disharmony reigning in this world and the longed-for unity of perfect love in which God reigns there is the necessary road of a juridical and authoritative unity linking human fact to divine right.

The perfect circle of the Universal Church requires a unique center, not so much for its perfection as for its very existence. The Church upon earth, called to gather in the multitude of the nations, must, if she is to remain an active society, possess a definite universal authority to set against national divisions; if she is to enter the current of history and undergo continual change and adaptation in her external circumstances and relationships and yet preserve her identity, she requires an authority essentially conservative but nevertheless active, fundamentally unchangeable though outwardly adaptable; and finally if she is set amid the frailty of man to assert herself in reaction against all the powers of evil, she must be equipped with an absolutely firm and impregnable foundation, stronger than the gates of hell.

Now we know on the one hand that Christ foresaw the necessity of such an ecclesiastical monarchy and therefore conferred on a single individual supreme and undivided authority over His Church; and on the other hand we see that of all the ecclesiastical powers in the Christian world there is only one which perpetually and unchangingly preserves its central and universal character and at the same time is specially connected by an ancient and widespread tradition with him to whom Christ said: Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build My Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Christ's words could not remain without their effect in Christian history; and the principal phenomenon in Christian history must have an adequate cause in the word of God. Where then have Christ's words to Peter produced a corresponding effect except in the Chair of Peter? Where does that Chair find an adequate cause except in the promise made to Peter?

The living truths of religion do not compel the reason in the manner of geometrical theorems. Moreover it would be unsafe to assert that even the truths of mathematics are unanimously accepted by everyone for the sole reason of their intrinsic proof; they meet with general acceptance because no one is concerned to reject them.

I am not so simple as to hope to convince those who are influenced by other motives more powerful than the search for religious truth. In setting out the general proofs of the permanent primacy of Peter as the foundation of the Universal Church, my only aim has been to assist the intellectual task of those who deny this truth not from personal or emotional reasons, but from unconscious error and inherited prejudice. In pursuance of this aim I must now, while keeping my eyes always fixed on the brilliant searchlight of the Biblical record, embark for a moment on the dark and uncertain domain of universal history.

VII--THE MONARCHIES FORETOLD BY DANIEL. 'ROMA' AND 'AMOR'

The historic life of mankind began with the confusion of Babel (Gen 11); it will end in the perfect harmony of the New Jerusalem (Apoc. 21). Between these two extreme limits, described in the first and last books of Holy Scripture, takes place the evolution of universal history of which a symbolic representation is given us in the sacred book which may be regarded as transitional between the Old and New Testaments, the book of the prophet Daniel (Dan. 2: 31-36).

Since mankind on earth is not, and was never meant to be, a world of pure spirits, it needs for the expression and development of the unity of its inner life an external social organism which must become more centralized as it grows in extent and diversity. Just as the life of the individual human soul manifests itself by means of the organized human body, so the collective soul of regenerate humanity, the invisible Church, requires a visible social organism as the symbol and instrument of its unity.

From this point of view the history of mankind presents itself as the gradual formation of a universal social entity or of the one Catholic Church in the broadest sense of the term. This work is inevitably divided into two main parts: (1) the outward unification of the nations of history, or the formation of the universal body of mankind by the efforts, more or less unconscious, of earthly powers under the invisible and indirect action of Providence, and (2) the vivifying of this body by the mighty breath of the God-Man and its further development by the combined action of divine grace and more or less conscious human forces.

In other words we have here on the one hand the formation of natural universal monarchy and on the other the formation and development of spiritual monarchy or the Universal Church on the basis and in the framework of the corresponding natural organism. The first part of this great work constitutes the essence of ancient or pagan history; the second part mainly determines modem or Christian history.

The connecting link is the history of the people of Israel who under the active guidance of the living God prepared the setting, both organic and national, for the appearance of the God-Man Who is both the spiritual principle of unity for the universal body and the absolute center of history.

While the chosen nation was preparing the natural body of the individual God-Man, the Gentile nations were evolving the social body of the collective God-Man, the Universal Church. And since this task allotted to paganism was achieved by purely human efforts guided only indirectly and invisibly by divine Providence it was bound to proceed by a series of attempts and experiments. Previous to any effective universal monarchy we see the rise of various national monarchies claiming universality but incapable of achieving it.

After the Assyrio-Babylonian monarchy, the head of gold, denoting the purest and most concentrated despotism, comes the monarchy of the Medes and Persians represented by the breast and arms of silver which symbolize a less unmitigated, less concentrated, but on the other hand much more extensive despotism, embracing the whole scene of contemporary history from Greece on the one side to India on the other.

Next comes the Macedonian monarchy of Alexander the Great, the brazen belly enguling Hellas and the East. But despite the fruitfulness of Hellenism in the sphere of intellectual and aesthetic culture, it proved impotent in practical affairs and incapable of creating a political framework or a center of unity for the vast multitude of nations which it penetrated. In administration it took over without any essential alteration the absolutism of the national despots which it found in the East; and though it imposed the unity of its culture on the world which it conquered, it could not prevent that world from splitting into two great semi-Hellenised national States, the Helleno-Egyptian kingdom of the Ptolemies and the Helleno-Syrian kingdom of the Seleucids.

These two kingdoms, at one moment engaged in bitter warfare, at another precariously allied by dynastic marriages, were well symbolized by the two feet of the colossus in which the iron of primitive despotism was mingled with the soft clay of a decadent culture.

Thus the pagan world divided between two rival powers, with Alexandria and Antioch as their two political and intellectual centers, could not provide an adequate historic basis for Christian unity. But there was a stone -- Capitoli immobile saxum -- a little Italian town, whose origin was hidden among mysterious legends and prophetic portents, and whose real name even was unknown. This stone hurled forth by the providence of the God of history smote the feet of clay of the Greco-barbarian world of the East, overthrew and crushed to powder the impotent colossus, and became a great mountain.

The pagan world was given a real center of unity. A truly international and universal monarchy was established, embracing both East and West. Not only was it far more extensive than the greatest of the national monarchies, not only did it include far more heterogeneous national and cultural elements, but it was above all powerfully centralized, and it transformed these varied elements into a positive, active whole.

Instead of a monstrous image made up of heterogeneous parts, mankind became an organized and homogeneous body, the Roman-Empire, with an individual living center in Caesar Augustus, the trustee and representative of the united will of mankind.

But who was this Caesar and how had he come to represent the living center of humanity? On what was his power based? Long and painful experience had convinced the nations of East and West that continual strife and division were a curse and that some center of unity was essential to the peace of the world. This vague but very real desire for peace and unity threw the pagan world at the feet of an adventurer who succeeded in replacing beliefs and principles by the weapons of his legions and his own personal courage.

Thus the unity of the Empire was based solely on force and chance. Though the first of the Caesars seemed to deserve his fortune by his personal genius, and the second justified his to a certain extent by his calculated piety and wise moderation, the third was a monster and was succeeded by idiots and madmen. The universal State which should have been the social incarnation of Reason itself took shape in an absolutely irrational phenomenon, the absurdity of which was only heightened by the blasphemy of the Emperor's apotheosis.

The Divine Word, individually united to human nature and desiring to unite socially with Himself the collective being of Man, could not take either the confusion of an anarchic mass of nations or the autocracy of a tyrant as the starting point of this union. He could only unite human society with Himself by means of a power founded upon truth. In the social sphere we are not directly and primarily concerned with personal virtues and defects.

We believe the imperial power of pagan Rome to have been evil and false, not merely because of the crimes and follies of a Tiberius or a Nero, but mainly because, whether represented by Caligula or Antonine, it was itself based on violence and crowned with falsehood. The actual Emperor, the momentary creature of the praetorians and the legionaries, only owed his power to crude, blind force; the ideal, deified Emperor was an impious fiction.

Against the false man-god of political monarchy the true God-Man set up the spiritual power of ecclesiastical monarchy founded on Truth and Love. Universal monarchy and international unity were to remain; the center of unity was to keep its place. But the central power itself, its character, its origin and its authority-all this was to be renewed.

The Romans themselves had a vague presentiment of this mysterious transformation. While the ordinary name of Rome was the Greek word for 'Might', and a poet of decadent Greece had hailed her new masters by that name: caire moi, Rwma, qugathr ArhoV--yet the citizens of the Eternal City believed that they discovered the true meaning of her name by reading it backwards in Semitic fashion: AMOR; and the ancient legend revived by Virgil connected the Roman people and the dynasty of Caesar in particular with the mother of Love and through her with the supreme God.

But their Love was the servant of death and their supreme God was a parricide. The piety of the Romans, which is their chief claim to glory and the foundation of their greatness, was a true sentiment though rooted in a false principle, and it was just that change of principle that was necessary in order that the true Rome might be revealed based upon the true religion.

The countless triads of parricidal gods must be replaced by the single divine Trinity, consubstantial and indivisible, and the universal society of mankind must be set up, not on the basis of an Empire of might, but on that of a Church of Love.

Was it a mere coincidence that, when Jesus Christ wished to announce the foundation of His true universal monarchy, not upon the servile submission of its subjects nor upon the autocracy of a human ruler, but upon the free surrender of men's faith and love to God's truth and grace, He chose for that pronouncement the moment of His arrival with His disciples at the outskirts of Caesarea Philippi, the town which a slave of the Caesars had dedicated to the genius of his master?

Or again was it a coincidence that Jesus chose the neighborhood of the Sea of Tiberias for the giving of the final sanction to that which He had founded, and that under the shadow of those monuments which spoke of the actual ruler of false Rome He consecrated the future ruler of true Rome in words which indicated both the mystical name of the Eternal City and the supreme principle of His new Kingdom: Simon Bar-Jona, lovest Thou Me more than these?

But why must true Love, which knows no envy and whose unity implies no exclusiveness, be centered in a single individual and assume for its operation in society the form of monarchy in preference to all others? Since here it is not a question of the omnipotence of God, which might impose truth and justice upon men from without, but rather of the Divine love in which man shares by a free act of adherence, the direct action of the Godhead must be reduced to a minimum.

