Religion_Christianity_Roman

In 1965 M.-J. le Guillou, a Roman Catholic theologian, defined the church in these terms: "The Church is recognized as a society of fellowship with God, the sacrament of salvation, the people of God established as the body of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit." The progress of Roman Catholic theology can be seen in the contrast between this statement and the definition still current as late as 1960, substantially the definition formulated by Robert Bellarmine, a Jesuit controversialist, in 1621: "the society of Christian believers united in the profession of the one Christian faith and the participation in the one sacramental system under the government of the Roman Pontiff." The older definition, created in response to the Protestant claims, defines the church in external and juridical terms. The more recent definition is an attempt to describe the church in terms of its inner and spiritual reality.

From the time of the earliest heresies the church has thought of itself as the one and only worshiping community that traced itself back to the group established by Jesus Christ. Those who withdrew from it were religiously no different from those who had never belonged to it. The ancient adage, "There is no salvation outside the church," was understood as applying to membership in this group. When this adage was combined with the notions contained in Bellarmine's definition of the church, lines were clearly drawn. These lines were maintained in the breakup of Western Christendom in the Reformation.

There were, however, other factors determining the idea of the one true church. The Roman Catholic Church had never excluded the Orthodox Church, which had seceded from the Roman Church in 1054, from the community of Christian believers. Furthermore, the juridical definition of the church did not include such traditional themes as the communion of the saints and the body of Christ, both of which look beyond the visible, juridically constituted church. The theme of the communion of saints refers to the church as a whole, including both the living (the church militant) and the dead (the church suffering in purgatory--a state for those who must be cleansed from lesser sins--and the church triumphant in heaven). The idea of "communion" appears in early church literature to indicate the mutual recognition of union in the one church and the notion of mutual services.

The theme of the body of Christ appears in the letters of Paul (Romans 12; 1 Corinthians 12; Ephesians 4 and 5; Colossians 1). In modern Roman Catholic theology the term mystical has been added to "body," doubtless with the intention of distinguishing the church as body from the juridical society. Pius XII, in the encyclical Mystici Corporis (1943; "The Mystical Body"), identified the mystical body with the Roman Catholic Church. Most Roman Catholic theologians and the second Vatican Council have taken a less rigorous view, trying to find some way of affirming membership in the body for those who are not members of the Roman Catholic Church. The documents of the council described the church as the "People of God" and as a "Pilgrim Church," but no generally accepted statement of membership in this church has yet emerged. The second Vatican Council also departed from established Roman Catholic theology since the Reformation by using the word church in connection with the Protestant churches. This use has caused some confusion, but the trend is now rather to think of one church divided than of one true church and other false churches.

The idea of apostolic succession appears in the writings of Irenaeus, a Church Father who died about 202. Against the Gnostics (dualistic sects that maintained that salvation is not from faith but from some esoteric knowledge) Irenaeus urged that the Catholic teaching was verified because a continuous succession of teachers, beginning with the Apostles, could be demonstrated. In the 3rd and 4th centuries problems of schism within churches were resolved by appealing to the power of orders (i.e., the powers a person has by reason of his ordination either as deacon, priest, or bishop) transmitted by the imposition of hands through a chain from the Apostles. Orders in turn empowered the subject to receive the power of jurisdiction (i.e., the powers an ordained person has by reason of his office). In disputes between Rome and the Eastern churches the idea of apostolic succession was centred in the Roman pontiff, the successor of Peter; it will be observed that this goes beyond the idea of collegial succession. Apostolic authority is defined as the power to teach, to administer the sacraments, and to rule the church. Apostolic succession in the Roman Catholic understanding is validated only by the recognition of the Roman pontiff; and the Roman Catholic Church understands the designation "apostolic" in the creed as referring to this threefold power under the primacy of the Roman pontiff.

The Roman Catholic Church has not entirely denied apostolic succession to non-Roman churches. Rome recognizes the validity of orders in the Orthodox churches; this means that it recognizes the sacramental power of the priesthood but does not recognize the government of these churches as legitimate. The orders of the Anglican and the Swedish Lutheran churches, on the contrary, are not recognized by Rome, and the entire threefold quality of apostolic succession is denied them. Oriental churches in union with Rome (Eastern Catholics) are recognized as in full apostolic succession. Luther and Calvin saw clearly that their position could not be maintained if apostolic succession were necessary; they therefore affirmed that apostolic succession had been lost in the Roman Church by doctrinal and moral corruption and that the true church was found only where the gospel was rightly preached and the sacraments were rightly administered. Thus, Protestant churches generally have not accepted the necessity of apostolic succession. (J.L.McK.)

The multiplicity and variety of papal titles themselves indicate the complexity of the papal office. In the Annuario Pontificio, the official Vatican directory, the pope is described as bishop of Rome, vicar of Jesus Christ, successor of the prince of the Apostles, pontifex maximus ("supreme pontiff") of the universal church, patriarch of the West, primate of Italy, archbishop and metropolitan of the Roman province, sovereign of the state of Vatican City, and servant of the servants of God. In his more circumscribed capacities as bishop of Rome, metropolitan of the Roman province, primate of Italy, and patriarch of the West, the pope is the bearer of responsibilities and the wielder of powers that have their counterparts in the other episcopal, metropolitan, primatial, and patriarchal jurisdictions of the Roman Catholic Church. What differentiates his particular jurisdiction from these others and renders his office unique is the Roman Catholic teaching that the bishop of Rome is at the same time successor to St. Peter, prince of the Apostles. As the bearer of the Petrine office, he is raised to a position of lonely eminence as chief bishop or primate of the universal church.

Basic to the claim of primacy is the Petrine theory, according to which Christ, during his lifetime, promised the primacy to Peter alone, and, after his Resurrection, actually conferred that role upon him. Thus John 1:42 and, especially, Matthew 16:18 f.: "And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." Also John 21:15 f.: "Feed my lambs . . . Tend my sheep." Vatican I, in defining the Petrine primacy, cited these three texts, interpreting them to signify that Christ himself directly established St. Peter as prince of the Apostles and visible head of the Church Militant, bestowing on him a primacy not merely of honour but of true jurisdiction. In defining also that the Petrine primacy was, by Christ's establishment, to pass in perpetuity to his successors and that the bishops of Rome were these successors, Vatican I cited no further scriptural texts. In defining further, however, that the Roman pontiffs, as successors in the Petrine primacy, possess the authority to issue infallible pronouncements in matters of faith or morals, the council cited both Matthew 16:18 f. and Christ's promise to Peter at the Last Supper: "But I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren" (Luke 22:32).

Of the Petrine texts, Matthew 16:18 f. is clearly central and has the distinction of being the first scriptural text invoked to support the primatial claims of the Roman bishops. Before the mid-3rd century, however, and even after that date, some Western, as well as Eastern, patristic exegetes (early Church Fathers who in their interpretation of the Bible used critical techniques) understood that by the "rock" Christ meant to refer not to Peter but to himself or to the faith that Peter professed. Nevertheless, in the late 4th and 5th centuries there was an increasing tendency on the part of the Roman bishops to justify scripturally and to formulate in theoretical terms the ill-defined preeminence in the universal church that had long been attached to the Roman Church and to its bishop. Thus, Damasus I, despite the existence of other churches of apostolic foundation, began to call the Roman Church "the apostolic see." About the same time the categories of the Roman law were borrowed to explicate and formulate the prerogatives of the Roman bishop. The process of theoretical elaboration reached a culmination in the views of Leo I and Gelasius I, the former understanding himself not simply as Peter's successor but also as his representative, or vicar. He was Peter's "unworthy heir," possessing by analogy with the Roman law of inheritance the full powers Peter himself had wielded, which he interpreted as monarchical, since Peter had been endowed with the principatus over the church.

On the purely theoretical level the distance between the claims advanced by Leo I and the position embodied in Vatican I's primacy decree is not great. Medieval popes, such as Gregory VII, Innocent III, and Innocent IV, clarified by their practice as well as by their theoretical statements the precise meaning of that fullness of power (plenitudo potestatis) over the church to which, according to some scholars, Leo I himself had laid claim. In this they were aided not only by the efforts of publicists such as the Italian theologian and philosopher Aegidius Romanus (d. 1316), who magnified the pope's monarchical powers in unrestrained and secular terms, but also by the massive development during the late 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries of a highly romanized canon law. Gratian's Decretum (c. 1140), the unofficial collection of canons that became the fundamental textbook for the medieval student of canon law, laid great emphasis on the primacy of the Roman see, accepting as genuine certain canons that were the work of 8th- and 9th-century forgers--such as two principles that the 1917 Code of Canon Law restates: "that there cannot be an ecumenical council which is not convoked by the Roman Pontiff" and that "the First See is under the judgment of nobody."

