A Service of Love

4. Conclusion

85 4 Conclusion Vatican II stated: “Nothing more should be demanded of separated Eastern Christians who come to Catholic unity under the influence of the grace of the Holy Spirit than what the simple profession of the Catholic faith requires” (OE 25). Because the Catholic Church believes that a universal primacy exists iure divino, this stipulation of what the Catholic faith requires is understood to include an acceptance of universal primacy. With regard to the form of that primacy, however, Joseph Ratzinger commented at Graz in 1976 that the form the primacy has taken in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is not the only possible form, and therefore that it is not “binding on all Christians.” He famously added: “Rome must not require more from the East with respect to the doctrine of the primacy than had been formulated and was lived in the first millennium.”1 He recalled that Patriarch Athenagoras had greeted Pope Paul VI on the latter’s visit to Constantinople on July 25, 1967, as “successor of Peter,” “the first in honor among us,” and “the 1. Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), 198–99. 86 conclusion one who presides in charity,”2 and he observed that this was “the essential content of the doctrine of primacy as it was known in the first millennium.” “Rome need not ask for more,”3 he firmly concluded. Later in the same address, Ratzinger concentrated on the second and third of the phrases used by Patriarch Athenagoras and asked whether “this archaic confession , which has nothing to do with the ‘primacy of jurisdiction’ but confesses a primacy of ‘honor’ (τιμή) and agape, might not be recognized as a formula that adequately reflects the position Rome occupies in the Church.”4 He thus translated the general idea that what was confessed in the first millennium might suffice for today into a brief and memorable concrete form, leaving aside the issue of jurisdiction and highlighting expressions from the First Council of Constantinople and Ignatius of Antioch, respectively. The first of these refers, as we have seen, to the honor of primacy,5 and the second is Eucharistic.6 It is notable that Ratzinger did not insist on the first phrase that Patriarch Athenagoras used—“successor of Peter.” As seen above, this phrase can be understood in various ways,7 and, while the bishops of Rome from the fourth century onwards tended to emphasize their con2 . The three titles are quoted here from E. J. Storman, ed., Towards the Healing of Schism: The Sees of Rome and Constantinople. Public statements and correspondence between the Holy See and the Ecumenical Patriarchate 1958–1984 (New York/Mahwah, N. J.: Paulist Press, 1987), 159 (final phrase amended). 3. Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, 199. 4. Ibid., 217. 5. Cf. above, p. 55. 6. Cf. above, p. 27. 7. Cf. above, p. 54. conclusion 87 nection with Peter in particular, as successor, heir, or vicar,8 the East never accepted this idea9 and preferred the idea that the bishop of Rome was simply bishop of the church founded by both Peter and Paul.10 Patriarch Athenagoras did use the phrase “successor of Peter” but immediately made mention of Paul, too, as patron saint of the pope he was greeting: “Welcome then, holy brother and successor of Peter, one with Paul in name and manner, messenger of love, unity, and peace.”11 What is perhaps most striking is that the expression , “messenger of love, unity, and peace,” echoes Vatican II’s description of the communion that united the bishops of the church with one another and with the bishop of Rome in the early centuries as “a bond of unity , charity, and peace” (LG 22).12 Bearing in mind that love, unity, and peace are all fruits of the one Eucharist that Catholics and Orthodox both celebrate, it would seem that “messenger of love, unity, and peace” might be a promising way for Catholics and Orthodox together to describe a universal primate who sums up in himself what all the bishops are, and who serves their Eucharistic communion. We may finally observe that the Eucharistic resonance of the word agape (love) in Ignatius’s greeting to 8. Cf. above, pp. 23–24, 54. 9. Cf. above, p. 54. 10. Cf. above, p. 69. It may be noted in this regard that Ignatius of Antioch in...