It cannot be entirely suppressed since all men are false and no human entity, either individual or collective, left to its own resources, can maintain itself in constant and progressive relationship to the Godhead. But the fruitful Love of God united to the Divine Wisdom quae in superfiuis non abundat, in order to assist human weakness while at the same time allowing human forces full play, chooses the path along which the unifying and life-giving action of supernatural truth and grace on the mass of mankind will encounter the fewest natural obstacles and will find a social framework externally conformable and adapted to the manifestation of true unity; and the path which facilitates union between the Divine and the human in the social order by forming a central unifying organ within humanity itself is the path of monarchy.

Otherwise the creation afresh each time of a spontaneous unity on the chaotic basis of independent opinions and conflicting wills would require each time a new, direct and manifestly miraculous intervention of the Godhead, an activity ex nihilo forced upon men and depriving them of their moral freedom. As the Divine Word did not appear upon earth in His heavenly splendor but in the lowliness of human nature, as today in order to give Himself to the faithful He assumes the lowly appearance of material 'species', so it was not His will to rule human society directly by His divine power but rather to employ as the normal instrument of His social activity a form of unity already in existence among men, namely, universal monarchy.

Only it was necessary to regenerate, spiritualize and sanctify this social form by substituting the eternal principle of grace and truth for the mortal principle of violence and deception; to replace the head of an army, who in the spirit of falsehood declared himself to be a god, by the head of all the faithful who in the spirit of truth recognized and acknowledged in His Master the Son of the living God; to dethrone a raving despot who would fain have enslaved the human race and drained the blood of his victim, and to raise up in his stead the loving servant of a God Who shed as Blood for mankind,

In the borders of Caesarea and on the shores of the Sea of Tiberias Jesus dethroned Caesar--not the Caesar of the tribute-money nor the Christian Caesar of the future, but the deified Caesar, the sole absolute and independent sovereign of the universe, the supreme center of unity for the human race. He dethroned him because He had created a new and better center of unity, a new and better sovereign power based upon faith and love, truth and grace.

And while dethroning the false and impious absolutism of the pagan Caesars Jesus confirmed and made eternal the universal monarchy of Rome by giving it its true theocratic basis. it was in a certain sense nothing more than a change of dynasty; the dynasty of Julius Caesar, supreme pontiff and god, gave place to the dynasty of Simon Peter, supreme pontiff and servant of the servants of God.

VIII--THE 'SON OF MAN' AND THE 'ROCK'

The interpretation given in our last chapter helps to explain why the prophetic vision of the great pagan powers, which is as complete and exact as such a vision could be, makes no mention of the greatest power of all, the Roman Empire. It was because this Empire was not a part of the monstrous colossus doomed to destruction but was the abiding material framework and mould of the Kingdom of God.

The great powers of the ancient world were merely passing figures upon the stage of history; Rome alone lives for ever. The rock of the Capitol was hallowed by the stone of the Bible, and the Roman Empire was transformed into the great mountain which in the prophetic vision sprang from that stone. And what can that stone, itself mean except the monarchical power of him who was called the Rock par excellence and on whom the Universal Church, the mountain of God, was founded?

The image of this mysterious stone in the book of Daniel is usually applied to Jesus Christ Himself. It is noteworthy, however, that though Jesus made considerable use of the prophet Daniel in His preaching, yet in speaking of His own person He did not borrow from the prophet the symbol of the stone but another title which He used almost as His own name: the Son of Man.

It is this very name which He employs in the crucial passage of St. Matthew: Quem dicunt homines esse Filium Hominis? Who do men say the Son of Man is?

Jesus is the Son of Man seen by the prophet Daniel (Dan 7: 13) whereas the stone (Dan 2: 34, 35, 45) does not directly denote Jesus but rather the fundamental authority of the Church, to the first representative of which this symbol was applied by the Son of Man Himself--Et ego dico tibi quia tu es Petrus. And I say unto thee that thou art Peter.

The context of the prophecy of Daniel directly confirms our view, for it speaks of a Kingdom coming from God but nevertheless visible and earthly, destined to conquer, destroy and replace the great pagan Empires. The appearance and triumph of this fifth Kingdom, which in a parallel passage is called 'the people of the saints of the Most High' (Dan 7: 18, 27) and which is obviously the Universal Church, are symbolically represented by this stone which, after breaking the feet of the colossus, becomes a great mountain and fills the whole earth.

If then the stone mentioned by Daniel directly denoted Christ it would follow that it was Christ Himself Who became the 'great mountain', or in other words the universal monarchy of the Church, to which the pagan Empires gave place.

But why should we go out of our way to attribute to the truly inspired author of this wonderful book such confused and incongruous imagery, when there is all the time a clear and harmonious interpretation not only open to us but absolutely forced upon us by the comparison between these prophetic passages and the corresponding passage of the Gospel?

Both in Daniel and in St. Matthew we find the Son of Man and the Rock of the Church. Now it is absolutely certain that the Son of Man, whether in the prophetic book or in the Gospel, denotes one and the same Person, the Messiah; the analogy demands therefore that the Rock of the Church bears in both passages the same sense.

But in the Gospel the Rock is obviously the prince of the Apostles -- tu es Petrus -- hence the 'stone' of the prophet Daniel must equally foreshadow the original trustee of monarchical authority in the Universal Church, the rock which was taken and hurled not by human hands but by the Son of the living God and by the heavenly Father Himself revealing to the supreme ruler of the Church that divine-human truth which was the source of his authority.

There is a further remarkable coincidence to be noted. It was the great king of Babylon, the typical representative of false universal monarchy, who saw in a mysterious dream the chief representative of true universal monarchy under the significant image of a stone which was to become his actual name. Moreover he saw the complete contrast between the two monarchies: the one beginning in the head of gold and ending in feet of clay which crumble to dust, the other beginning in a little stone and ending in a huge mountain which filled the world.

IX--ANCIENT AND MODERN WITNESS TO THE PRIMACY OF PETER

'Granted that Jesus Christ established in the person of St. Peter a central sovereign authority over the Church; it is still not clear how and for what purpose this authority could have passed to the Roman Church and the Papacy.'

This is the reply which sincere Orthodox have been compelled by the evidence to make to us. In other words, they admit that the stone was shaped by no human hand, but they shut their eyes to the great mountain which has grown out of it. And yet the phenomenon is amply explained in Holy Scripture by similes and parables which are familiar to everyone, though for all that none the better understood.

Though the transformation of a stone into a mountain is only a symbol, the transformation of a simple, almost imperceptible seed into an infinitely larger and more complicated organism is an actual fact. And it is by just this fact that the New Testament foretells and illustrates the development of the Church, as of a great tree which began in an imperceptible grain of seed and today gives ample shelter to the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air.

Now even among Catholics we meet with ultra-dogmatic spirits who, while justly admiring the vast oak tree which covers them with its shade, absolutely refuse to admit that all this abundance of organic forms has grown from a structure as simple and rudimentary as that of an ordinary acorn. According to them, though the oak arose out of the acorn yet the acorn must have contained in a distinct and discernible form, if not every leaf, at least every branch of the great tree, and must have been not only identical in substance with the latter but similar to it in every detail.

Whereupon ultra-critical spirits of the opposite school set to work to examine the wretched acorn minutely from every angle. Naturally they discover in it no resemblance whatever to the entwining roots, the stout trunk, the leafy branches or the tough corrugated foliage of the great tree. 'What humbug!' they exclaim, 'the acorn is simply an acorn and can never be anything else; it is only too obvious where the great oak and all its characteristics came from. The Jesuits invented it at the Vatican Council; we saw it with our own eyes--in the book of Janus.'

At the risk of appearing a freethinker to the extreme dogmatists and of being at the same time labelled a Jesuit in disguise by the critics, I must affirm the unquestionable truth that the acorn actually has a quite simple and rudimentary structure and that though all the component parts of a great oak cannot be discovered in it yet the oak has actually grown out of the acorn without any artificial stimulus or infringement of the laws of nature, but by its own right, nay even by divine right.

Since God, Who is not bound by the limitations of time and space and of the mechanism of the material world, sees concealed in the actual germ of things all their future potentialities, so in the little acorn He must not only have seen but ordained and blessed the mighty oak which was to grow from it; in the grain of mustard seed of Peter's faith He discerned and foretold the vast tree of the Catholic Church which was to cover the earth with its branches.

Though Peter was entrusted by Jesus Christ with that universal sovereign authority which was to endure and develop within the Church throughout its existence upon earth, he did not personally exercise this Authority except in a measure and in a form suited to the primitive condition of the Apostolic Church. The action of the prince of the Apostles had as little resemblance to modern papal administration as the acorn has to the oak; but this does not prevent the Papacy from being the natural, logical and legitimate development of the primacy of Peter. The primacy itself is so marked in the historical books of the New Testament that it has never been disputed by any theologian of good faith, whether Orthodox, rationalist or Jew.

(The same sincerity is not usually found in Protestant writers. The best among them, however, admit the fact of the primacy though they make fruitless attempts to interpret it according to their liking.. Take, for instance, the words of M. de Pressense "Histoire des trois premiers siecles du Christianistne", 1st ed., Vol. i. PP. 358-360)): 'Throughout these early years the Apostle Peter exercised a predominant influence; the part which he played at this date has been adduced as a proof of his primacy. But on closer examination of the evidence it is clear that all he did was to develop his own natural gifts purified and enhanced by the Spirit of God.' 'Moreover St. Luke's record lends no color to any notion of a hierarchy. Everything in St. Peter's behavior is natural and spontaneous. He is not official president of any kind of apostolic college., (M. de Pressense is obviously confusing the accident of a more or less pronounced official status with the substance of primacy.) 'He only acts on the advice of his brethren'--according to Protestant ideas, it seems, advice excludes authority--'whether in the choice of a new Apostle or at Pentecost, before the people or before the Sanhedrin. Peter had been the most humiliated of all the first Christians, hence the reason that he was promoted the most rapidly.' With this kind of facetiousness Protestantism seeks to evade explicit texts of Holy Scripture after declaring Scripture to be the one and only source of religious truth.)