This decree was the basis for the solemn definition that Vatican I promulgated in 1870 as part of its dogmatic constitution (Pastor Aeternus). Having asserted as a matter of faith the primacy of Peter and the succession of the popes in that primacy and having quoted in full the Florentine definition, the constitution clarified what is to be understood by "the full power of nourishing, ruling, and governing" the church, which, according to that definition, inhered in the pope's primacy. Unlike the conciliar definition arrived at in Florence, Pastor Aeternus specified this to include the pope's judicial supremacy, insisting that there is "no higher authority," not even an ecumenical council, to which appeal can be made from a papal judgment.

This definition marked the culmination of a development reaching back at least to the 4th and 5th centuries. But the doctrinal development that culminated in Vatican I's definition of papal infallibility cannot lay claim to a comparable antiquity. There has always been much discussion about the meaning of the prerogative of infallibility and what it implies about the status of individual doctrinal pronouncements of the church's teaching authority. The notion that the church (conceived as the community of the faithful) is by virtue of Christ's own promise infallible--in the sense that it cannot totally deviate from the truth--is clearly scriptural in foundation and was not questioned even by the Protestant Reformers. Similarly, the notion that a preeminent authority attached to the doctrinal pronouncements of the Roman Church and its bishops was of great antiquity, long predating the extension of papal jurisdictional claims by the 4th- and 5th-century popes. But the combination of these two notions--i.e., the identification of the supreme teaching authority of the universal church with that of the pope, and the claim that the infallibility promised to the church itself was possessed also by the pope acting as its head, thus guaranteeing the inerrancy even of his individual doctrinal pronouncements--is essentially a modern theological development and one characteristic primarily of the Roman or Ultramontane (propapal) theological school. This school rose to prominence in the 16th and 17th centuries; one of its most distinguished representatives was Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (d. 1621). Though it drew from earlier materials--notably from the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals and from the writings of such medieval theologians as St. Thomas Aquinas, Aegidius Romanus, and Augustinus Triumphus--the Ultramontane school derived much of its initial strength from the papalist reaction that followed in the wake of the conciliar movement, and it was shaped very much in opposition to the claims that the conciliarists and their Gallican successors made on behalf of the general council. This is evident in the solemn definition of the doctrine promulgated by Vatican I, with its insistence that the ex cathedra definitions of the pope (those made from "the chair," or papal throne), "are irreformable of themselves and not by virtue of the consent of the Church." The conciliar debates indicate that this sentence was intended to exclude the Gallican notion that a papal definition could not claim infallibility unless, subsequently or concomitantly, it received episcopal assent. Despite the maximalist (extremist) tendencies both of subsequent Catholic apologists and of their Protestant critics, the sentence apparently was not intended to restrict the church's infallible teaching authority to the pope alone or to suggest that the pope was free to define doctrine without making every effort to take into account the mind of the church.

Nevertheless, after 1870, when the memory of the heated conciliar debates had faded away, maximalist interpretations became prominent. In particular, there was a marked tendency to stress the absolute and unlimited nature of papal jurisdictional power and to end in favour of the papacy the hitherto unresolved question of the source of episcopal jurisdiction. In response to this development, Vatican II, in its dogmatic constitution, De Ecclesia (1964), while endorsing Vatican I's teaching on papal primacy and infallibility, also focused on the nature of episcopal authority. It insisted that bishops "are not to be regarded as vicars of the Roman Pontiff, for they exercise an authority which is proper to them," since, "by divine institution . . . [they] . . . have succeeded to the place of the apostles as shepherds of the Church" and are themselves, in fact, "the vicars and ambassadors of Christ." Also, "Just as, by the Lord's will, St. Peter and the other apostles constituted one apostolic college, so in a similar way the Roman Pontiff as the successor of Peter and the bishops as the successors of the apostles are joined together." This college, "together with its head, the Roman Pontiff, and never without this head" is "the subject of supreme and full power over the universal Church," a supreme authority that it can exercise in more than one fashion but "in a solemn way through an ecumenical council." The supreme authority in the church can be exercised not only personally by the pope himself but also in a collegial fashion by the whole episcopate, which of necessity includes the bishop of Rome as its head.

In so emphasizing the doctrine of episcopal collegiality, Vatican II was responding to the findings of modern New Testament and patristic scholarship concerning the nature of the primitive and ancient church, and it insisted that it was restoring an ecclesiological emphasis of great antiquity. Recent medieval scholarship indicates that this emphasis persisted into the Middle Ages and survived, in the writings of canonists and theologians, side by side with the more prominent concern with the papal primacy. The great conciliarists active at the Council of Constance made an unsuccessful attempt to effect a stable balance between these two emphases, and even in the modern period, despite the growing prominence of Ultramontane views and their eventual triumph at Vatican I, the collegial concern was never fully displaced. It was not lost sight of by the Gallican theologians of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries who, however much their subservience to the exigencies of royal policy may have damaged their credibility, apparently are now recovering in Catholic eyes, at least, a certain measure of esteem.

The recovery of this ecclesiological emphasis has an importance outside Roman Catholic theology. It has never ceased to dominate in the churches of Eastern Orthodoxy, with their stress on episcopal equality, their respect for the autonomy of the national or regional churches, and their insistence that the supreme teaching authority in the universal church resides (if anywhere) in the collegial decisions of the bishops assembled together in an ecumenical council. Up to the 11th century Byzantine churchmen and theologians certainly accorded some sort of primacy to the church of Rome and its bishop. But with the growth of papal claims to a universal jurisdictional power, with the growing conviction that the Roman Church had fallen into heresy, and above all with the disastrous crusading onslaught on Byzantium in 1204, the attitude of Orthodox churchmen to Rome underwent an understandable shift. Though Byzantine theologians rarely questioned the fact of Peter's primacy among the Apostles, they concluded that their own fundamentally collegial ecclesiology necessitated the rejection of the primatial claims advanced on behalf of those who claimed to be uniquely his successors. The very attempt by the bishops of a single local church to claim a monopoly on the Petrine succession was regarded as something of a deviation, in that all bishops, insofar as they professed the faith of Peter, were to be understood as his successors.

In the modern period, then, the Eastern Orthodox churches have been unanimously adamant in their rejection of the papal claims to primacy and infallibility. Orthodox theologians are often careful to insist that what they are rejecting is not the notion of primacy itself but rather that actual primacy of jurisdiction as it was conceived in the Latin Middle Ages and as it has been exercised by Rome in the modern period--with its apparent corollary that all power in the church is to be regarded as proceeding outward from the primatial office and its concomitant tendency to stifle independent life in the local churches. The original primacy of honour, which these theologians argue, was one accorded to the Roman bishops by emperors and ecumenical councils, they clearly regard as a different matter altogether. Given this fact, and also the common ground shared in ecclesiological matters by the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, Vatican II's affirmation of episcopal collegiality may soften the edges of the Orthodox rejection of the papal primacy.

The impact of that doctrine on Protestant thinking is more difficult to predict. Historically, the Protestant rejection of papal claims has been much less qualified than that of the Orthodox. Thus, in the view of the 20th-century theologian Karl Barth, Vatican I's definition of papal infallibility completed the process by which the Roman Catholic Church abandoned the Christian belief in the unique character of divine revelation, identified itself instead with that revelation, and made the pope's teaching "the infallible revelation for the present age." Philipp Melanchthon, the Lutheran author of the Augsburg Confession of 1530, may have been willing to admit that a truly evangelical pope had a certain superiority over other bishops; however, even if one de-emphasizes Luther's denunciations of the pope as the Antichrist, the rejection by the major Reformers and their successors of the Petrine theory and of papal primacy by divine institution is absolute. Peter, they argued, exercised no primacy. The powers communicated to him were the powers communicated to all the Apostles. By the "rock" Christ meant himself; upon him the church is founded, and in Matthew 16:17 f. Peter stands only as the type or figure of the Christian faithful who believe in Christ as the sole "rock."

Unlike such medieval predecessors as the Waldenses or the political philosopher Marsilius of Padua, who had likewise attacked the Petrine theory, the Reformers did not base their attack upon the historical argument that Peter had never visited Rome. This argument was embraced by many a liberal Protestant theologian of the 19th century, but in the 20th it has lost most of its appeal. In the mid-20th century some Protestant theologians shifted toward the Roman Catholic understanding of the status and meaning of Matthew 16:17 f. According to Oscar Cullmann (the French Protestant biblical critic and theologian) any sound exegesis of the relevant scriptural texts points to the conclusion that Peter enjoyed a preeminence among the disciples even during Christ's lifetime; that the "rock" in Matthew refers not to Christ or to the faith of Peter but to his person; that Christ promised him, therefore, the leadership of the church; and that after the Resurrection Peter actually exercised that leadership. Though Cullmann argued that Peter did so only for a short time, being replaced in the leadership by James, other Protestant scholars have disagreed and have claimed for Peter a more enduring role. All, however, continue with Cullmann to distinguish sharply between conditions in the apostolic and post-apostolic church, to deny on exegetical grounds that the "primacy," or leadership, promised to Peter was intended to be passed on to any post-apostolic successors, and to insist on historical grounds that no such succession in the primacy actually occurred in the primitive church. Nevertheless, because of the degree of convergence already occurring between the Roman Catholic and Protestant exegesis of the Petrine texts, because of the reexamination of the Catholic tradition begun by Vatican II, and because of the growing Protestant sense of the need for some striking symbol of unity in the worldwide Christian community, some Protestant ecumenists in the last third of the 20th century have shown a degree of openness to the papal office that would have been unimaginable only 50 or 60 years before.