We have already cited the eminent Jewish writer Joseph Salvador as an unbiased witness to the historical foundation of the Church by Jesus Christ and to the outstanding part allotted to Peter in its foundation. A writer equally free from Catholic bias, David Strauss, the well-known leader of the German school of critics, has found himself compelled to defend the primacy of Peter against Protestant controversalists whom he accuses of prejudice. (Vie de Jesus (tr. Littre, Paris 1839), Vol. i. part 2, p. 584; cf p. 378).

As regards the representatives of Eastern Orthodoxy we cannot do better than quote once more our one and only theologian, Philaret of Moscow. For him the primacy of Peter is 'clear and evident'. After recalling the fact that Peter was entrusted by Christ with the special task of confirming his brethren (Luke 22: 32), that is to say, the other Apostles, the famous Russian prelate continues thus: 'In point of fact, although the Resurrection of our Lord had been announced to the women who came bearing spices, this did not confirm the Apostles in their faith in the event (Luke 24: 11). But when the Risen Lord had appeared to Peter, the other Apostles (even before the appearance to them all together) declared with conviction: The Lord is risen indeed and has appeared to Simon (Luke 24: 34).

Finally, when it is a question of filling the gap left in the Apostolic band by the apostasy of Judas, it is Peter who is the first to draw attention to the fact and to take the decisive step; when the moment arrives, just after the descent of the Holy Spirit, for the solemn inauguration of the preaching of the Gospel, 'Peter standing up...'; when the foundations of the Christian Church are to be laid among pagans as well as among Jews, it is Peter who gives Cornelius baptism and thus, not for the first time, fulfils the utterance of Christ: Thou art Peter, etc.' (Sermons and Addresses of Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow (1873 etc.), Vol. ii. P. 214).

In bearing this witness to the truth, the eloquent doctor of the modem Russian Church is but the echo of the still more eloquent doctor of the ancient Greek Church. St. John Chrysostom long ago anticipated and triumphantly refuted the objections to the primacy of Peter which are made even today on the ground of certain incidents in the record of the Gospel and of the Apostolic Church, such as Simon's denial in the High Priest's palace, his relations with St. Paul, and so forth. We refer our Orthodox readers to the arguments of the great Ecumenical Doctor. (The Greco-Russian Church, as is well known, specially attributes this title to three ancient Fathers: St. Basil of Caesarea, surnamed the Great, St. Gregory Nazianzen, surnamed the Theologian, and St. John Chrysostom. They have a feast in common on January 30 in our calendar).

No papist could assert more forcibly and insistently the primacy of power (and not merely of honor) which belonged to Peter in the Apostolic Church. The prince of the Apostles, to whose care all were committed by Christ (ate autoV tantaV egceirisqeiV) had, according to this saintly writer, the power of nominating a successor to Judas on his own authority, and if on this occasion he called in the assistance of the other Apostles it was by no means of obligation, but simply of his good pleasure that he did so. (Works IX. 27, 30-3I)

Holy Scripture tells us of the primacy of Peter; his right to absolute sovereign authority in the Church is attested by Orthodox tradition; but no one possessed of any historical feeling or indeed of any ordinary common sense would expect to find legally defined powers taking effect according to fixed rules in the primitive Church, not only of the period when 'the multitude of believers had but one heart and one soul' but also long after.

There is always the temptation to expect to find in the acorn the branches of the oak. The real and living seed of the supreme authority of the Church which we discern in the prince of the Apostles could only be displayed in the primitive Church by practical leadership on the part of Peter in every matter which concerned the Universal Church, and this is what we actually find in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. (Those of our Orthodox readers who find neither the authority of saintly Fathers such as John Chrysostom nor that of Russian theologians such as Mgr. Philaret sufficient to convince them of Peter's unique place in New Testament history will perhaps be amenable to what may be called statistical proof. Since it occurred to me that none of Jesus' intimate disciples had so considerable a claim to a prominent place as St. John, the beloved Apostle, I counted up the number of times that John and Peter are mentioned respectively in the Gospels and Acts, and found the proportion to be about 1 to 4. St. Peter is mentioned by name 171 times (114 in the Gospels and 57 in the Acts), St. John only 46 times (38 times in the Gospels, including the instances where he refers to himself indirectly, and 8 times in the Acts).

Since there are actually critics who do not recognize the personality of St. Paul in his epistles, there will always be some who will not observe the outstanding part played by St. Peter in the foundation of the Church. We will not stay longer to refute them but we will pass on to the objection raised against the succession of Rome to the position of the Galilean fisherman.

X--THE APOSTLE PETER AND THE PAPACY

'The Apostle Peter possesses the primacy of power; but why should the Pope of Rome succeed to this primacy?' We must confess our entire inability to understand how such a question can be taken seriously. Once it is admitted that there is in the Universal Church a fundamental supreme authority established by Christ in the person of St. Peter, then it must follow that this authority is in existence somewhere. And it seems to us that the obvious impossibility of discovering it anywhere else but at Rome is at once a sufficient reason for supporting the Catholic contention.

Since neither the patriarch of Constantinople nor the Synod of St. Petersburg claims or can possibly claim to represent the rock of the Universal Church, that is to say the real and fundamental unity of ecclesiastical authority, there is no choice but either to abandon all idea of such a unity and accept a state of division, confusion and bondage as the normal condition of the Church, or else to acknowledge the claims and actual validity of the one and only existing authority which has always shown itself to be the center of ecclesiastical unity.

No amount of argument can overcome the evidence for the fact that apart from Rome there only exist national churches such as the Armenian or the Greek church, State churches such as the Russian or Anglican, or else sects founded by individuals, such as the Lutherans, the Calvinists, the Irvingites, and so forth.

The Roman Catholic Church is the only church that is neither a national church, nor a State church, nor a sect founded by a man; it is the only church in the world which maintains and asserts the principle of universal social unity against individual egoism and national particularism; it is the only church which maintains and asserts the freedom of the spiritual power against the absolutism of the State; in a word, it is the only church against which the gates of hell have not prevailed.

'By their fruits ye shall know them.' in the sphere of religious fellowship the fruit of Catholicism (for those who have remained Catholics) is the unity and freedom of the Church; the fruit of Protestantism for its adherents both in the East and in the West is division and bondage: division chiefly in the West and bondage in the East.

Think and say what you will of the Roman Church or of the Papacy; we ourselves are very far from seeing or expecting to find in either the achievement of perfection or the realization of the ideal. We are aware that the rock of the Church is not the Church itself, that the foundation is not the same as the building, nor the way the same as the goal.

All that we are maintaining is that the Papacy is the sole international and independent ecclesiastical authority, the only real and permanent basis for the Church's universal activity. That is an indisputable fact and in itself compels us to acknowledge the Pope to be the sole trustee of those powers and privileges which St. Peter received from Christ.

And since the universal monarchy of the Church was not to eliminate the universal monarchy of the political world but to transubstantiate it, was it not natural that the visible seat of the two corresponding monarchies should remain the same? If, as has already been said, the dynasty of Julius Caesar was in a certain sense to give place to the dynasty of Simon Peter, if Caesarism was to yield to Papacy, it was surely to be expected that the Papacy should take up its abode in the existing center of the universal Empire.

The transference to Rome of the supreme ecclesiastical authority established by Christ in the person of St. Peter is a patent fact attested by the tradition of the Church and justified by the logic of circumstances.

As regards the question of the formal manner in which the authority of Peter was transmitted to the bishop of Rome, that is a historical problem which for lack of documentary evidence can hardly be scientifically solved. We believe the Orthodox tradition which is recorded in our liturgical books to the effect that St. Peter on his arrival at Rome definitely fixed his see there and before his death personally nominated his successor. Later times saw the Popes elected by the Christian community of the city of Rome until the present mode of election by the college of Cardinals was definitely established.

Furthermore, as early as the second century we have in the writings of St. Irenaeus unimpeachable evidence that the Church of Rome was already regarded by the whole Christian world as the center of unity, and that the bishop of Rome enjoyed a permanent position of supreme authority, though the forms in which this authority found expression were bound to vary with the times, becoming more definite and imposing in proportion as the development of the whole social structure of the Church became more intricate and diversified.

'In fact' (to quote a historian of the critical rationalist school) 'in 196 the chosen heads of the churches were attempting to create ecclesiastical unity; one of them, the head of the Roman Church, seemed to claim the role of executive authority within the community and to assume the position of sovereign pontiff.' (B. Aube, Les chretiens dans I'Empire Romani, de l afin des Antonitis au milieu du troisieme siecle, p. 69).

But it was not merely a question of executive authority, for a little further on the same author makes the following admission: 'Tertullian and Cyprian appear to hail the Church of Rome as the principal church and in a certain degree the guardian and keeper of the faith and of genuine tradition'. (ibid., p.146)

In the early days of Christianity the monarchical authority of the Universal Church was but a seed scarcely visible but nevertheless pregnant with life; by the second century this seed has visibly developed, as the acts of Pope Victor testify; in the third century the same witness is borne by the acts of Pope Stephen and Pope Dionysius, and in the fourth by those of Pope Julius I.

In the following century we already see the supreme authority and monarchical power of the Roman Church growing like a vigorous sapling under Pope St. Leo I; and finally by the ninth century the Papacy is already the mighty and majestic tree which covers the Christian world with the shadow of its branches.

That is the great fact, the main fact, the manifestation and fulfillment in history of the divine utterance: Thou art Peter. This broad fact is the outcome of divine law, while particular facts regarding the transmission of the sovereign power, the papal elections and so forth concern the purely human side of the Church and have no more than a secondary interest from the religious point of view.

Here again the Roman Empire, foreshadowing as it does in a certain sense the Roman Church, may provide us with an analogy. Since Rome was the undisputed center of the Empire, the individual who was proclaimed Emperor at Rome was immediately recognized as such by the whole world without any question as to whether it was the Senate or the proctorians or the votes of the people which had raised him to the purple.