Theories concerning the relationship of the papacy to the world at large have both reflected the established political conceptions of the day and been in tension with them. The pope has been conceived successively as a leading dignitary in an imperial church headed in effect by the emperor, as a majestic potentate possessed of a supreme and direct authority even in temporal matters, and as a primarily spiritual figure who had in temporal matters no more than an indirect power of intervention. With the post-Reformation fragmentation of Christendom, the growth of secularism, and the emergence of the unified modern state claiming within its own borders jurisdictional omnicompetence, even such attenuated claims to an indirect power became increasingly anachronistic. In the 20th century, in his relations with the world at large, the pope, while affected by the conventions regulating the relationships of heads of state with one another, possesses primarily a moral authority deriving from the dignity and prestige of his office. The strength of that authority, however, depends upon his moral standing as a person, upon the persuasive force of his cause, and upon the degree of enthusiasm it can arouse within the church.

After the mid-20th century some voices were raised in Roman Catholic circles questioning both the doctrine of papal infallibility and the exercise of the papal primacy--at least as it is envisaged in the teaching of Vatican I and the Code of Canon Law. The church's official teaching on the papal office remains that of Vatican I, solemnly reaffirmed at Vatican II. Nevertheless, the latter council's juxtaposition of the doctrine of episcopal collegiality with the existing teaching on papal primacy and infallibility created something of a dilemma in Catholic ecclesiology. Though the text of De Ecclesia had insisted that the doctrine of episcopal collegiality in no way impugned the pope's primacy, a minority of the council fathers remained unconvinced and were commonly said to have been won over by the explanatory note that the Theological Commission by papal authority appended to the decree as an "authentic norm of interpretation." The note is framed in much more juristic terms than is the decree itself, and, in discussing the possession by the College of Bishops of "supreme and full power over the whole Church" it insists that "there is no distinction between the Roman Pontiff and the bishops taken collectively," that "necessarily and always, the College carries with it the idea of its head" so that the bishops acting independently of the pope cannot be considered to constitute a college. At the same time, the note insists that "since the Supreme Pontiff is the head of the College, he alone can perform certain acts which in no wise belong to the bishops, for example, convoking and directing the College, approving the norms of action etc.," norms that "must always be observed."

Already in 1964 there were some who regarded this note with considerable misgiving, feeling that it withdrew from the bishops, in practical and legal terms, that supreme authority in which they had been said, on theological grounds, to be sharers. Subsequent events did little to dispel such misgivings. Despite the unquestionable vitality shown at its 1967 and 1969 meetings, the Synod of Bishops was not really allowed to function as a decision-making rather than a merely advisory body, and it was no more consulted than were the bishops as a whole when, in 1968, the pope promulgated Humanae Vitae (the encyclical on birth control)--considered by some observers to be the most divisive papal initiative of recent times and one that amounted to a de facto negation of collegiality.

Because of the dissent over Humanae Vitae and the tension engendered by the rigour of the pope's stand on the much-debated problem of clerical celibacy, attention probably will focus increasingly on the old and difficult question of the limits of papal power. Because of this, considerable importance attaches to the current revival of interest in the late medieval conciliar movement and to the assertion made by some Roman Catholic scholars (if hotly disputed by others) that a continuing dogmatic validity must be accorded to the decree Sacrosancta, promulgated in 1415 by the Council of Constance. This decree declared that the general council possessed an authority superior to that of the pope in matters pertaining to the faith, the ending of the schism, and the reform of the church. Those who assert this view do not always wish by so doing to cast any doubt on the dogmatic validity of Vatican I's teaching on papal primacy and infallibility, but the efforts thus far made to demonstrate the compatibility of the respective teachings of the two councils (i.e., Constance and Vatican I) remain somewhat less than persuasive.

In the day-to-day exercise of his primatial jurisdiction the pope relies on the assistance of the Roman Curia, a name first used of the body of papal assistants in the 11th century. The Curia had its origins in the local body of presbyters (priests), deacons (lower order of clergy), and notaries (lower clerics with secretarial duties) upon which, like other bishops in their own dioceses, the early bishops of Rome relied for help. By the 11th century this body had, on the one hand, been narrowed down to include only the leading (or cardinal) presbyters and deacons of the Roman diocese, while, on the other hand, being broadened to embrace the cardinal-bishops (the heads of the seven neighbouring, or "suburbicarian," dioceses). From this emerged the Sacred College of Cardinals, a corporate body possessed, from 1179 onward, of the exclusive right to elect the pope. This right it still possesses, as it does the right to govern the church in urgent matters during a vacancy in the papal office. Recent popes have extended the size of the Sacred College beyond the traditional limit of 70 and have attempted, with growing success, to broaden its national complexion and to make its membership more representative of the church's international character.

During the Middle Ages the cardinals played an important role as a corporate body, not only during papal vacancies, as today, but also during the pope's lifetime. In the 12th century the Roman councils that popes had hitherto convoked when urgent matters were at hand were replaced by the assembly of the cardinals, or consistory, which thus became the most important collegial (corporate) body advising the pope and participating in his judicial activity. Eventually it began to make oligarchic claims to a share in the powers of the Petrine office and attempted, with sporadic success, to bind the pope to act on important matters only with its consent. During the 16th century, however, with the final establishment of the Roman congregations (administrative committees), each charged with the task of assisting the pope in a specific area of government, the significance of the consistory began to decline, and with it the importance of the cardinals as a corporate body. At the same time, there was an increase in the power and influence of the "curial" cardinals--those cardinals who did not administer local dioceses but served as the pope's representatives in important foreign affairs or resided permanently in Rome, holding responsibilities in the curial congregations, tribunals, and offices that proliferated in the course of the next three centuries.

By the early 20th century the growth of the Roman Curia had produced a bewildering tangle of administrative and judicial bodies, in which neither temporal and ecclesiastical functions nor executive and judicial powers were clearly demarcated. The reforms of Pius X (reigned 1903-14) and Benedict XV (reigned 1914-22) clarified and streamlined the work of the Curia, introducing a measure of order into its maze of overlapping jurisdictions. But in the wake of the complaints about abuses of curial power that were voiced at the second Vatican Council (along with requests for an internationalization of curial staff and a modernization of curial functions and procedures), Paul VI pledged himself to act.

Though Paul VI (reigned 1963-78) made some changes in detail, his reforms left intact the basic curial structure created by Pius X, with its tripartite division of the various curial bodies: the Roman congregations composed of cardinals nominated by the pope (e.g., the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which was the former Holy Office and direct descendant of the Roman Inquisition); the tribunals, three in number, which compose the judicial branch of the Curia and one of which, the Rota, handles matrimonial cases; a group of offices, councils, and secretariates, the most important of which is the Secretariate of State, presided over by the cardinal secretary of state, who now emerges as the pope's "prime minister." To promote a higher degree of coordination among the various jurisdictions, provision was made for regular meetings of department heads, summoned and presided over by the cardinal secretary of state. Similarly, to prevent bureaucratic empire-building, most curial appointments were to be made for an initial term of five years. Finally, in response to Vatican II's request, some diocesan bishops were to be present at the plenary sessions of the congregations, efforts were to be made to internationalize the curial staff, and there was to be some attempt to consult the laity. These reforms went into effect in January 1968. (F.C.O.) (Ed.)

It has been noted that in Roman Catholicism the college of bishops is the successor to the college of the Apostles. This is said in spite of certain differences between the two offices. The Apostles in the New Testament were a college (except for Paul, not one of the Twelve); the bishops are individual officers, and their collegial function has not been operative in recent centuries. The Apostles had a power that was not defined locally; every Roman Catholic bishop is a bishop of a place, either a proper area, a jurisdiction, of which he is the ordinary (as he is called in church law), or a fictitious place, a see no longer existing, of which he is named titular bishop. Such a monarchical officer does not appear in the New Testament. Nevertheless, Ignatius of Antioch, whose letters (written about 107) provide an early description of the Christian community, was clearly a monarchical bishop, and he did not think himself the only one of his kind; thus, the institution must have arisen in apostolic or early post-apostolic times.

The bishops in Roman Catholic belief succeed to the apostolic power, which is understood as the power to teach Catholic doctrine, to sanctify the church through the administration of the sacraments, and to govern the church. The residential bishop is supreme in his territory in this threefold function, having no superior other than the Roman pontiff. An archbishop governs a metropolitan see, usually the largest or oldest see in a region of several dioceses called a province. The metropolitan archbishop convokes and presides at provincial synods, or meetings, and has certain rights of visitation; but he has no jurisdiction in the suffragan, or subordinate, sees. The power of the bishop in governing is only over his own diocese; even there, however, it is not absolute, because church law provides the bishop with certain advisory bodies.

Until the second Vatican Council the Roman Catholic Church had not dealt with the ambiguity of two concurrent jurisdictions, pontifical and episcopal. The pope cannot define or limit the powers of a bishop; the powers are "ordinary," inhering in the office itself. The second Vatican Council accepted the emphasis that recent theologians have laid on the collegial character of episcopacy, and the supremacy of the pope is understood as supremacy in the college; the pope needs the college of which he is head, although the first Vatican Council declared that he needs neither its consultation nor its approval. It is now understood that such solitary action should be the emergency rather than the rule; and the synod of bishops, established after the second Vatican Council, was a step toward involving the body of bishops in the policy of the entire church, hitherto formulated exclusively by the Roman see.

The qualifications for a bishop as defined in church law, which is known as canon law, are so general as to suit candidates for any office in the church, major or minor. Bishops have been chosen by the pope since the 11th century; the qualifications are not made public, and the decisions depend on a number of factors that are difficult to assess. In modern practice most bishops have been career administrators in the church, rarely pastors or scholars. Election is a much older tradition, and there have been many calls for a restoration of election of bishops. But because the selection of bishops is a basis of Rome's power over the whole Catholic Church, Rome has been generally unsympathetic to these calls.

Bishops in modern times are more visible as managers of the business of the diocese than as pastors and teachers. The responsibilities of the office are great and demand leadership and the ability to delegate business to a competent staff. A common criticism from certain quarters within the Catholic Church in the mid-20th century was that the episcopacy has been conceived more in terms of power than in terms of leadership. One of the reasons for setting up episcopal conferences of nations and regions following the second Vatican Council was to promote leadership by giving bishops the strength that lies in community. No authentic "Catholic" activity is conducted in a diocese without at least the tacit approval of the bishop; his disposal of funds and persons makes it evident that the activity will flourish much more vigorously if it enjoys his active support and encouragement. His power to discourage or forbid activities, which he is free to use according to his own sole judgment, is both a strength and a weakness of the Roman Catholic structure.

The bishop is assisted in governing the diocese by a staff called, like the staff of the pope, a curia. The structure of the staff is to some extent determined by canon law--e.g., vicar general, chancellor, and official, or head, of the diocesan tribunals. Otherwise, the bishop at his discretion may appoint a staff according to the needs of the diocese. In modern times a great amount of diocesan business has settled upon the bishop. This has become a constant strain on the structure of the Roman Catholic episcopacy; it cannot be a strength when so much of the time of the supreme officer must be consumed by purely routine business.

Regional councils of bishops to settle doctrinal and disciplinary questions appeared in the 2nd century. The first general council representing the bishops of the whole world (the Greek oikumene referred to the inhabited world) occurred at Nicaea in Asia Minor in 325. The council was convoked not by an ecclesiastical authority but by Constantine, who wished to have a final decision on the Arian controversy. (According to Arius, the Son of God was a creature of similar but not the same substance as God the Father.) The representatives of Constantine's bishop, the bishop of Rome, presided over the council. The Roman Catholic Church has held 21 such assemblies. The chronological distribution of the last three (Trent, 1545-63; first Vatican, 1869-70; second Vatican, 1962-65) shows that in modern times the ecumenical council has been convened less frequently.

The scandals of the Great Western Schism, which at its worst saw three men claiming the papacy, and the corruption of the papal court during the 15th century led to the movement of conciliarism, according to which the ecumenical council was the means of saving the church from scandal and corruption. Much of the policy of the Roman see since that time has been devoted to the suppression of any conciliarist sentiments. This has naturally led to questions about the value of ecumenical councils, which are cumbersome and expensive, when an omnicompetent office such as the papacy is prepared to handle the business of the Roman Catholic Church. Both the first and second Vatican councils illustrated the values of the ecumenical council. Apart from the public and psychological impact produced by a consensus so broad, the council not only makes available for the church a fund of worldwide wisdom and experience not available to the Roman Curia but also seems to generate a state of mind that raises the members of the council above their normal level of thought and action.

The priest is by definition a cultic officer, and the title designates the second element of the office, the work of sanctification. Certain ambiguities in the Roman Catholic clerical hierarchical system appear clearly in the priesthood. Ordination empowers the priest to administer the sacraments, but he cannot use this power except by receiving "faculties" (proper permission or license) from a bishop. Teaching and preaching are not powers conferred by ordination, but they are subject to the same "faculties." The priest is lowest in the system of government and actually does not govern unless he is a pastor. Governing is not exercised by curates (priests who assist the pastor) or by the large number of priests engaged in specialized works that can hardly be called ministries: administration, teaching, scholarship, journalism, and other activities.

The pastor of the parish is the model priest; in spite of the fact that in large parishes the pastor may be primarily an administrator, Catholics experience their church directly through the parochial clergy. Catholics hear sermons, worship, receive the sacraments, and look for religious counsel and direction in their parish. Many Catholics, particularly in the United States, have their children educated in a school run by the parish. The parish is also the centre of activities ranging from recreation to adult education and to social works, all under the direction of the clergy. In Roman Catholicism the parochial clergy are genuine pastors; the pastoral office has often been reduced for the bishop and is barely visible in the pope. The strength of the Roman Catholic Church historically has been rooted in its priests, especially in its parochial clergy.

Roman Catholicism for centuries has fostered a distinct clerical identity, symbolized by clerical garb, which sets priests as a class apart not only from non-Catholics but from Catholics. The most striking feature of this class, celibacy, has stirred up considerable dissatisfaction in the modern church with celibacy as well as a feeling that it interferes with the ministry. Critics point out that neither in the New Testament nor in the pre-Constantinian church was there a clerical class; the whole church was a people set apart with a mission to the unbelieving world. Because of this dissatisfaction with celibacy and issues related to it there have been a significant number of departures from the priesthood and an alarming fall in the number of candidates.

Religious communities in the Roman Catholic Church consist of groups of men or women who live a common life and pronounce vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience (the evangelical counsels). The aim of such a life has traditionally been regarded as the achievement of Christian perfection (theologically defined as perfect love); thus it is an option only for a minority of the members of the church. Roman Catholic theology has never quite rationalized the elitism implicit in this idea nor escaped the implicit denigration of the lay state; but up to modern times both religious and seculars have overcome the need for rationalization by mutual respect and mutual services.

The origins of the religious life are seen in the anchorites, or hermits, of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, who escaped sin and temptation by flight from the world, mostly in the deserts of Syria, Egypt, and Palestine. Flight from the world became the rule of the cloister, forbidding both free entrance of "externs" into the enclosure and free egress of religious from the enclosure and imposing supervision in all dealings with seculars. The evangelical counsels meant a life of solitude and destitution and an effort to attain union with God by prolonged, almost constant contemplation. Where large numbers of hermits assembled in the same place, cenobitism (common life) emerged, and the hermits or monks (Greek monachos, "solitary") elected one of their members abbot (Aramaic abba, "father"). Eastern monasticism produced the rules of Pachomius and Basil in the 4th century, and travelers (most notably John Cassian) introduced monasticism into the Latin Church. Eastern monasticism, principally because of a lack of discipline, dissipated much of its energy and had no further influence on the West. Western monasticism was dominated by the rule of Benedict of Nursia in Italy, who founded his communities in the 5th century.

The Benedictine Rule emphasized less austerity and contemplation and more common life and common work in charity and harmony. It has many offshoots and variations, and it has proved itself sturdy; it is the longest continuous religious community in the Roman Catholic Church, and it has survived many near collapses and reforms. The monk did not join an "order" but a monastery. Benedictine monasteries were almost always located in remote areas. However, because the labour of the monks transformed them into food-producing areas, they became centres of settlement. Thus the monks who had fled the world found that the world sought them out for services, which they gladly rendered. Whatever charitable works existed, were done by them. The monks were also the only people who did anything to preserve the learning of antiquity. They supported church reform and furnished many reforming popes and bishops. Benedict did not put contemplation into his rule; prayer was fulfilled by the chanting of the divine office (a set form of liturgical prayer), celebrated at specific times during the day.

The 13th century saw the rise of the mendicant friars (Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites, Augustinians). The friary was like a monastery, with common life and the divine office in choir; but the friars made excursions, sometimes at great length both in time and distance, for apostolic works, mostly preaching. All of the mendicant orders had apostolic work in mind in their foundation, and they desired a mobility that was had neither by the monks nor the diocesan clergy. They were thus at the ready disposal of the pope, and the principle of clerical exemption (exemption from the jurisdiction of the bishop) became much more important than it had been for the monks. Originally, the friars did not need even the approval of the bishop to preach in his diocese, although this freedom has been restricted in modern times. Preaching became almost the specialty of the mendicant friars in the Middle Ages, and they were important in the foundation of the universities of the Middle Ages.