In exceptional cases, when the Emperor was elected by the legions outside Rome, his first concern was to hasten to the imperial city, without whose support his election would be regarded by everyone as only provisional. The Rome of the Popes became for universal Christendom what the Rome of the Caesars had been for the pagan world. The bishop of Rome was by his very office the supreme pastor and doctor of the whole Church. There was no need to trouble about the method of his election; that depended on circumstances and conditions of the moment. There was usually no more reason for doubting the legality of the election of the bishop of Rome than that of the election of any other bishop.

And once his election to the episcopate was recognized, the head of the central church and the occupant of the Chair of St. Peter was ipso facto in possession of all the rights and powers which Christ conferred upon the rock of the Church. There were exceptional instances where doubt might be felt about the election; antipopes are not unknown to history. But just as the usurpers Demetrius and Peter III in no way robbed the Russian monarchy of its lawful authority, so the antipopes provide no argument against the Papacy.

Any apparent abnormality in the history of the Church belongs to the human 'species' rather than to the divine 'substance' of the religious society. If by some chance adulterated or even poisoned wine were used in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, would this sacrilege have the slightest effect on the validity of the Sacrament itself?

In maintaining that the bishop of Rome is the true successor of St. Peter and therefore the impregnable rock of the Church and the steward of the Kingdom of Heaven, we are putting on one side the question whether the prince of the Apostles was ever personally in Rome. This fact is attested by the tradition of the Church both in the East and in the West and we ourselves feel no doubt in the matter.

But if there are Christians in good faith who are more susceptible than ourselves to the specious arguments of Protestant scholars, we have no wish to dispute the matter with them. We might even admit that St. Peter never went personally to Rome, and yet at the same time from the religious point o fview maintain a spiritual and mystical transmission of his sovereign authority to the bishop of the Eternal City.

The history of early Christianity supplies us with a striking instance of an analogous relationship. St. Paul had no natural link whatever with Jesus Christ; he was not a witness of our Lord's life on earth nor did he receive his commission in any visible or public fashion; nevertheless he is recognized by all Christians as one of the greatest Apostles. His apostolate was a public ministry in the Church and yet its origin, in his relation to Jesus Christ, is a mystical and miraculous fact.

Now if a phenomenon of a supernatural order formed the original link between Jesus Christ and St. Paul and made the latter a chosen vessel and the Apostle of the Gentiles, though at the same time this miraculous commission did not prevent his further activity from being subject to the natural conditions of human life and historic circumstances, then similarly that original relationship between St. Peter and the See of Rome which created the Papacy might well depend upon a mystical and transcendental act, which would in no way deprive the Papacy itself once constituted of the character of a normal social institution acting under the ordinary conditions of earthly life. The mighty spirit of St. Peter, guided by his Master's Almighty Will, might well seek to perpetuate the center of ecclesiastical unity by taking up his abode in the center of political unity already formed by Providence and thus making the bishop of Rome heir to his primacy.

According to this theory (which, let us remember, would become necessary only if it were conclusively shown that St. Peter did not go to Rome) the Pope would be regarded as the successor of St. Peter in the same spiritual and yet absolutely real sense in which, mutatis mutandis, St. Paul must be recognised as a true apostle chosen and sent by Jesus Christ though he had no knowledge of Him except in a miraculous vision. St. Paul's apostleship is attested by the Acts of the Apostles and by the Epistles of St. Paul himself, the succession of the Roman primacy from St. Peter is attested by the unbroken tradition of the Universal Church.

For an Orthodox Christian the latter evidence is intrinsically of no less value than the former. Of the manner in which the foundation rock of the Church was removed from Palestine to Italy we may well be ignorant; but that it was actually so removed and established at Rome is an incontrovertible fact, the rejection of which would involve the denial not only of sacred tradition but of the very history of Christianity.

The point of view which ranks fact lower than principle and lays greater emphasis on a general truth than on the external certainty of material phenomena is by no means peculiar to ourselves; it is the opinion of the Orthodox Church herself.

Let us quote an example in order to make our meaning clear. It is absolutely certain that the first ecumenical council of Nicea was summoned by the Emperor Constantine and not by Pope St. Silvester. Nevertheless the Greco-Russian Church in the office of January 2, in which she celebrates the memory of St. Silvester, has accorded to him special praise for having summoned the 318 Fathers to Nicea and promulgated the orthodox dogma against the blasphemy of Arius. This is no mere historical error -- the history of the first council was well known in the Eastern Church -- but rather the expression of a general truth far more important for the religious conscience of the Church than material accuracy.

Once the primacy of the Popes was recognized in principle, it was natural to ascribe to each Pope all the ecclesiastical acts that took place during his pontificate. Thus with the general fundamental rule of the life of the Church in mind rather than the historical details of a particular event, the Easterns assigned to St. Silvester the privileges and duties which were his according to the spirit, if not the letter, of Christian history. And if it is true that the letter killeth but the spirit giveth life, they were right.

XI--POPE ST. LEO THE GREAT ON THE PAPACY

This is not the place to set forth the whole historical development of the Papacy or to quote the copious testimony home by Orthodox tradition to the lawfulness of the papal sovereignty in the Universal Church. In order to demonstrate the historical basis of our argument to those of our readers who are not familiar with Church history, it will be enough to dwell upon a single epoch memorable in the history of the Papacy, an epoch which is sufficiently primitive to command the respect of our Orthodox traditionalists and which at the same time stands revealed in the broad daylight of historical knowledge and documentary evidence and so presents no obscurity or ambiguity in its essential outlines. The epoch in question is the middle of the fifth century, the period when the Roman Church had so worthy a representative in Pope St. Leo the Great.

It is interesting for us to note the conception which this Roman pontiff, who is also a recognized saint of the Greco-Russian Church, had of his own authority and how his assertions were received in the Eastern part of the Church.

In one of his sermons, after reminding his hearers that Christ is the only pontiff in the strict sense of the word, St. Leo continues thus:

'Now He has not abandoned the care of His flock; and it is from His supreme and eternal authority that we have received the abundant gift of apostolic power and His succor is never absent from His work.... For that firmness of faith which was commended in the prince of the Apostles is perpetual, and as that which Peter believed on in Christ endures, so does that which Christ established in Peter endure also (et sicut permanet quod in Christo Petrus credidit, ita permanet quod in Petro Christus instituit).... The dispensation of the truth therefore abides; and the blessed Peter persevering in the strength of the Rock wherewith he has been endowed has not abandoned the reins of the Church which he received.... Thus if we act or decide justly, if by our daily supplications we obtain aught of the mercy of God, it is the work and the merit of him whose power lives and whose authority prevails in his see.'

And speaking of the bishops gathered at Rome for the feast of St. Peter, St. Leo says that they have desired to honor by their presence 'him whom they know not only to preside in this see (of Rome) but also to be the primate of all the bishops. (Works --ed. Migne, Paris 1846 etc., 1, 145-7).

In another sermon, after expressing what may be called the fundamental truth of the Church, that in the sphere of the inner life of grace all Christians are priests and kings, but that differences and inequalities are necessary in the outward structure of the mystical body of Christ, St. Leo goes on to say:

'And yet out of the whole world Peter alone is chosen to be set above the assembly of all the nations, above all the Apostles and all the Fathers of the Church, to the end that though among God's people there are many priests and many pastors, yet all might be duly governed by Peter, being ultimately governed by Christ. Behold, dearly beloved, how great a share (magnum consortium) in His own power was bestowed by the will of God upon this man, and if God willed that the rest of the Apostles should share aught in common with him, y et it was through him that He bestowed whatever He did not withhold from the others.... And I say unto thee: that is to say, as My Father has revealed unto thee My Godhead so I make known to thee thy pre-eminence; that thou art Peter: that is to say, though I am the inviolable Rock, though I am the Corner-stone Who have made both one, though I am the Foundation other than which none can be laid, yet thou also art the Rock strengthened by My might and so sharing in common with Me that which I possess by My own power.' (ibid., 149)

'The power of binding and loosing was handed on to the other Apostles also and through them to all the rulers of the Church; but not for nothing was a single individual entrusted with what belongs to all.... Peter is fortified with the strength of all and the assistance of divine grace is so ordered that the stability bestowed by Christ on Peter is conferred by Peter on the Apostles.' (ibid., 152; cf 429-32)

As Peter shares in the sovereign authority of Christ over the Universal Church, so the bishop of Rome who occupies the see of Peter is the living representative of this authority.

'Peter does not cease to preside in his see and his consortium with the Eternal Pontiff never fails. For that steadfastness with which he was endowed, when he was first made the Rock, by Christ Who is Himself the Rock, has passed to his successors, and wherever any stability is manifest it is beyond doubt the might of the supreme Pastor which is in evidence. Could anyone consider the renown of blessed Peter and yet be ignorant or envious enough to assert that there is any part of the Church which is not guided by his care and strengthened by his succor?' (ibid., 155-6)

'Though every individual pastor tends his flock with a special care and knows that he must give account of the sheep committed to his charge, nevertheless we alone must share the anxiety of all and our responsibility includes the governance of each individual. For since the whole world has recourse to the see of the blessed Apostle Peter, and since that love towards the Universal Church which was enjoined upon him by our Lord is expected of our administration also, therefore the greater our responsibility towards all the faithful, the heavier is the burden which weighs upon us.' (ibid., 153)

The renown of St. Peter is to St. Leo's mind inseparable from the renown of the Roman Church, which he calls 'the holy nation, the chosen people, the priestly and royal state, which has become the head of the world through the blessed Peter's holy see.' (ibid., 423)

'He, the chief of the apostolic band, was appointed to the citadel of the Roman Empire that the light of the truth which was being revealed for the salvation of all the nations might spread more effectually from the head itself throughout the whole body of the world.' (ibid., 424)

XII--ST. LEO THE GREAT ON PAPAL AUTHORITY

Believing as he did that true supreme authority of Peter resided permanently in the Roman Church, St. Leo could not regard himself otherwise than as 'the ruler of the Christian world' responsible for the peace and good order of all the Churches. (The designation given him in the Constitution of the Emperor Valentinian III, v. Works I, 637). Constant attention to this huge task was for him a religious obligation.