The 16th century saw the emergence of the third major form of religious life, that of the clerks regular. These communities were formally and frankly directed to the active ministry. Even the friary, with the divine office in choir and other monastic restrictions, was dropped; they wore no distinctive religious habit. According to Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), the best-known example of clerks regular, their life imitated the manner of living of devout secular priests. The Jesuits, almost by accident, had no particular ministry and placed themselves at the disposition of the pope. The clerks regular had even greater mobility than the friars and had the resources to undertake specialized works. Since the 16th century the works of religious communities have been education, foreign missions, preaching, and theological scholarship. Orders founded since the 16th century have adopted the manner of life of the clerks regular.

Religious communities of women until the 17th century were entirely contemplative and subject to rigid cloister, although from the 16th century onward they began to admit girls into the convent not as novices (those admitted to probationary membership in the community) but to educate them as gentlewomen. The modern communities of women all stem from the type of community instituted in France in the mid-17th century by Vincent de Paul under the name of the Daughters of Charity. At first these women were not religious and deliberately so; Vincent did not wish cloister. The group was founded to help the poor and sick and to train their children in religion and the rudiments of education. These have remained the major works of the communities of women.

The earliest individual church law was called a canon (Greek kanon, "rule, measure, standard"); the canons were finally called Canon Law. Church laws appear almost as soon as church authority, and some passages of the New Testament reflect early rules; whether they should be called law at this primitive stage is doubtful. Laws of dioceses or of regions appear even before Constantine; they were formed by diocesan synods or regional councils. Laws for the whole church appear with the earliest ecumenical councils. Canon Law remained scattered pieces of papal, conciliar, and diocesan legislation until the 12th century. The first collection and synthesis of Canon Law was made by Gratian in 1142, the Decretum Gratiani. To this collection in the next 400 years were added the decretals (papal decrees on points of law) produced in the reigns of Gregory IX (1234), Boniface VIII (1298), and John XXII (1317) and two collections known as Extravagantes(1500). These formed the Corpus Juris Canonici ("Body of Canon Law"); no further collection of laws was made later than the Corpus. Effectively, although not formally, Canon Law included the opinions of canonists interpreting the Corpus.

In Christianity the concept received a new meaning through its relationship to the person of Jesus Christ as the messianic inaugurator of the Kingdom of God: (1) with Christ the elected community of the end time has appeared; (2) the church is the eschatological gift of the Holy Spirit, which already flows through the life of the church (Acts 2:33); (3) the community of the end time consists of those who believe in Jesus Christ--both Jews and pagans; the idea of the elected convenant people (i.e., the Jews) is transferred to the "new Israel"; (4) the church forms the body of its Lord; and (5) the church consists of "living stones," from which its house is "built" (1 Peter 2:5).

The unity of the church, which was dispersed geographically, was understood from the viewpoint of the Diaspora (James 1:1--the scattered churches of the new Israel represent "the twelve tribes in the Dispersion"). The Didache, or the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (late 1st century), viewed the church in terms of the bread of the Eucharist, whose wheat grains "are gathered from the mountains." The idea of the preexistence of the divine Logos brought into existence the concept of the preexistence of the church, which included the view that the world was created for the sake of the church. The earthly church is thus the representative of the heavenly church.

Establishment of norms for the church was necessary because diverse kinds of interpretations of the Christian message were conceived under the influence of the religions of late antiquity, especially Gnosticism--a syncretistic religious dualistic belief system that incorporated many Christian motifs and became one of the strongest heresies of the early church. In Gnostic interpretations, mixed Christian and pagan ideas appealed to divine inspiration or claimed to be revelations of the Resurrected One. The church erected three defenses against the apparently uncontrollable prophetic and visionary efficacy of pneumatic (spiritual) figures as well as against pagan syncretism, which was represented by a mixing together of many divine images and expressions: (1) the New Testament canon, (2) the apostolic "rules of faith," or "creeds," and (3) the apostolic succession of bishops. The common basis of these three defenses is the idea of "apostolicity."

The early church never forgot that it was the church that created, selected the books, and fixed the canon of the New Testament, especially because of the threat of Gnostic writings. This is one of the primary distinctions between the Orthodox Church vis-à-vis the Reformation churches, which view the Scriptures as the final norm and rule for the church and church teaching. The Orthodox Church, like the Roman Catholic Church, emphasizes the fact that the Christian Church existed prior to the formation of the canon of Scripture--that it is indeed the source and origin of the Scripture itself. Thus, tradition plays a significant role alongside the Holy Scriptures in the Orthodox and Roman churches.

The third defense that the church used against both Gnostic and syncretistic movements and free charismatic movements within the church was the office of bishop, which became legitimized through the concept of apostolic succession. The mandate for missions, the defense against free prophecy, the polemics with Gnosticism and other heresies, the persecution of the church, and, not least of all, management of church discipline--all allowed the monarchical episcopacy to emerge as a strong jurisdictional office in the early centuries. The bishop, in his capacity as leader of the eucharistic worship service, as teacher, and as curer of souls, became the chief shepherd of the church and was considered its representative.

The basic idea of apostolic succession is as follows: Christ appointed the original Apostles and entrusted to them his full spiritual authority; the original Apostles then appointed overseers (bishops) for the churches founded by them and passed on to them, through the sacramental laying on of hands, their authority of office. These men transmitted the office of overseer to their successors also by the laying on of hands. In this manner, apostolic succession guaranteed the legitimacy of episcopal church government, episcopal doctrine, and the validity of the sacraments dispensed by the bishops.

The evolution of the episcopal office followed a different development in the East and in the West. The Orthodox Church accepts the monarchical episcopacy insofar as it involves the entire church, both the visible earthly and the invisible heavenly churches bound together inseparably. The monarchical principle, however, finds no application to the organization of the visible church. The latter is based upon democratic principles that are grounded in the polity of the early church. Just as all Apostles without exception were of equal authority and none of them held a paramount position over against the others, so too their successors, the bishops, are of equal authority without exception.

The ecumenical council, which consists of the assembly of all Orthodox bishops, constitutes the highest authority of Orthodox synodal polity. The bishops gathered at an ecumenical council resolve all questions of Orthodox faith as well as of worship and canon law according to the principle that the majority rules. The councils recognized by the Orthodox Church as ecumenical councils are: Nicaea in 325, Constantinople in 381, Ephesus in 431, Chalcedon in 451, second Council of Constantinople in 553, third Council of Constantinople in 680, and second Council of Nicaea in 787. No council since then has been regarded as ecumenical by Eastern Orthodoxy.

Orthodoxy was divided into various old and new types of churches. Some of these were "patriarchal," which meant that they were directly responsible to a patriarch. Others were "autocephalous," which has come to mean in the modern world that as national churches they are in communion with Constantinople but are responsible for authority to their own national synods. This division, plus the fact that Orthodoxy has so often been the victim of revolutionary change and political onslaught, has served as a hindrance against any new ecumenical council, even though many Orthodox have asked for such a council.

On the basis of the joint action of special circumstances, in the Roman Church the papacy evolved out of the monarchical episcopate. Rome, as the capital of the Roman Empire, in which a numerically significant Christian community was already formed in the 1st century, occupied a special position. A leading role devolved upon the leading bishop of the Roman community in questions of discipline, doctrine, and ecclesiastical and worship order. This occurred in the Latin provinces of the church in the West (Italy, Gaul, Spain, Africa), whose organization followed the provincial organization of the Roman Empire. A special leadership position devolved upon the Roman bishop after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. The theological underpinning of this special position was emphasized by Petrine theology, which saw in the words of Jesus, "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church" (Matthew 16:18), a spiritual-legal instituting of the papacy by Jesus Christ himself. In the Greek Church of the East (e.g., Origen) and also in Augustine in the West, however, these words were referred to Peter's confession of faith; since the time of the popes Gelasius I (reigned 492-496), Symmachus (reigned 498-514), and Gregory I (reigned 590-604), these words have served as the foundation for the claim of papal primacy over the entire Christian Church.

Christianity, from its beginning, tended toward an intolerance that was rooted in its religious self-consciousness. Christianity understands itself as revelation of the divine truth that became human in Jesus Christ himself. "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me" (John 14:6). To be a Christian is to "follow the truth" (3 John); the Christian proclamation is "the way of truth" (2 Peter 2:2). Those who do not acknowledge the truth are enemies "of the cross of Christ" (Philippians 3:18) who have "exchanged the truth about God for a lie" (Romans 1:25) and made themselves the advocates and confederates of the "adversary, the devil," who "prowls around like a roaring lion" (1 Peter 5:8). Thus, one cannot make a deal with the devil and his party--and in this lies the basis for intolerance in Christianity.

Early Christianity aimed at the elimination of paganism--the destruction of its institutions, temples, tradition, and the order of life based upon it. After Christianity's victory over Greco-Roman religions, it left only the ruins of paganism still remaining. Christian missions of later centuries constantly aimed at the destruction of indigenous religions, including their cultic places and traditions (as in missions to the Anglo-Saxons, Germans, and Slavs). This objective was not realized in mission areas in which Christian political powers did not succeed in conquests--e.g., China and Japan; but in Indian Goa, for example, the temples and customs of all indigenous religions were eliminated by the Portuguese conquerors.

The attitude of intolerance was further reinforced when Islam confronted Christianity from the 7th century on. Islam understood itself as the conclusion and fulfillment of the Old and New Testament revelation; from the Christian view, however, Islam was understood eschatologically--i.e., as the religion of the "false prophets," or as the religion of the Antichrist. The aggression of Christianity against Islam--on the Iberian Peninsula, in Palestine, and in the entire eastern Mediterranean area during the Crusades--was carried out under this fundamental attitude of intolerance. Intolerance of indigenous religions was also manifested in Roman Catholic missions in the New World; these missions transferred the methods of the struggle against Islam to the treatment of the Native Americans throughout the Western Hemisphere and destroyed their cults and cultic places. Against Protestants, the Counter-Reformation displayed the same kind of intolerance and was largely equated with the struggle against the Turks.

Thus, for Nicholas of Cusa (1401-64) the conquest of Constantinople became the occasion to demand, for the first time, the mutual toleration of Christianity and Islam as the presupposition for a religious peace. When the Reformation churches asserted the exclusive claim of possessing the Christian truth, they tried to carry it out with the help of the political and military power at their disposal. In the religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries, Christian intolerance developed into an internal fratricidal struggle in which each side sought to annihilate the other party in the name of truth. Only the fact that such attempts did not succeed led to new reflections upon the justification of one's own exclusive claim to absoluteness.

The faith of Christendom is present in the confessions of faith and the creedal writings of the different churches. Three creeds find general ecumenical acknowledgment: the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (also called the Nicene Creed), and the Athanasian Creed. The Apostles' Creed is the baptismal confession of the Roman Catholic community; its original form as a Greek hymn can be traced back to the apostolic tradition (of the 2nd century). The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed is the confession of faith of the ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 325, which was later supplemented at the ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 381. Its principal use is in the liturgy of the Eucharist. The Athanasian Creed is a Latin creed whose theological content can be traced back to Athanasius of Alexandria (4th century) but that probably first originated in the 5th century in Spain or southern Gaul. It contains a detailed formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity and Christology (the two-natures doctrine), which was influenced by Augustine. All three creeds were accepted by the churches of the Reformation.

The original form of the creed possessed not a didactic but a hymnal character and had its locus in the worship service. Regular use of a creed as a baptismal confession, and, accordingly, in the preparation of candidates for baptism in catechetical instruction, influenced its fixed formulation. This was also true of its use in the eucharistic worship service as an expression of the congregation's unity in faith before receiving the elements of the Lord's Supper as well as its use as testimony before the world in times of persecution and as norm of faith (regula fidei) in the altercation with heresies.

Development of confessions of faith into theological didactic creeds, which began during the Christological controversies of the 5th century, was continued in the Reformation. The relatively short creedal formulas grew into extensive creedal compositions, primarily because the Reformers conducted their battles with the Roman Church as a struggle for "pure doctrine" as well as for a foundation for the unity of the church. In the Diet of Augsburg in 1530 the feuding ecclesiastical parties were induced to deliver a presentation of their faith. Though the Roman Catholics did not accede to this challenge, the Protestants offered the Confessio Augustana (or the Augsburg Confession). First planned by Philipp Melanchthon, a follower of Luther, as a creed for union, it later became the basic confessional statement of the Lutheran Church.

A similar development of doctrinal confessions occurred in Calvinism. The idea of the completion of confessional writings is missing in the Lutheran churches but not in Calvinistic churches: the revision of old and the formation of new creedal writings are permitted and in part are provided for in the rules of the church. Thus the Barmen Declaration in 1934, against the "German Christians" and the Nazi worldview, arose primarily from Reformed circles. The Anglican Church incorporated the Thirty-nine Articles (a confessional statement) and a short catechism into The Book of Common Prayer of 1559/1662 (revised in the United States by the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1928 and 1979) and thereby emphasized the unity of doctrine and worship.

The shifting of the chief emphasis in church life to "pure doctrine" in the 16th and 17th centuries also obliged the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches to formulate their teaching in confessional texts. Thus, under the influence of the reformational creedal writings, the Eastern Orthodox Church developed confessional texts. An example is The Orthodox Confession of Faith (Confessio orthodoxa) of the metropolitan Peter Mogila of Kiev against Cyril Lucaris, a Calvinist-influenced patriarch of Constantinople; it was approved in 1643 by the Greek and Russian patriarchs. At the Council of Trent (1545-63) the Roman Catholic Church countered the Protestant doctrinal creeds with a Professio fidei Tridentina ("The Tridentine Profession of Faith"), which at the end of every article of faith respectively anathematizes the dissenting Protestant article of faith.

In modern Christendom, creedal formulation is continued in two areas. (1) Within the ecumenical movement, since the formation of the World Council of Churches in 1948 there have been attempts to create a brief uniform confession as the common basis of faith for the Christians in that council. These efforts have not yet been concluded. According to its constitution, the World Council of Churches is "a fellowship of Churches which accepts our Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour." In 1960 at St. Andrews, Scot., the World Council's central committee unanimously accepted an expanded draft of the "basis":

(2) There are great numbers of churches--the majority, many would contend--that are products of missionary endeavours by the West. For a time they were called "the younger churches" but are now more frequently referred to simply as Asian or African churches, or churches in developing nations. Among them the doctrinal disputes and confessional battles of Western Christendom have often been viewed as alien, imported, and frequently incomprehensible. The union of churches in South India into the Church of South India (1947) occurred only on the basis of the participating churches dismantling their traditional creedal differences. The Church of South India's scheme of union substitutes biblical revelation for doctrinal formulation. Similarly, the United Church of Christ in Japan (Kyodan) renounced drawing up a new creed and limited itself to a preface to the Apostles' Creed. In the churches of Africa, the inadequacy of the confessions of the 16th century also has been strongly recognized as a result of their own indigenous cultural presuppositions.

In the early church, discipline--qualified by the ideal of holiness demanded from baptized Christians--concerned four areas in which there arose violations of the demand for holiness: (1) the relationship to the pagan social milieu and the forms of life and culture connected with it (e.g., idolatry, the emperor's cult, the theatre, and the circus); (2) the relationship of the sexes within the Christian community (e.g., rejection of polygamy, prostitution, pederasty, sodomy, and obscene literature and art); (3) other offenses against the community, especially murder and property crimes of all kinds; and (4) the relationship to teachers of false doctrine, false prophets, and heretics.

Employment of church discipline at an early date led to the formation of a casuistry that at first consisted simply of the distinction between "mortal" and "not mortal" sins (1 John 5:15 ff.)--i.e., between sins that through their gravity resulted in loss of eternal life and those with which this was not the case. In earliest Christianity, the relapse of a baptized Christian into paganism (i.e., apostasy) was believed to be the most serious offense. In the Letter to the Hebrews one who is baptized irrevocably forfeits salvation through a relapse into grievous sin. The various difficulties in substantiating the theory and practice of a second repentance were solved by Pope Calixtus (reigned 217/218-222). This question was especially important in Rome because of the great number of offenses against the idea of holiness. Pope Calixtus granted to bishops decisions about definitive exclusion from the congregation or readmission as well as the evaluation of church punishments. Among all the factors that led to the power of the episcopacy, the concentration of penitential discipline in the hands of the bishop probably contributed more to the strengthening of episcopal power and to the achievement of the monarchical episcopate in the church than any other single factor. This development did not take place without fierce opposition (e.g., Montanism).

On the whole, the casuistic regulation of church discipline led to its externalization and devaluation. The medieval sects, therefore, always stressed in their critique of the worldly church the lack of spiritual discipline and endeavoured to realize a voluntary church discipline in terms of a renewed radical demand of holiness based on early Christianity. The radical sects that emerged in the Reformation reproached the territorial churches by claiming that they had restricted themselves to a renovation of doctrine and not to a renewal of the Christian life and a restoration of the "communion of saints." Different groups of Anabaptists (e.g., Swiss Brethren, Mennonites, and Hutterites), especially, attempted to realize the ideal of the purity and holiness of the church through the reintroduction of a strict church discipline.

The Reformed churches in particular endeavoured to make church discipline a valid concern of the community. In Geneva, church discipline was expressed, at the instigation of Calvin, in the establishment of special overseers, who, in the individual districts assigned to them, had to watch over the moral behaviour of church members. There likewise came about the creation of such social arrangements as ecclesiastically controlled inns and taverns, in which not only the consumption of food and drink but even the topics of conversation were subject to stern regulation. The cooperation of ecclesiastical discipline and state legislation found its characteristic expression in the United States in the Prohibition amendment to the Constitution. Its introduction came most strongly from congregational churches, above all those characterized by Evangelical, Fundamentalist, or Pentecostal outlooks. They united forces with more moderate or liberal churches that were experienced in trying to affect the social order through legislation. Together they battled against the misuse of alcohol as part of their ideal to extend Christian norms and influence to the whole of society.