'The demands of religious duty, (ratio pietatis), (ibid., 664) he writes to the African bishops, 'require that we should make every effort to ascertain the exact state of affairs with that solicitude which, according to the divine command, we owe to the Universal Church.... For the stability and order of the Lord's whole household would be disturbed if there were lacking in the head aught of which the body had need.' (ibid., 646)

The same ideas are found expressed in a more developed form in his letter to the bishops of Sicily: 'We are urged by divine precepts and apostolic exhortations to keep a loving and active watch over the state of all the Churches and if there is anything deserving of blame we must be diligent to warn the culprit either against the rashness of ignorance or the presumption of self-aggrandizement. Constrained by the Lord's utterance which urged upon blessed Peter the mystical injunction thrice repeated that he who loves Christ should feed Christ's sheep, we are bound by reverence for His see, which by the abundance of divine grace we occupy, to avoid the peril of sloth so far as we may, lest the confession of the holy Apostle, whereby he declared himself the Lord's disciple, be required of us in vain. For he who is negligent in feeding the flock so repeatedly entrusted to him is proved to have no love for the Chief Shepherd.' (ibid., 695-6)

In his letter to St. Flavian, the patriarch of Constantinople, the Pope assigns to himself the task of preserving the Catholic faith intact by cutting off all dissensions, of warning by his own authority (nostra auctoritate) the champions of error, and of fortifying those whose faith is approved. (ibid., 733)

When the Emperor Theodosius II attempted to plead with St. Leo on behalf of the archimandrite Eutyches who was the author of the Monophysite heresy, the sovereign pontiff replied that Eutyches could secure pardon if he recanted the opinions condemned by the Pope, with whom lay the final decision in questions of dogma. 'What the Catholic Church believes and teaches on the mystery of the Lord's incarnation is contained fully in the letter sent to my brother and fellow-bishop Flavian.' (ibid., 783)

St. Leo did not admit that the ecumenical council had any power of decision on a dogma already defined by the Pope. (ibid., 918; Letter to Emperor Marcion). In the instructions which the Pope gives to his legate the Bishop Paschasinus he points to his dogmatic epistle to Flavian as the complete and final definition of the true faith. (ibid., 927)

In another letter to the Emperor Marcian, St. Leo declares himself instructed by the Spirit of God to teach and impart the true Catholic faith. (ibid., 930) In a third letter to the Emperor, he states that he has only asked for the summoning of a council in order to restore peace in the Eastern Church, (ibid., 932) and in the letter addressed to the council itself he says that he only accepts it 'so that the rights and dignity belonging to the See of the blessed Apostle Peter be respected', and he urges the Eastern bishops 'to abstain entirely from the rashness of impugning the divinely inspired faith' as he has defined it in his dogmatic epistle.

'It is not permitted,' he writes, 'to defend that which it is not permitted to believe, since in our letters sent to Bishop Flavian of blessed memory we have already with the greatest fullness and lucidity (plenissime et lucidissime) expounded the true and pure faith concerning the mystery of the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ in accordance with the authoritative record of the Gospels, the words of the Prophets and the teaching of the Apostles.' (ibid., 937-9)

And in the following words St. Leo informs the Gaulish bishops of the result of the council of Chalcedon: 'The holy Synod, adhering with religious unanimity to that which had been written by our unworthy hand and reinforced by the authority and merit of my lord the blessed Apostle Peter, has cut off from the Church of God this shameful abomination' (the heresy of Eutyches and Dioscorus). (ibid., 987)

But it is well known that, besides this result which the Pope approved, the council of Chalcedon was marked by an act of a different kind. In an irregular session, the Eastern bishops subject to the patriarch of Constantinople promulgated the famous twenty-eighth Canon by which they conferred upon their metropolitan the primacy of the East to the prejudice of the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch. It is true that they themselves declared the Canon to be provisional and humbly submitted it to the judgment of St. Leo, who repudiated it with indignation and seized this fresh opportunity of defining his conception of the hierarchy and the extent of his own authority.

In his letter to the Emperor, he observes in the first place that the claims of the patriarch of Constantinople are based upon political considerations and have nothing in common with the primacy of St. Peter which is of divine institution.

'Secular things stand upon a different footing from things divine; and apart from the one Rock which the Lord has laid for a foundation no building can be stable.... Let it suffice him' (the patriarch Anatolius) 'that he has obtained the bishopric of so great a city with the aid of your piety and the support of my favor. He should not disdain the royal city, even though he cannot change it into an apostolic see; and let him on no account hope to succeed in exalting his own position at the expense of others.... Let him remember that it is to me that the government of the Church has been entrusted. 1 should be responsible if the rules of the Church were infringed through my acquiescence (far be it from me!) or if the will of a single brother had more weight with me than the common good of the Lord's whole house.' (ibid., 995)

'The agreements of the bishops which are contrary to the holy canons of Nicaea ... we declare to be null and void, and by the authority of the blessed Apostle Peter we annul them completely by a general decree.' (ibid., 1000)

In his reply to the petition of the bishops of the fourth council, the Pope confirms his approval of their dogmatic decree (formulated on the lines of his own letter to Flavian) as well as his annulment of the twenty-eighth Canon.

'Your Holiness will be able,' he writes, 'to appreciate the reverence with which the Apostolic See observes the rules of the holy Fathers, by reading my writings in which I have rejected the claims of the bishop of Constantinople; and you will understand that I am, with the help of the Lord, the guardian of the Catholic faith and of the decrees of the Fathers.' (ibid., 1027 sqq)

Although St. Leo, as we have just seen, did not think an ecumenical council necessary in the interests of dogmatic truth after the definitions contained in his letter, yet he considered it very desirable for the peace of the Church; and the spontaneous and unanimous adherence of the council to his decrees filled him with joy. In such a voluntary unity he saw the ideal relationship within the hierarchy.

'The merit of the priestly office,' he writes to Theodoret, bishop of Cyrus, 'gains great luster where the authority of those in command is so maintained that the liberty of those under obedience appears in no way diminished.' (ibid., 1048)

'The Lord has not allowed us to suffer harm in the person of our brethren, but what He had already laid down through our ministry He subsequently confirmed by the irrevocable assent of the whole brotherhood to show that it was indeed from Himself that "the dogmatic act" proceeded which was first promulgated by the chief of all sees and then received by the judgment of the whole Christian world so that in this also the members might be in agreement with the head.' (ibid., 1046-7)

The learned Theodoret, as is well known, had been accused of Nestorianism but had been exculpated at the council of Chalcedon; he himself, however, regarded this judgment as only provisional and applied to the Pope for a final decision. St. Leo pronounced him orthodox 'in the name of our blessed God Whose invincible truth has shown thee to be clean from all stain of heresy according to the judgment of the Apostolic See'; and he adds: 'We acknowledge the exceeding care of blessed Peter for us all, who not only has confirmed the judgment of his see in the definition of the faith, but has also vindicated those who were unjustly condemned,' (ibid., 1053)

But while he recognized in voluntary agreement the ideal of ecclesiastical unity, St. Leo clearly distinguished in this unity the element of authority from the element of deliberation, the decision of the Holy See from the consent of the ecumenical council.

The ideal of the Church requires such consent on the part of the whole brotherhood; the life of the Church is incomplete without an entire unanimity; but even this universal consent has no real basis and can produce no result without the decisive action of the central authority, as the history of the Church abundantly proves.

The last word in all questions of dogma and the final confirmation of every ecclesiastical act belongs to the see of St. Peter. Hence in his letter to Anatolius, the patriarch of Constantinople, regarding a cleric of that city, Atticus, who was to recant his heretical opinions and submit himself to the judgment of the fourth council, St. Leo draws an essential distinction between his own part in the decisions of the ecumenical council and the part played by the Greek patriarch:

'He' (i.e. Atticus) 'must promise to maintain in all points the definition of faith of the council of Chalcedon to which your charity has assented and subscribed and which has been confirmed by the authority of the Apostolic See' (ibid., 1147)

The fundamental principle of Church government could not be better formulated than by drawing St. Leo's distinction between the authority which confirms and the charity which assents. It is assuredly no mere primacy of honor that the Pope claims in these words. On the contrary, St. Leo allows a complete equality of honor among all bishops; from that point of view all were for him brethren and fellow-bishops.

It was on the other hand the distinction of power which he explicitly asserted. The brotherhood of all does not exclude for him the authority of one. In a letter to Anastasius, bishop of Salonica, on certain matters which 'have been entrusted to his brotherly care by the authority of the blessed Apostle Peter' (ibid., 668) he sums up the conception of the hierarchical principle thus:

'Even among the blessed Apostles, there was side by side with an equality of honor a distinction of authority; and though all were equally chosen, nevertheless pre-eminence was given to one over the others. On the same principle distinction is made between bishops, and the mighty design of Providence has ordered it that all may not claim every prerogative but that in each province there should be someone possessing primacy of jurisdiction' (literally 'prime judgment') 'over his brethren; and again that those presiding in the larger cities should receive a wider responsibility, that through them the care of the Universal Church might ultimately rest upon the one see of Peter and that no part should anywhere be separated from the head.' (ibid., 676)

The ultimate warrant and sanction of this 'mighty design of Providence' consists, according to St. Leo in the fact that the one head of the Church, with whom the rights and obligations of all are bound up, does not owe his power to the ordinance of man or to the accidents of history but represents the impregnable rock of truth and justice laid down by the Lord Himself as the foundation of His social structure. It is no mere consideration of expediency but the ratio pietatis which is invoked by him who has received the government of the whole Church e divina institutione. (ibid., 646)

XIII--THE APPROVAL OF ST. LEO'S IDEAS BY THE GREEK FATHERS. THE 'ROBBER-COUNCIL' OF EPHESUS

In the writings and acts of Leo I we see no longer the germ of the sovereign Papacy but the Papacy itself exhibiting the full extent of its powers. To mention only the most important point, the doctrine of infallibility ex cathedra is here proclaimed fourteen centuries before Pius IX. St. Leo asserts that the authority of St. Peter's Chair is of itself sufficient to resolve a fundamental question of dogma, and he does not ask the ecumenical council to define the dogma but to assent, for the sake of the peace of the Church, to the definition given by the Pope who is by divine right the lawful guardian of the true Catholic faith. If this thesis, which was merely developed by the Vatican council in its Constitution claimed, then Pope St. Leo the Great is a declared heretic or rather a heresiarch, since never before had this thesis been affirmed so explicitly, so forcibly or so insistently.