In the 20th century, church discipline, in the original spiritual sense of voluntary self-control, is practiced only in smaller communities of evangelical Christians, in which the ideal of holiness of the community is still maintained and in which the mutual, personal bond of the congregational members in the spirit of Christian fellowship still allows a meaningful realization of a church discipline. It is also practiced in churches in developing nations. In these churches the practice of church discipline still appears as a vitally necessary centre of the credible self-representation of the Christian community. Characteristically, therefore, these churches' main criticism of the old institutional churches has been directed against the cessation of church discipline among their members.

The development of the episcopacy in the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches has been covered in the general introduction of this section under evolution of the episcopal office. Occupying a special position is the episcopal polity of the Anglican Communion. Despite the embittered opposition of Puritan and independent groups during the period of the Reformation and Revolution in England, this polity has maintained the theory and practice of the episcopal office of apostolic succession. The Low Church tradition of the Anglican Communion views the episcopal office as a form of ecclesiastical polity that has been tested through the centuries and is therefore commendable for pragmatic reasons; the Broad Church tradition, however, emphatically adheres to the traditional worth of the episcopal office without allowing the faithful to be excessively dependent upon its acknowledgement. The High Church tradition, on the other hand, values episcopal polity as an essential element of the Christian Church that belongs to the church's statements of faith. The episcopal branch of the Methodist Church has also retained in its polity the bishop's office in the sense of the Low Church and Broad Church view.

In the Reformation churches an episcopal tradition has been maintained in the Swedish state church (Lutheran), whose Reformation was introduced through a resolution of the imperial Diet of Västerås in 1527, with the cooperation of the Swedish bishops. In the German Evangelical (Lutheran and Reformed) territories, the bishops' line of apostolic succession was ruptured by the Reformation. As imperial princes, the Roman Catholic German bishops of the 16th century were rulers of their territories; they did not join the Reformation in order to avoid renouncing the exercise of their sovereign (temporal) rights as demanded by Luther's Reformation. On the basis of a legal construction originally intended as a right of emergency, the Evangelical rulers functioned as the bishops of their territorial churches but only in questions concerning external church order. This development was promoted through the older conception of the divine right of kings and princes, which was especially operative in Germanic lands.

In matters of church polity, controversial tendencies that began in the Reformation still work as divisive forces within the ecumenical movement in the 20th century. For Luther and Lutheranism, the polity of the church has no divine-legal characteristics; it is of subordinate significance for the essence of the church, falls under human ordinances, and is therefore quite alterable. In Calvinism, on the other hand (e.g., in the Ecclesiastical Ordinances [Ordonnances ecclésiastiques] of 1541 and in Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion [1536]), the Holy Scriptures appear as a codex from which the polity of the congregation can be inferred or certainly derived as a divine law. Thus, on the basis of its spiritual-legal character, church polity would be a component of the essence of the church itself. Both tendencies stand in a constant inner tension with one another in the main branches of the Reformation and within the individual confessions as well.

Even in Lutheranism, however, there has been a demand for a stronger emphasis upon the independent episcopal character of the superintendent's or president's office. Paradoxically, in the Lutheran Church, which came forth with the demand of the universal priesthood of believers, there arose the development of ecclesiastical authorities but not the development of self-contained congregational polities. When a merger of three Lutheran bodies produced a new Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in 1988 it established the bishop as leader of the synodal jurisdictions. In Lutheranism these bishops replaced presidents. Bishops were regarded there, as in Methodism, as part of the bene esse, the well-being, and not the esse, the essence, of the church. More or less self-contained congregational polities were developed in many Reformed churches because the Reformed Church congregation granted greater participation in the life of the congregation to the laity as presbyters and elders. Furthermore, the Reformed Church areas in Germany, France, England, and Scotland, as well as in The Netherlands and Hungary, had to build up their own ecclesiastical structure without dependence upon state authorities.

Presbyterian polity appeals to the model of the original church. The polity of the Scottish Presbyterian Church and the Presbyterian churches of North America is primarily based upon this appeal, which was also found among many English Puritan groups. It proceeds from the basic view that the absolute power of Christ in his church postulates the equality of rights of all members and can find expression only in a single office, that of the presbyter. The calling to this office is through election by church members, formally analogous to the democratic, republican political mode, and, accordingly, in contrast with the monarchy of the papal and the aristocracy of the episcopal church polity. In Presbyterian churches the differences between clergy and laity have been abolished in theory and, to a great extent, in practice. A superstructure of consistories and presbyteries is superposed one upon the other, with increasing disciplinary power and graduated possibilities of appeal. Through their emphases upon the divine-legal character of Presbyterian polity, the Presbyterian churches have represented a Protestant polity that counters the Roman Catholic concept of the church in the area of ecclesiastical polity. In ecumenical discussions in the 20th century, the divine-legal character of this polity is occasionally noticeable in its thesis of an apostolic succession of presbyters as a counter-thesis to that of the apostolic succession of bishops.

Congregationalism stresses the autonomous right of the individual congregation to order its own life in the areas of teaching, worship, polity, and administration. This demand had been raised and practiced by the medieval sects and led to differentiated polities and congregational orders among the Waldenses, the Hussites, and the Bohemian Brethren. Congregationalism was advanced in the Reformation period by the most diverse parties in a renewed and reinforced way not only by "Enthusiasts" (or, in German, Schwärmer) and Anabaptists, who claimed for themselves the right to shape their congregational life according to the model of the original church, but also by individual representatives of Reformation sovereigns, such as Franz Lambert (François Lambert d'Avignon), whose resolutions at the Homberg Synod of 1526 were not carried out because of a veto by Luther. The beginnings of modern Congregationalism probably lie among the English refugee communities on the European mainland, in which the principle of the established church was first replaced by the concept of a covenant sealed between God or Jesus Christ and the individual or the individual congregation.

The basic concepts of Congregationalism are: the understanding of the congregation as the "holy people" under the regent Jesus Christ; the spiritual priesthood, kingship, and prophethood of every believer and the exchange of spiritual experiences between them, as well as the introduction of a strict church discipline exercised by the congregation itself; the equal rank of all clergy; the freedom of proclamation of the gospel from every episcopal or official permission; and performance of the sacraments according to the institution of Jesus. By virtue of the freedom of self-determination fundamentally granted every congregation, no dogmatic or constitutional union but rather only county union of the Congregationalist churches developed in England. North America, however, became the classic land of Congregationalism as a result of the great Puritan immigration to New England, beginning with the Pilgrims on the Mayflower (1620). In the 20th century, acknowledgement of the full authority of the individual congregation runs through almost all Protestant denominations in the United States and is even found among the Lutherans. Congregationalism participates in the ecumenical movement, within which it presses for awakening the independent activity of the Christian churches in the entire world in terms of a proto-Christian ideal of the congregation.

Numerous other forms of congregational polity have arisen in the history of Christendom, such as the association idea in the Society of Friends. Even Pentecostal communities have not been able to maintain themselves in a state of unrestrained and constant charismatic impulses but instead have had to develop a legally regulated polity. This was what happened in the early church, which likewise was compelled to restrain the freedom of charisma in a system of rulers and laws. Pentecostal communities either have been constituted in the area of a biblical fundamentalism theologically and on the basis of a congregationalist church polity constitutionally or they have ritualized the outpouring of the Spirit itself. Thus, the characteristic dialectic of the Holy Spirit is confirmed: the Spirit creates law and the Spirit breaks law even in the most recent manifestations of its working.

The central focus of the liturgy of the early church was the Eucharist, which the Christian community interpreted as a fellowship meal with the resurrected Christ. Judaism at the time of Christ was dominated by an intense expectation of the Kingdom of God, which would be inaugurated by the Messiah-Son of man. The early Christian Church appropriated this expectation, which revolved around the image of the messianic meal in which the faithful would "sit at table" (Luke 13:29) with the coming Messiah-Son of man. At the centre of Jesus' preaching on the Kingdom of God is the promise that the blessed would "eat bread" with the exalted Messiah-Son of man (Luke 13:29). The Lord himself would serve the chosen community of the Kingdom at the messianic meal (Luke 12:37 ff.), which bears the features of a wedding banquet. The basic mood in the community gathered about him is thus one of nuptial joy over the inauguration of the promised end time, which Jesus emphasized in Matthew, chapter 9, verse 15: "Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?" The supper that Jesus celebrated with his disciples "on the night when he was betrayed" (1 Corinthians 11:23) inaugurated the heavenly meal that will be continued in the Kingdom of God. Decisive for understanding the original meaning of the Eucharist are the words of Jesus in Matthew, chapter 26, verse 29: "I shall not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom."

The death of Jesus at first bewildered his community in the face of his promise, but the appearances of the Resurrected One, beginning with Easter morning, confirmed their expectations about the messianic Kingdom. These appearances influenced the expectations about the messianic meal and the continuation of fellowship with the exalted Son of man in the meal. Faith in the Resurrection and an expectation of the continuation of the fellowship meal with the exalted Son of man are two basic elements of the Eucharist that are a part of the liturgy from the beginnings of the church. In meeting the Resurrected One in the eucharistic meal the community sees all the glowing expectations of salvation confirmed.