Let us see then the kind of reception which the Orthodox Church gave to the authoritative assertions of Pope St. Leo; for this purpose we will take the acts of those Greek councils which were contemporary with this Pope and read the documents (Mansi, Concil., vols. v., vi. and vii.).

We find first of all a remarkable letter from the bishop Peter Chrysologus to the archimandrite Eutyches. When St. Flavian the patriarch of Constantinople had in conjunction with his synod condemned Eutyches, archimandrite of one of the monasteries of the Greek capital, for heresy and had applied to the Pope for confirmation of the sentence, Eutyches following the advice given him at the Emperor's court, where he had many influential patrons, attempted to win certain orthodox bishops to his side.

The following is the reply he received from one of them, Peter Chrysologus: 'Above all we advise you, venerable brother, to adhere with the greatest confidence to the writings of the blessed Pope of the city of Rome; since the blessed Apostle Peter who lives and presides in his own see gives to those who seek it the truth of the faith. As for us, our anxiety for peace and for the faith forbids us to decide causes which concern religion without the assent of the bishop of Rome." (Mansi, Concil., v. I349).

Peter Chrysologus, though a Greek and writing to a Greek, was nevertheless bishop of Ravenna and therefore half Western. But a few pages further on we find the same doctrine from the representative of the metropolis of the East, Flavian, a saint and confessor of the Orthodox Church. On the heresy of Eutyches he writes thus to the Pope: 'The whole question needs only your single decision and all will be settled in peace and quietness. Your sacred letter will with God's help completely suppress the heresy which has arisen and the disturbance which it has caused; ' and so' he continues, 'the convening of a council which is in any case difficult will be rendered superfluous.'

Next to the saintly patriarch of Constantinople should be quoted the learned bishop of Cyrus, Theodoret, who has been beatified by the Greek Church.

'If Paul the herald of the truth and the trumpet of the Holy Spirit,' he writes to Pope Leo, 'had recourse to the great Peter... we, simple and humble as we are, ought all the more to hasten to your apostolic throne to receive at your hands healing for the wounds which afflict the Churches. For the primacy belongs to you for every reason. Your see is adorned with every sort of privilege and above all with that of faith; to which the divine Apostle bears sufficient witness when in addressing the Church of Rome he exclaims: "Your faith is spoken of in the whole world". It is your see which possesses the tombs of the fathers and doctors of the truth, Peter and Paul, enlightening the souls of the faithful. That divine and thrice blessed pair appeared in the East and shed their rays abroad; but it was in the West that they chose to be delivered from this life and it is from thence that they now illumine the whole world. They have shed manifest luster upon your throne and that is the crown of your blessings' (ibid, 1350).

'As for me I have only to await the sentence of your apostolic see. And I beg and beseech your Holiness to give me, who am unjustly accused, access to your lawful and just tribunal; give but the word and I hasten to receive from you my doctrine in which I have only desired to follow in the Apostles' footsteps' (ibid.,40)

These are no mere empty words or rhetorical phrases addressed to the Pope by the representatives of orthodoxy. The Greek bishops had cause enough to cling to the supreme authority of the Apostolic See. The robber-council of Ephesus had just given them ocular demonstration of what an ecumenical council without the Pope could be like. It is instructive to recall the circumstances of that occasion.

Since the fourth century, that part of the Church which was mainly Greek in culture had suffered from the rivalry and continual strife of central sees, the ancient patriarchate of Alexandria and the new one of Constantinople. The outward fluctuations in this struggle depended mainly on the attitude of the Byzantine court; and if we look into the causes which influenced the attitude of the secular power to the two ecclesiastical centers of the East we note a remarkable fact.

A priori it might be supposed that the Byzantine Empire had from the political point of view three lines of action from which to choose: she might support the new patriarchate of Constantinople as her own creation always within her control and unable to achieve any permanent independence; or else imperialist Byzantium might wish to avoid the necessity of repressing clericalist tendencies at home and, in order to rid herself of a rather too close and irksome connection, she might prefer to have the center of ecclesiastical administration somewhere farther off and yet within her sphere of influence; she might, with this end in view, incline to support the patriarchate of Alexandria which satisfied both these conditions and besides could claim on traditional and canonical grounds a relative primacy over the East; or lastly, the imperial government might choose to maintain an even balance between the rival sees by favoring now one and now the other according to political circumstances. It is clear, however, that actually none of these courses was chosen.

When ample allowance has been made for individual coincidences or purely personal reactions it must still be recognized that there was a general motive dictating the policy of the Byzantine Emperors in the struggle between the great sees of the East; but the motive lay outside the three political considerations just indicated.

If the Emperors varied in their attitude to the two patriarchates, alternately giving first one and then the other their support, this variation had nothing to do with the balance of power; the Byzantine court invariably supported, not the one of the two rival prelates who was least dangerous at the moment, but the one who was in the wrong from the religious or moral point of view.

It was enough for a patriarch, whether of Constantinople or of Alexandria, to be a heretic or an unworthy shepherd of his flock, and he was assured of the active protection of the Empire for a considerable period, if not for the rest of his career. And conversely, a saint or a champion of orthodoxy who ascended the episcopal throne either in the city of Alexander or in that of Constantine might count at once upon the hatred and persecution of the imperial court and often upon nothing short of martyrdom.

This invincible tendency of the Byzantine government towards injustice, violence and heresy and its ineradicable antipathy to the worthiest representatives of the Christian hierarchy was quick to show itself. Scarcely had the Empire recognized the Christian religion before it was already persecuting St. Athanasius, the light of orthodoxy. The whole of the long reign of Constantius, the son of Constantine the Great, was taken up with the struggle against the renowned patriarch of Alexandria, while the heretical bishops of Constantinople were backed by the Emperor.

Nor was it the power of the see of Alexandria which was intolerable to the Christian Csar, but the moral greatness of its occupant. Half a century later the position was reversed and the see of Constantinople was occupied by a great saint, John Chrysostom, while the patriarchate of Alexandria had fallen to Theophilus, a man of the most contemptible character; but the court of Byzantium favored Theophilus and used every means in its power to bring about Chrysostom's downfall. It may be said, however, that it was merely the independent character of the great Christian orator which made him suspect in imperial circles.

Yet not long afterwards the Church of Constantinople was ruled by Nestorius, a personality of an equally courageous and independent character; but since he possessed the additional qualification of being a determined propagator of heresy, he received every encouragement from Theodosius II and could count on the Emperor's unfailing support in his struggle against St. Cyril, the new patriarch of Alexandria and the rival of the great Athanasius, if not in personal character, at least in his zeal for orthodoxy and his theological ability. We shall see before long why the imperial government did not succeed in upholding the heretic Nestorius and bringing about the fall of St. Cyril.

Shortly afterwards the position was again reversed: the patriarchate of Constantinople had in St. Flavian a worthy successor of John Chrysostom, and the see of Alexandria was now held by a second Theophilus, one Dioscorus, nicknamed 'the Pharaoh of Egypt'. St. Flavian was a gentle and unassuming person; Dioscorus' character, on the other hand, was stained with every wickedness and was distinguished mainly by an inordinate ambition and a despotic temper to which he owed his nickname.

From the purely political point of view it was obvious that the imperial government had nothing to fear from St. Flavian, while the domineering ambitions of the new 'Pharaoh' might well arouse justifiable apprehensions. But St. Flavian was orthodox, and Dioscorus had the great merit of favoring the new heresy of Monophysitism. That alone was enough to ensure him the support of the Byzantine court and an oecumenical council was summoned under imperial auspices to give official sanction to his cause. (A curious fact and one which strikingly confirms our theory of the partiality of the Byzantine Emperors for heresy as such is that the same Emperor Theodosius II, who had favored the Nestorian heresy and had seen it condemned by the Church in spite of his efforts, became subsequently the enthusiastic supporter of Eutyches and Dioscorus who held the view diametrically opposite to that of Nestorius though no less heretical).

Dioscorus had everything in his favor: the support of the secular arm, a well-disciplined body of clergy brought with him in from Egypt and blindly devoted to him, a mob of heretical monks, a considerable following among the clergy of the other patriarchates, and lastly the cowardice of the majority of the orthodox bishops who dared not offer open resistance to a heresy which enjoyed the favor of 'the sacred majesty of Divus Augustus'.

St. Flavian was condemned unheard, and his fall must have involved the collapse of orthodoxy throughout the Eastern Church--had that Church been left to her own resources. But there was outside that Church a religious and moral authority with which the 'Pharaohs' and the Emperors had to reckon. Though in the struggle between the two Eastern patriarchates the Byzantine court always took the side of injustice and heresy, yet the cause of justice and orthodoxy, whether maintained by Alexandria or Constantinople, never failed to find vigorous support in the Apostolic See of Rome.

The contrast is indeed striking. It is the Emperor Constantius who ruthlessly persecutes St. Athanasius; it is Pope Julius who takes his Part and defends him against the whole East. It is Pope Innocent who makes energetic protest against the persecution of St. John Chrysostom and after the death of the saint takes the first step towards the rehabilitation of his memory in the Church. Again, it is Pope Celestine who backs St. Cyril with all the weight of his authority in his courageous struggle against the heresy of Nestorius and its political champions; and there can be no doubt--that without the aid of the Apostolic See the patriarch of Alexandria for all its energy would not have succeeded in overcoming the combined forces of the imperial power and the greater part of the Greek clergy.

This contrast between the policy of the Empire and that of the Papacy may be observed right through the history of the Eastern heresies which were not only invariably supported but sometimes even invented by the Emperors, as the Monothelite heresy was by the Emperor Heraclius and the Iconoclastic heresy by Leo the Isaurian.

But we must pause at the fifth century over the struggle of the two patriarchates and the instructive history of the 'robber-council' of Ephesus.

Repeated experience had proved that in the quarrel between the two princes of the Eastern Church, the Western Pope showed no bias or partiality, but invariably gave his support to the cause of justice and truth. Accordingly the tyrant and heretic Dioscorus could not count on Rome for the same assistance that his predecessor St. Cyril had received. His plan was to secure primacy over the whole Eastern Church by the condemnation of St. Flavian and the triumph of the Egyptian faction, more or less Monophysite, of which he himself was the leader. Realizing that there was no hope of the Pope's consent being given to such a plan, he resolved to achieve his object without the Pope or if necessary in spite of him.

In 449 a council which was ecumenical in its composition assembled at Ephesus. The whole Eastern Church was represented. The legates of Pope St. Leo were also present but were not allowed to preside over the council. Dioscorus, guarded by the imperial officers and attended by his Egyptian bishops and a mob of clerics armed with staves, presided like a king holding court. The bishops of the orthodox party were cowed and silent. 'All of them,' we read in the Russian Martyrology (life of St. Flavian), 'loved darkness rather than light and preferred falsehood to truth, desiring rather to please their earthly king than the King of Heaven.'

St. Flavian had to submit to a farcical trial. Some of the bishops threw themselves at Dioscoros' feet and implored his indulgence for the accused. They were roughly handled by the Egyptians amid deafening cries of 'Hack asunder those who would divide Christ!'

The orthodox bishops were given tablets on which nothing was written and to which they were compelled to put their signatures, knowing that a heretical formula would be immediately inscribed upon them. The majority signed without a murmur. A few desired to sign with certain reservations, but the Egyptian clergy tore the tablets from their hands, breaking their fingers with blows from their staves. Finally Dioscorus rose and in the name of the council pronounced sentence of condemnation against Flavian, who was deposed, excommunicated and handed over to the secular arm. Flavian tried to protest, but Dioscorus' clerics fell on him and handled him so roughly that he died within two days.

When injustice, violence and falsehood thus reigned supreme in an Ecumenical council, where was the infallible and inviolable Church of Christ? It was present and moreover gave proof of its presence. At the moment when St. Flavian was being done to death by the brutalities of Dioscorus' minions, when the heretical bishops were loudly acclaiming the triumph of their leader, while the orthodox bishops stood by trembling and silent, Hilary, the deacon of the Roman Church, cried: 'Contradicitur!'

At that moment it was certainly not the cowering silent crowd of orthodox Easterns which represented the Church of God. All the immortal power of the Church was concentrated for Eastern Christendom in that simple legal word spoken by the Roman deacon: contradicitur.

We are accustomed to find fault with the distinctively juridical and legalistic character of the Western Church; and no doubt the principles and formula of Roman law do not hold good in the Kingdom of God. But the robber-council of Ephesus was an express vindication of Latin justice.

The contradicitur of the Roman deacon was the symbol of principle against fact, of right against brute force, of unshakeable moral stability against victorious wickedness on the one hand and cowardice on the other; it was, in a word, the impregnable Rock of the Church against the gates of hell.

The murderers of the patriarch of Constantinople did not dare to touch the deacon of the Roman Church. And in the short space of two years the contradicitur of Rome had changed 'the most holy ecumenical council of Ephesus' into 'the robber-council of Ephesus', had ousted the mitred assassin, decreed the canonization of his victim, and brought about the assembling of the true ecumenical council of Chalcedon under the presidency of the Roman legates.

XIV--THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON

The central authority of the Universal Church is the impregnable foundation of social justice because it is the infallible organ of religious truth. Pope Leo had a twofold task to accomplish: he had not only to re-establish in the Christian East the moral order which had been subverted by the misdeeds of the patriarch of Alexandria, but also to confirm his Eastern brethren in the true faith which was threatened by the heresy of Monophysitism.

The distinctive truth of Christianity, the truth of the God-Man, was at stake. The Monophysites, in asserting that the humanity of Jesus Christ was entirely absorbed by His divinity and that therefore after the incarnation He was God alone, were reverting, unconsciously no doubt, to the inhuman God of Eastern paganism, the God Who devours all that He has created and is nothing but an abyss unfathomable to the human spirit.

Their assertion was ultimately a disguised denial of any permanent revelation or incarnation, but it took shelter behind the great theological reputation of St. Cyril, who in vindicating against Nestorius the unity of the person of Jesus Christ had let fall from his pen an inaccurate phrase: Mia fusiV tou qeou Logou sesarkwmenh (one incarnate nature of God the Word).

And just because the denial of the faith was so disguised it was necessary to find a new formula to express in clear and precise terms the truth of the Divine Humanity. The whole orthodox world was awaiting such a formula from the successor of St. Peter. Pope Leo himself was profoundly aware of the importance of the question.

'Jesus Christ, the Savior of mankind,' he says, 'in founding the faith which recalls the wicked to righteousness and the dead to life, instilled into the minds of His disciples the exhortations of His teaching and the marvels of His works that the one Christ might be acknowledged both as the only-begotten of God and as the Son of Man. For one belief without the other was of no avail to salvation, and it was equally perilous to believe the Lord Jesus Christ to be God alone and not Man, or to be Man alone and not God'-since the former belief places Him out of reach of our infirmity and the latter makes Him unable to effect our salvation--but both were to be confessed, for just as true humanity existed in the Godhead, so true Divinity existed in the manhood.

'In order therefore to confirm them in their most wholesome (saluberrimam) knowledge of this faith, the Lord had questioned His disciples: and the Apostle Peter, surpassing the things of the body and transcending human knowledge by the revelation of the Spirit of the Father, beheld with the eyes of his mind the Son of the living God and acknowledged the glory of the Godhead because he did not look merely at the substance of flesh and blood. And Christ so approved the sublime faith of Peter that He pronounced him blessed and endowed him with the sacred stability of the inviolable Rock on which the Church should be built to prevail against the gates of hell and the laws of death; so that in the decision of all causes nothing shall be ratified in Heaven but that which has been established by the judgment of Peter.' (Works, ed. Migne, 1, 309)

Claiming, as he does, that the primary function of the authority of the Church--that of asserting and defining Christian truth--belongs for all time to the Chair of St. Peter which he occupies, Leo considers it his duty to combat the new heresy by expounding anew the confession of the Apostle. In penning his famous dogmatic epistle to Flavian he regards himself as the inspired interpreter of the prince of the Apostles; and the whole orthodox East regarded him in the same light.

In the Leimonarion I (A kind of chrestomathy composed of edifying stories) of St. Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem in the seventh century, we find the following legend: When St. Leo had written his epistle to St. Flavian the bishop of Constantinople against the impious Eutyches and Nestorius he placed it upon the tomb of the chief Apostle Peter and with prayers, vigils and fasts he entreated the sovereign Apostle in these words: 'if in the frailty of human nature I have been guilty of error, do thou, to whom Jesus Christ our Savior, Lord and God, has entrusted this throne and the whole Church, supply every defect in what I have written and remove all that is superfluous.' After forty days had elapsed, the Apostle appeared to him while he was praying and said: 'I have read and corrected it'. And, taking up his epistle from the tomb of blessed Peter, Leo opened it and found it corrected by the Apostle's hand. (v. the life of St. Leo the Pope in the Russian Martyrology).

This epistle, truly worthy of such a reviser, defined with wonderful clearness and vigor the truth of the two natures in the one person of Christ and thenceforth left no place in the Church for the two opposite errors of Nestorius and Eutyches.

The fact that St. Leo's epistle was not read at the robber-council of Ephesus was the main reason urged for the quashing of the decrees of the pseudo-council. Though Dioscorus had succeeded in coercing the entire gathering of Eastern bishops into condemning St. Flavian and putting their names to a heretical document, he encountered unexpected opposition when he ventured on open rebellion against the Pope.

For the latter, on receiving from his legates news of what had passed at Ephesus, at once convened a council of Latin bishops at Rome, and with their unanimous approval condemned and deposed Dioscorus. The 'Pharaoh' who had returned to Alexandria in triumph attempted to outwit the Pope; he was soon to realize that it was no mere empty self-aggrandizement with which he was confronted but a living spiritual authority which claimed the allegiance of the Christian conscience throughout the world.

The pride and effrontery of the usurping bishop were shattered upon the true Rock of the Church; employing all his customary methods of violence he succeeded in compelling only ten Egyptian bishops to lend their name to the condemnation of Pope Leo. (Mansi, vi. 510) Even in the East this futile insult was universally regarded as an act of insanity, and it proved the final undoing of the Egyptian 'Pharaoh'.

The Emperor Theodosius II, the champion of the two opposite heresies and the patron of both Nestorius and Dioscorus, had just died, and with the accession of Pulcheria and her nominal consort Marcian there began a short phase during which the imperial government, apparently from religious conviction, ranged itself decisively upon the side of truth.

In the East this alone was enough to restore courage to the orthodox bishops and to enlist on the side of the true faith which the new Emperor professed all those who had only sided with heresy to please his predecessor. But the orthodox Emperor himself had little confidence in these pliant prelates. For him, supreme authority in matters of faith belonged to the Pope. 'In all that concerns the Catholic religion and the faith of Christians' we read in a letter of his to St. Leo, 'we have thought it right to approach in the first place your Holiness who is the overseer and guardian of the divine faith' (thn te shv agiwsunhn eriskopeouosan kai arcousan thV qeiaV pistewV) (ibid., 93)

According to the Emperor's view, it is by the Pope's authority (sou auqentouvtoV) that the forthcoming council must banish all impiety and error from the Church and establish perfect peace among all the bishops of the Catholic faith. (loc. cit.) And in another letter which follows close upon the first the Emperor asserts again that the duty of the council will be to acknowledge and expound for the East what the Pope has decreed at Rome. (ibid., 100)

The Empress Pulcheria uses the same language in her assurance to the Pope that the council 'will define the Catholic belief by your authority (sou auqentountoV), as Christian faith and piety require'. (ibid., 101)

When the ecumenical council had assembled at Chalcedon in 451 under the presidency of the Roman legates, the bishop Paschasinus, who was the principal legate, rose and said: 'We bear instructions from the blessed and apostolic bishop of the city of Rome, who is the head of all the Churches, forbidding us to admit Dioscorus to the deliberations of the council'. (ibid., 580-1) And the second legate Lucentius explained that Dioscorus was already condemned for having usurped judicial powers and having assembled a council without the consent of the Apostolic See, a thing which had never happened before and was forbidden (oper oudepote gegponen oude exon genesqai). (ibid., 645)

After considerable discussion, the Emperor's representatives announced that Dioscorus would not sit as a member of the council but would appear as an accused man, since he had incurred accusation on fresh counts subsequently to his condemnation by the Pope. (loc. cit) Judgment upon him was withheld until after the reading of the Pope's dogmatic epistle which was hailed by the orthodox bishops with shouts of. 'Peter has spoken by the mouth of Leo!' (ibid., 972)

In the following session several clergy of the Church of Alexandria presented a petition addressed 'to the most holy Leo, beloved of God, universal archbishop and patriarch of great Rome, and to the holy ecumenical council at Chalcedon'. It was a bill of accusation against Dioscorus who, the complainants alleged, after ratifying heresy in a council of brigands and murdering St. Flavian, 'attempted a still greater wickedness', the excommunication of the most holy and sacred Apostolic See of great Rome.' (ibid., 1005-9)

The council did not think itself competent to pass fresh judgment on a bishop whom the Pope had already judged, and it was proposed that the Roman legates should pronounce judgment on Dioscorus. (ibid., 1045) Accordingly they did so, having first enumerated all the crimes of the patriarch of Alexandria, in these terms: 'The most holy and blessed archbishop of great and old Rome, Leo, through us and the holy council here present, and together with the thrice blessed and most glorious Apostle Peter who is the Rock and base of the Catholic Church and the foundation of the orthodox faith, has deprived the said Dioscorus of episcopal status and expelled him entirely from his priestly office'. (ibid., 1048)

The solemn recognition of the Pope's supreme authority at the council of Chalcedon was sealed by the letter of the Eastern bishops to Leo, in which they impute to him the merit of all that had been done at the council. 'It is you,' they wrote, 'who through your legates have guided and ruled (hgemoneueV) The whole gathering of the Fathers, as the head rules the members (wV kefalh welwn), by showing them the true meaning of the dogma.' (ibid., 148)

It is clear that to reject the supremacy and doctrinal authority of the Roman See as usurped and false involves not merely a charge of usurpation and heresy against a man of the character of St. Leo the Great; it means accusing the ecumenical council of Chalcedon of heresy and with it the whole Orthodox Church of the fifth century.

This is the conclusion that emerges unmistakably from the authentic evidence which the reader has had set before him.

A PARABLE AND PROFESSION OF FAITH

This is from the long Preface Soloviev wrote for "Russia and The Universal Church"--following this parable, Soloviev makes his own famous profession of faith---

By way of bringing this too lengthy preface to an end, here is a parable which will perhaps bring out more clearly my general point of view and the purpose of the present work.

A great architect, setting out on a voyage to distant parts, called his pupils and said to them: 'You know that I came here to rebuild the principal sanctuary of the country which had been destroyed by an earthquake. The work is begun; I have sketched the general plan, the site has been cleared and the foundations laid. You will take my place during my absence. I will certainly return, but I cannot tell you when. Work, therefore, as though you had to complete the task without me.

Now is the time for you to apply the teaching that I have given you. I trust you, and I am not going to lay down all the details of the work, only observe the rules of our art. I am leaving you the solid foundations of the Temple which I have laid and the general plan that I have traced; that will be sufficient if you are faithful to your duty. And I am not leaving you alone; in spirit and in thought I will be always with you.

With these words he led them to the site of the new church, showed them the foundations and handed them the plan.

After his departure, his pupils worked in complete harmony and almost a third of the building was soon raised.

As the work was vast and extremely complicated, the first companions were not enough and new ones had to be admitted. it was not long before a serious dispute arose between those who were in charge of the work. Some of them maintained that of the two things left them by their absent Master--the foundations of the building and its general plan--only the latter was important and indispensable; there was nothing, they said, to prevent them from abandoning the foundations already laid and building on another site.

When their companions violently opposed this idea, they went further and in the heat of the argument actually declared (contrary to what they themselves had often maintained before) that the Master had never laid nor even indicated the foundations of the Temple; that was merely an invention of their opponents.

Many of the latter, on the other hand, in their anxiety to maintain the importance of the foundations, went to the opposite extreme and declared that the only thing that really mattered in the whole work was the foundation of the building which the Master had laid, and that their proper task consisted simply in preserving, repairing and strengthening the already existing part of the building, without any idea of finishing it entirely, for (they said) the completion of the work was reserved exclusively for the Master himself at the time of his return.

Extremes meet, and the two opposing parties soon found themselves agreed on one point, that the building was not to be completed.

But the party which insisted on preserving the foundations and the unfinished nave in good condition plunged into various secondary activities for that purpose and displayed indefatigable energy, whereas the party which thought it possible to abandon the original foundation of the Temple declared, after vainly attempting to build on another site, that there was no need to do anything at all; the essential thing in the art of architecture, they maintained, was theory, the contemplation of its classic examples and meditation on its rules, not the carrying out of a definite design; if the Master had left them his plan of the Temple, it was certainly not with the object of getting them to work together on its actual construction but simply in order that each one of them by studying this perfect plan might himself become an accomplished architect.

Thereupon the most zealous of them devoted their lives to meditating on the design of the ideal Temple and learning and reciting by heart every day the explanations of that design which some of the early companions had worked out in accordance with the Master's instructions. But the majority were content to think of the Temple once a week, and the rest of the time was spent by each of them in attending to his own business.

There were, however, some of these dissentients who from a study of the Master's plan and of his own original explanation of it perceived clear indications that the foundations of the Temple had actually been laid and could never be changed; among other remarks of the great architect they came across the following: 'Here are the impregnable foundations that I have laid myself--it is upon them that my Temple must be built if it is to be proof for ever against earthquake or any other destructive force.'

Impressed by these words, the good workers resolved to give up their quarrel and to lose no time in joining the guardians of the foundations, in order to assist them in their work of preservation.

There was, however, one worker who said: 'Let us admit our mistake; let us be just and give due honor to our old associates; let us rejoin them around the great building which we began but to our shame abandoned and which to their incalculable credit they have guarded and kept in good condition. But above all we must be faithful to the Master's conception. He did not mean these foundations which he laid to remain untouched; he meant his Temple to be built upon them. Therefore we must all unite to complete the building upon the existing foundations. Shall we have time to finish it before the Master's return or not? That is a question which he did not see fit to answer.

But he did tell us explicitly to do everything to continue his work; and moreover he added that we should do more than he had done. This worker's appeal seemed strange to most of his companions. Some called him an idealist, others accused him of pride and presumption. But the voice of conscience told him clearly that his absent Master was with him in spirit and in truth.

As a member of the true and venerable Eastern or Greco-Russian Orthodox Church which does not speak through anti-canonical synod nor through the employees of the secular power, but through the utterance of her great Fathers and Doctors, I recognise as supreme judge in matters of religion him who has been recognized as such by St Irenaeus, St Dionysius the Great, St Athansius the Great, St John Chrysostom, St Cyril, St Flavian, the Blessed Theodoret, St Maximus the Confessor, St Theodore of Studium, St Ignatius, etc. etc.--namely, the Apostle Peter, who lives in his successors and who has not heard in vain our Lord's words: 'Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build My Church', 'Strengthen thy brethren', 'Feed My sheep, feed My lambs'.

O deathless spirit of the blessed Apostle, invisible minister of the Lord in the government of His visible Church, thou knowest that she has need of an earthly body for her manifestation.

Twice already hast thou embodied her in human society; in the Greco-Roman world, and again in the Romano-Germanic world; thou hast made both the Empire of Constantine and the Empire of Charlemagne to serve her. And these two provisional incarnations she awaits her third and last incarnation. A whole world full of energies and of yearnings but with no clear consciouness of its destiny knocks at the door of universal history.

What is your word, ye peoples of the world? The multitude knows it not yet, but powerful voices issuing from your midst have already disclosed it. Two centuries ago a Croatian priest announced it with prophetic tongue, and in our own days a bishop of the same nation has more than once proclaimed it with superb eloquence. The utterance of the spokesman of the Western Slavs, the great Krishanitch, and the great Strossmayer, needs only a simple Amen from the Eastern Slavs. It is this Amen that I come to speak in the name of a hundred million Russian Christians, in full and firm confidence that they will not repudiate me.

Your word, O peoples of the world, is free and universal Theocracy, the true solidarity of all nations and classes, the application of Christianity to public life, the Christianizing of politics; freedom for all the oppressed, protection for all the weak; social justice and good Christian peace. Open to them, therefore, thou Key-bearer of Christ, and may the gate of history be for them and for the whole world the gate of the Kingdom of God!

Vladimir Soloviev, "The Russian Newman"

Perhaps the two greatest religious/spiritual geniuses of the 19th century were Vladimir Soloviev and John Henry Newman. Both of these great hearted and brilliant Christians came to the same conviction about the absolute necessity of the Petrine Office in the life of the Universal Church!

"...he was a completely different person from Newman. Aware of already possessing the entire catholicity of the faith of the Creed and bringing with him the rich treasure of Eastern wisdom and speculative trinitarian sophiology, he had a triumphal way of showing his Orthodox brethren the plain necessity of a concrete Church center in Rome and of mercilessly unveiling the sins, delusions and cowardice of the Eastern Church. Yet he loved the Church of his origins no less than Newman did his own; both were noble hearts--but Newman spoke more softly..."

(Hans Urs von Balthasar, "The Office of Peter And The Structure of the Church"--Ignatius Press). This, along with Soloviev's book, seems to me the finest ever written on the Petrine Office.

Order it now--you won't regret it--and it's worth the wait!

For Vladimir Soloviev's A SHORT STORY OF THE ANTI-CHRIST

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