What the Christian community experiences in the eucharistic meal is basically a continuation of the appearances of the Resurrected One in its midst. Thus, many liturgical forms developed, all of which served to enhance the mystery of the eucharistic meal. In the magnificent liturgical creations from the 1st to the 6th century, diversity rather than uniformity was a commanding feature of the development of worship forms. The eucharistic mystery developed from a simple form, as depicted in the 1st-century Didache, to the fully developed liturgies of the 5th and 6th centuries in both the East and the West.

In the 6th century two types of liturgies were fixed by canon law in the Eastern Orthodox Church: the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (originally the liturgy of Constantinople) and the Liturgy of St. Basil (originally the liturgy of the Cappadocian monasteries). The Liturgy of St. Basil, however, is celebrated only 10 times during the year, whereas the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom is celebrated most other times. In addition to these liturgies is the so-called Liturgy of the Preconsecrated Offerings, attributed to Pope Gregory I the Great of the 6th century. In this liturgy no consecration of the eucharistic offering occurs--because the eucharistic offerings used have been consecrated on the previous Sunday--and it is celebrated on weekday mornings during Lent as well as from Monday to Wednesday during Holy Week.

The period of liturgical improvisation apparently was concluded earlier in the Latin West than in the East. The liturgy of the ancient Latin Church is textually available only since the 6th century. Though the Gallic liturgies are essentially closer to the Eastern liturgies, the liturgy of Rome followed a special development. From the middle of the 4th century, the Roman mass was celebrated in Latin rather than in Greek, which had been the earlier practice. The fixing of the Roman mass by canon law is congruent with the historical impulse of the Roman Catholic Church to follow the ancient Roman pattern of rendering sacred observance in legal forms and with stipulated regularities.

Characteristically, all reformation eras in the history of Christianity, in which new charismatic impulses arise in the areas of piety and theology, are also periods of new liturgical creations. Thus in the late 16th-century Reformation a great diversity of new liturgical forms emerged. Luther in Germany restricted himself to a reformatory alteration of the Roman Catholic liturgy of the mass, whereas Zwingli in Switzerland attempted to create a completely new evangelical liturgy of the Eucharist based upon a New Testament foundation. The Free churches also showed a strong liturgical productivity; in the Herrnhut Brethren (Moravian) community, Graf von Zinzendorf ushered in the singing worship services. Methodism, influenced by the Moravian spiritual songs and melodies, also produced new liturgical impulses, especially through its creation of new hymns and songs and its joyousness in singing.

The innovative religious bodies, especially those that arose in the 19th and 20th centuries, have been especially productive in this area. The Mormons, for example, developed not only a new type of church song but also a new style of church music in the context of their liturgical new creation (e.g., "sealing"). The mood of charismatic, liturgical new creations has also been preserved in the Baptist churches of American blacks, whose spirituals are the most impressive sign of a free and spontaneous liturgy. The Pentecostal churches of the 20th century quite consciously attempt to protect themselves against liturgical formalism. The free, often spontaneously improvised liturgy of the Pentecostal tent missions was transformed into patterns that became familiar to a wider audience through televised evangelism, which was often of a Pentecostal nature. Often ecstatic, strongly rhythmized music endeavours to retain certain features of the charismatic spontaneity of the early Christian worship.

Traditional liturgy fixed by canon law, which could develop into a lifeless formalism, occasionally led to the adoption of a fundamentally anti-liturgical attitude. Zwingli's reformation, for example, exhibited an emphatically anti-liturgical tendency in that it reduced the intricate Roman Catholic order of service to beginning song, prayer, sermon, concluding prayer, and concluding song. In many Reformed churches, some anti-liturgical currents developed, which, in terms of visual art, have been directed against encouraging expressions that might distract from the preached and prayed Word. In more radical instances this has even meant protests against the use of the organ in the worship service. The Society of Friends radically eliminated the liturgy and replaced it with mutual silence, expecting the spontaneous activity of the Holy Spirit.

Though definite and obligatory liturgies have been established as normative, the forms of the liturgy continue to develop and change. The impulse toward variations in worship services has been especially noticeable in the latter part of the 20th century. In the Eastern Orthodox liturgy, in the Roman Catholic mass and breviary, and in Anglican and Lutheran liturgies, there are both fixed and changing sections. The fixed parts represent the basic structure of the worship service concerned, and the alternating parts emphasize the individual character of a particular service for a certain day or period of the church year. The changing parts consist of special Old and New Testament readings that are appropriate for a particular church festival, as well as of special prayers and particular hymns.

The eucharistic liturgy consists of two parts: the Liturgy of the Catechumens and the Liturgy of the Faithful. This basic liturgical structure goes back to a time in which the church was a missionary church that grew for the most part through conversion of adults. The latter were first introduced to the Christian mysteries as catechumens through instruction in religious doctrine. They also received permission to take part in the first part of the worship service (which was instructional), but they had to leave the service before the eucharistic mystery was celebrated. The first part of the Orthodox worship service still ends with a threefold exclamation, reminiscent of pre-Christian, Hellenistic mystery formulas: "You catechumens, go forth! None of the catechumens (may remain here)!"

The eucharistic liturgy of the Orthodox Church is a kind of mystery drama in which the advent of the Lord is mystically consummated and the entire history of salvation--the incarnation, death, and Resurrection of Christ the Logos, up to the outpouring of the Holy Sprit--is recapitulated. The Orthodox Church also attaches the greatest value to the fact that within the eucharistic mystery an actual transformation of the eucharistic elements in bread and wine takes place. This is not the same as the Roman Catholic dogma of transubstantiation, which teaches that the substance of the bread and wine is changed into the body and blood of Christ, though the properties of the elements remain the same, when the priest consecrates the bread and wine. According to some Orthodox authorities, the Orthodox view is similar to the Lutheran doctrine of the Real Presence. The essential and central happening in the Orthodox liturgy, however, is the descent of the resurrected Lord himself, who enters the community as "the King of the universe, borne along invisibly above spears by the angelic hosts." The transformation of the elements is, therefore, the immediate emanation of this personal presence. Thus, the Orthodox Church does not preserve and display the consecrated host after and outside the eucharistic liturgy, as in the Roman Catholic Church, because the consecrated offerings are mystically apprehended and actualized only during the eucharistic meal.

The prayerful gesture of folded hands among Protestant churches derives from an old Germanic tradition of holding the sword hand with the left hand, which symbolizes one's giving himself over to the protection of God because he is now defenseless. The prayerful gesture of hands pressed flat against one another with the fingertips pointed upward--the symbol of the flame--is practiced among Roman Catholics as well as Hindus and Buddhists. Other liturgical gestures found in many Christian churches are crossing oneself, genuflecting, beating oneself on the chest, and kneeling during prayer or when receiving the eucharistic elements. Among some Holiness or Pentecostal churches spontaneous handclapping and rhythmic movements of the body have been stylized gestures in the worship services. These gestures are often familiar features of worship in churches in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Liturgical dancing, widely spread in pagan cults, was not practiced in the early church; vestigial remnants of this ancient practice, however, have been admitted in liturgical processionals. In the latter part of the 20th century, liturgical dances have been reintroduced in some churches but only in a limited fashion. Among the many other gestures of devotion and veneration practiced in the liturgically oriented churches such as the Roman Catholic Church, the High Church Anglican churches, and the Orthodox Church, are kissing the altar, the gospel, the cross, and the holy icons.

The interpretation and number of the sacraments vary among the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Eastern independent, and Protestant churches. The Roman Church has fixed the number of sacraments at seven: baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, penance, holy orders, matrimony, and anointing of the sick. In the early church the number of sacraments varied, sometimes including as many as 10 or 12. The theology of the Orthodox Church, under the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, fixed the number of sacraments at seven. The classical Protestant churches (i.e., Lutheran, Anglican, and Reformed) have accepted only two sacraments--i.e., baptism and the Eucharist, though Luther allowed that penance was a valid part of sacramental theology.

The New Testament mentions a series of "holy acts" that are not, strictly speaking, sacraments. Though the Roman Catholic Church recognizes a difference between such "holy acts," which are called sacramentals, and sacraments, the Orthodox Church does not, in principle, make such strict distinctions. Thus, though baptism and the Eucharist have been established as sacraments of the church, foot washing, which in the Gospel According to John, chapter 13, replaces the Lord's Supper, was not maintained as a sacrament. It is still practiced on special occasions, such as on Holy Thursday in the Roman Catholic Church and as a rite prior to the observance of the Lord's Supper, as in the Church of the Brethren. The "holy acts" of the Orthodox Church are symbolically connected to its most important mysteries. Hence, baptism consists of a triple immersion that is connected with a triple renunciation of Satan that the candidates say and act out symbolically prior to the immersions. Candidates first face west, which is the symbolic direction of the Antichrist, spit three times to symbolize their renunciation of Satan, and then face east, the symbolic direction of Christ, the sun of righteousness. Immediately following baptism, chrismation (anointing with consecrated oil) takes place, and the baptized believers receive the "seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit."