Monsignor Fenton wrote an article about this question in great detail...
Is this it, Yeti?
https://archive.org/details/sim_american-ecclesiastical-review_1950-06_122_6/page/454/mode/1upOCR text:
THE LOCAL CHURCH OF ROME
According to the divine constitution of Our Lord’s kingdom
on earth, membership in that kingdom, the universal Church
militant, normally involves membership in some local or individual
brotherhood within the universal Church. These individual
brotherhoods within the Catholic Church are of two kinds. First
there are the various local Churches, the associations of the faith-
ful in the different individual regions of the earth. Then there
are the religiones, assemblies of the faithful organized unice et ex
integro for the attainment of perfection on the part of those who
are admitted into them. According to the Apostolic Constitution
Provida mater ecclesia, “the canonical discipline of the state of
perfection as a public state was so wisely regulated by the Church
that, in the case of clerical religious Institutes, in those matters in
general which concern the clerical life of the religious, the Insti-
tutes took the place of dioceses, and membership in a religious
society was equivalent to the incardination of a cleric in a diocese.””!
Among these individual brotherhoods that live within the uni-
versal Church of God on earth, the local Church of Rome mani-
festly occupies a unique position. Theologians of an earlier day
stressed these prerogatives of the Roman Church quite strongly.
Unfortunately, however, in our own time the manuals of sacred
theology, considered as a group, dwell almost exclusively upon the
nature and the characteristics of the Church universal, without
explaining the teaching about the local Church at any length.
Consistently with this trend, they have chosen to teach about the
Holy Father in relation to the Church throughout the entire world,
and have given comparatively little attention to his function pre-
cisely as the head of the Christian Church in the Eternal City.
Thus we and the people whom God has commissioned us to
instruct may be prone to forget that it is precisely by reason of
the fact that he presides over this individual local congregation
that the Holy Father is the successor of St. Peter and thus the
visible head of the entire Church militant. The Christian com-
1The Provida mater ecciesia was issued on Feb. 2, 1947. The translation
of this passage is that of Bouscaren in his Canon Law Digest: Supplement
through 1948 (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Company, 1949), p. 66.
454
THE LOCAL CHURCH OF ROME 455
munity of Rome was and remains Peter’s Church. The man who
governs that community with apostolic power in the name of Christ
is Peter’s successor, and is thus Our Lord’s vicar in the rule of
the Church universal.
It is definitely the more common teaching among the scholastic
theologians that the office of the visible head of the entire Church
militant is inseparably attached to the position of the Bishop of
Rome, and that this absolutely permanent attachment exists by
reason of the divine constitution of the Church itself. In other
words, an imposing majority of Catholic theologians who have
written on this particular subject have manifested the belief that
no human agency, not even the Holy Father himself, could render
the primacy of jurisdiction over the Church universal the pre-
rogative of some episcopal see other than that of Rome or other-
wise separate that primacy from the office and the essential pre-
rogatives of the Bishop of Rome. According to this widely ac-
cepted teaching, the successor of St. Peter, the vicar of Christ on
earth, could not possibly be other than the Bishop who presides
over the local Christian community of the Eternal City.
During even its earliest stage of development, scholastic ecclesi-
ology taught expressly that when St. Peter established himself
as the head of the local Christian community in Rome, he was
acting in accordance with God’s own direction. Thus Alvaro
Pelayo teaches that the Prince of the Apostles transferred his See
from Antioch to Rome “iubente Domino,” and that the location
of the principal seat of the Christian priesthood in the “caput et
domina totius mundi” was to be attributed to Divine Providence.”
A century later, the Cardinal John de Turrecremata insisted that
a special command of Christ had made Rome the primatial See
of the Catholic Church.* Turrecremata argued that this action
on the part of Our Lord made it impossible for even the Sovereign
Pontiff himself to detach the primacy from Peter’s own local
Church in the Eternal City. Later Thomas de Vio Cardinal
2Cf. De statu ct planctu ecclesiae, I, a. 40, in Iung, Un Franciscain, théo-
logien du pouvoir pontifical au XIV* siécle: Alvaro Pelayo, Evéque et Péni-
tencier de Jean XXII (Paris: Vrin, 1931), p. 111.
3 Cf. Summa de ecclesia, II, c. 40 (Venice, 1561), p. 154°.
456 THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW
Cajetan taught that St. Peter had established his See at Rome
by Our Lord’s express command.‘
The counter-Reformation theologians took up this question in
much greater detail. Dominic Soto sponsored the teaching, previ-
ously attacked by Turrecremata, to the effect that the fixing of
the primatial See at Rome was attributable only to St. Peter, in
his capacity as the head of the universal Church.5 Thus Soto held
that any one of St. Peter’s successors in the Supreme Pontificate
could, if he so chose, transfer the primatial See to some other
city, in exactly the same way and with exactly the same authority
St. Peter had used in bringing the primacy from Antioch to Rome.
Soto’s solution of this question never obtained any considerable
foothold in scholastic ecclesiology. His contemporary, the ever-
truculent Melchoir Cano, derided the contention that, since there
is no scriptural evidence in favor of any divine command that
the primatial See should have been established in Rome, St. Peter’s
transfer from Antioch to Rome must be attributed only to St.
Peter’s own choice.* He employed the occasion of this teaching
to bring out his own teaching on the importance of tradition as a
source of revelation and as a locus theologicus.
The traditional thesis that Rome is and always will be the
primatial See of the Catholic Church received its most important
development in St. Robert Bellarmine’s Controversies. St. Robert
devoted the fourth chapter of the fourth book of his treatise De
Romano Pontifice to the question De Romana ecclesia particulari.
His main thesis in this chapter was the contention that not only
the Roman Pontiff, but also the particular or local Church of the
city of Rome, must be considered as incapable of error in matters
of faith.’
In the course of this chapter St. Robert exposed as “a pious
and most probable teaching” the opinion that “Peter’s cathedra
4Cf. Apologia de comparata auctoritate papae et concilii, c. 13, in Pollet’s
edition of Cajetan’s Scripta theologica (Rome: Angelicuм, 1935), I, 299.
5 Cf. Commentaria in IV Sent., d. 24.
6 Cf. De locis theologicis, Lib. VI, c. 8, in the Opera theologica (Rome:
Filiziani, 1900), II, 44.
7Cf. De controversiis christianae fideit adversus huius temporis hacreticos
(Cologne, 1620), I, col. 811.
5
THE LOCAL CHURCH OF ROME 457
could not be taken away from Rome,”® and that, for this reason,
the individual Roman Church must be considered as both infallible
and indefectible. In support of this thesis which, incidentally, he
considered as an opinion and not as entirely certain, St. Robert
appealed to the doctrine that “God Himself has ordered Peter’s
Apostolic See to be fixed in Rome.”®
St. Robert by no means closed the door entirely on the thesis
of Dominic Soto. He admits the possibility that the divine mandate
according to which St. Peter assumed command of the Church in
Rome might have been merely a kind of “inspiration” from God,
rather than a definite and express order issued by Our Lord
Himself. Always insistent that his thesis was not a matter of
divine faith, he repeated his contention that it was most probable
and pie credendum “that the See has been established at Rome
by divine and immutable precept.”!?
Gregory of Valentia, however, taught that Soto’s opinion on
this subject was singularis nec vero satis tuta.11 Adam Tanner
believed the thesis that “the supreme authority to govern the
Church has been inseparably joined to the Roman See by direct
and divine institution and law,” though not a doctrine of faith,
was still something which could not be denied absque temeritate.!*
In his Tractatus de fide Suarez taught that it seemed more prob-
able and “pious” to say that St. Peter had joined the primacy over
the entire Church militant to the See of Rome by reason of
Our Lord’s own precept and will. Suarez believed, however, that
St. Peter received no such order from Christ prior to the Ascen-
sion.'* The outstanding seventeenth century theologians, Francis
Sylvius and John Wiggers also subscribed to the opinion that the
primacy was permanently attached to the local Church of Rome by
reason of Our Lord’s own command."
8 Cf. ibid., col. 812.
9 [bid., col. 813.
10 Jbid., col. 814.
11 Cf, Valentia’s Commentaria theologica (Ingolstadt, 1603), III, col. 276.
12. Cf. Tanner’s Theologia scholastica (Ingolstadt, 1627), III, col. 240.
13 Cf, Suarez’ Opus de triplici virtute theologica (Lyons, 1621), p. 197.
14 Cf. Sylvius’ De praccipuis fidet nostrae orthodoxae controverstis cuм
nostris haercticis, Lib. IV, q. 1, a. 6, in D’Elbecque’s edition of Sylvius’
Opera omnia (Antwerp, 1698), V, 297; Wigger’s Commentaria de virtutibus
theologicis (Louvain, 1689), p. 63.
\
458 THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW
The status of this thesis was further improved when Pope
Benedict XIV inserted it into his De synodo diocesana.’® Pope
Benedict believed that St. Peter had chosen the Roman Church
either at Our Lord’s command, or on his own authority, acting
under divine inspiration or guidance. Billuart taught that Rome
was chosen as a result of Our Lord’s own direct instruction.'® John
Perrone taught that no human authority could transfer the pri-
macy over the universal Church from the See of Rome."
In more recent times interest in this particular thesis has cen-
tered around the question of the manner in which God had joined
the primacy to the episcopate of the local Church of Rome.
Some, like Dominic Palmieri, consider it probable that St. Peter
received a divinely revealed mandate to establish his See perma-
nently at Rome before he assumed the leadership of the local Church
of the Eternal City.1% Others, like Reginald Schultes, believe such
an antecedent command most unlikely, but insist that an explicit
divine mandate to this effect was probably given to St. Peter prior
to his martyrdom.’® Still others, like Cardinal Franzelin and
Bishops Felder and D’Herbigny, give it as their opinion that St.
Peter’s final choice of Rome was brought about by a movement
of divine grace or inspiration of such a nature as to preclude the
possibility of any transfer of the primatial See from Rome at any
subsequent time.”° Cardinal Billot taught that Rome held its posi-
tion dispositione divina, and that this thesis, though not yet defined,
15 Cf. De synodo diocesana, Lib. II, c. 1, in Migne’s Theologiae cursus
completus (Paris, 1840), XXV, col. 825.
16 Cf, Billuart’s Tractatus de regulis fidei, diss. 4, a. 4, in the Summa
Sancti Thomae hodiernis academiarum moribus accommodata sive cursus
theologiae juxta mentem Divi Thomae (Paris: LeCoffre, 1904), V, 171 f.
17 Cf, Perrone’s Tractatus de locis theologicis, pars I, c. 2, in his Praelec-
tiones theologicae in compendium redactae (Paris, 1861), I, 135.
18 Cf, Palmieri’s Tractatus de Romano Pontifice cuм prolegomeno de
ecclesia (Prado, 1891), pp. 416 ff.
19 Cf. Schultes’ De ecclesia catholica praelectiones apologeticae (Paris:
Lethielleux, 1931), pp. 450 ff.
20 Cf. Franzelin’s Theses de ecclesia Christi (Rome, 1887), pp. 210 ff.;
Felder’s Apologetica sive theologia fundamentalis (Paderborn: Schoeningh,
1923), II, 120 f.; and D’Herbigny’s Theoloyia de ecclesia (Paris: Beau-
chesne, 1927), II, 213 ff.
i
THE LOCAL CHURCH OF ROME 459
was unquestionably capable of definition. It is interesting to
note that Gerard Paris wrote that more probably the primacy
over the universal Church was joined to the episcopate of Rome
ture divino, saltem indirecto.** The possibility of such an indirect
divine mandate has not been generally considered in the recent
literature of scholastic ecclesiology.
An overwhelming majority of theologians since the Vatican
Council has upheld the thesis that, in one way or another, the
primacy is permanently attached to the local Church of Rome
ture divino. Within this majority we find such outstanding ecclesi-
ologists as Cardinal Camillus Mazzella, Bonal, Tepe, Crosta, De
Groot, Hurter, Dorsch, Manzoni, Bainvel, Tanquerey, Hervé,
Michelitsch, Van Noort, and Lercher.** Despite the preponderance
of testimony in favor of this thesis, however, Saiz Ruiz and Cal-
cagno reject the theological arguments usually adduced in its
favor, while Dieckmann refers to the question as subject to con-
21 Cf. Billot’s Tractatus de ecclesia Christi, 5th edition (Rome: Gregorian
University, 1927), I, 613 f.
22. Cf. Paris’ Tractatus de ecclesia Christi (Turin: Marietti, 1929), pp.
23 Cf. Card. Mazzella’s De religitone et ecclesia praelectiones scholastico-
dogmaticae, 6th edition (Prado, 1905), pp. 731 ff.; Bonal’s IJnstitutiones
theologiae ad usum seminariorum, 16th edition (Toulouse, 1887), I, 422 ff.;
Tepe’s Institutiones theologicae in usum scholarum (Paris: Lethielleux,
1894), I, 307 f.; Crosta’s Theologia dogmatica in usum scholarum, 3rd edi-
tion (Gallarate: Lazzati, 1932), I, 309 ff.; De Groot’s Summa apologetica de
ecclesia catholica, 3rd edition (Regensburg, 1906), pp. 575 ff.; Hurter’s
Theologiae dogmaticae compendium, 2nd edition (Innsbruck, 1878), I, 332;
Dorsch’s Institutiones theologiae fundamentalis, 2nd edition (Innsbruck:
Rauch, 1928), II, 229; Manzoni’s Compendium theologiae dogmaticae, 4th
edition (Turin: Berruti, 1928), I, 263; Bainvel’s De ecclesia Christi (Paris:
3eauchesne, 1925), p. 201; Tanquerey’s Synopsis theologiae dogmaticae fun-
damentalis, 24th edition (Paris: Desclée, 1937), p. 492; Hervé’s Manuale
theologiae dogmaticae, 18th edition (Paris: Berche et Pagis, 1934), I, 401;
Michelitsch’s Elementa apologeticae sive theologiae fundamentalis, 3rd edi-
tion (Vienna: Styria, 1925), p. 378; Van Noort’s Tractatus de ecclesia
Christi, 5th edition (Hilversum, Holland: Brand, 1932), p. 188; and Lercher’s
Institutiones theologiae dogmaticac, 2nd edition (Innsbruck: Rauch, 1934),
I, 378 ff.
460 THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW
troversy.*4 Granderath makes it evident that the Vatican Council
had no intention of condemning Dominic Soto’s teaching in its
Constitution Pastor aeternus.”®
As a consequence of this inseparable union of the primacy with
the episcopate of Rome, scholastic theology points to the common
Catholic teaching that the local Church of Rome, the faithful of
the Eternal City presided over by their Bishop who is surrounded
by his own priests and other clerics, as an infallible and inde-
fectible institution. If, until the end of time, the man who is
charged with the responsibility of presiding over the universal
Church militant as Christ’s vicar on earth is necessarily the head
of the local Church in Rome, then it follows quite obviously that
the local Church of the Eternal City must be destined by God to
continue to live as long as the Church militant itself. A man could
not be Bishop of Rome unless there were a definite Roman Church
over which he could rule by divine authority.
The thesis on the indefectibility of the local Church of Rome has
received rather considerable development in the literature of scho-
lastic ecclesiology. Saiz Ruiz is of the opinion that, if the city of
Rome were destroyed, it would be sufficient to have the Sovereign
Pontiffs retain the title of Bishop of Rome “‘sicut hodie episcopi in
partibus.”*®> The terminology of most of the other modern and
classical theologians who have dealt wtih this question, however,
involves a rejection of this contention. The bishops in partibus
infidelium, properly called titular bishops since Pope Leo XIII
decreed this change in terminology in his apostolic letter Jn
supremo, of June 10, 1882, have no jurisdiction whatever over
the Catholics of the locality where their ancient churches were
situated. No man, according to the prevailing teaching of scholas-
24Cf. Saiz Ruiz, Synthesis sive notae theologiae fundamentalis (Burgos,
1906), pp. 430 ff.; Calcagno, Theologia fundamentalis (Naples: D’Auria,
1948), pp. 229 f.; and Dieckmann, De ecclesia tractatus historico-dogmatici
(Freiburg-im-Breisgau: Herder, 1925), I, 437 f.
25 Cf. Granderath, Constitutiones dogmaticae sacrosancti oecuмenici Con-
cilii Vaticani ex ipsis cius actis explicatae atque illustratae (Freiburg-im-
Breisgau: Herder, 1892), pp. 137 ff. Although Soto’s teaching has not been
condemned, the doctrine according to which the primacy could be taken away
from Rome by the action of a general council or of the populace as a whole
was proscribed by Pius IX in his Syllabus of errors. Cf. DB. 1735.
26 Cf. Saiz Ruiz, op. cit., p. 433.
THE LOCAL CHURCH OF ROME 461
tic theology, could be the successor of St. Peter and thus the
visible head of the universal Church militant unless he had par-
ticular episcopal authority over the Christians of the Eternal City.
Although some theologians, like Suarez and, in our own time
Mazzella and Manzoni, hold it as probable that the material city
of Rome will be protected by God’s providence and will never be
completely destroyed,”* most of the others hold that this destruc-
tion is a possibility. They maintain, however, that the destruction
of the buildings and even the complete uninhabitability of the
city itself would in no way necessitate the destruction of the Roman
local Church. Older writers like St. Robert Bellarmine were con-
vinced that at one time the actual city of Rome was entirely with-
out inhabitants, while the local Church, with its clergy and its
bishop, continued to live.*8
From time to time heretics have pointed to the seventeenth
and the eighteenth chapters of the Apocalypse as indication that
ultimately there would be no followers of Christ within the city
of Rome. St. Robert admitted such a possibility at the end of the
world, but pointed out the traditional interpretation of this section
of the Apocalypse, particularly that popularized by St. Augustine,
had nothing to do with the Roman Church during the period im-
mediately preceding the general judgment.*® Francis Sylvius
demonstrated that any application of this section of the Apocalypse
to the Roman Church was merely fanciful.*° Modern theologians,
Franzelin and Crosta in particular, have followed this procedure.*4
Another highly important and sometimes overlooked preroga-
tive of the local Roman Church is its infallibility. By reason of its
peculiar place in the universal Church militant, this individual
congregation has always been and will always be protected from
corporate heresy by God’s providential power. The local Church
of Rome, with its bishop, its presbyterium, its clergy and its laity
27 Cf. Suarez, op. cit., p. 198; Mazzella, op. cit., p. 738; Manzoni, op. cit.,
p. 264.
28 Cf. St. Robert, of. cit., col. 813.
29 Cf. ibid., col. 814 .
30 Cf. Sylvius, op. cit., q. 1, a. 4, conclusio 3, p. 291.
31 Cf. Franzelin, of. cit., pp. 213 f.; Crosta, of. cit., p. 312, quotes Franzelin
on this question. It is interesting to note that the doctrines of these scholastics
coincide with the teachings of the exegete Allo on this subject. Cf. his Saint
Jean: L’Apocalypse, 3rd edition (Paris: Gabalda, 1933), pp. 264 ff.
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462 THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW
will exist until the end of time secure in the purity of its faith.
St. Cyprian alluded to this charism when he spoke of the Catholic
Romans as those “ad quos perfidia habere non potest accessum.’’**
This infallibility, not only of the Roman Pontiff, but also of
the local Church of Rome, was a central theme in the ecclesiology
of some of the greatest counter-Reformation theologians. Cardinal
Hosius proposed this thesis in his polemic against Brentius.**
John Driedo developed it magnificently.** St. Robert explained
this teaching by saying that the Roman clergy and the Roman
laity, as a corporate unit, could never fall away from the faith.*®
The Roman Church, as an individual local institution, can never
fall away from the faith. Manifestly the same guarantee is given
to no other local Church.
It is interesting to note that during the prolonged vacancy of
the Roman See the presbyters and the deacons of Rome wrote
to St. Cyprian in such a way as to manifest their conviction that
the faith of their own local Church, even during this interregnum,
constituted a norm to which the faith of other local Churches was
meant to conform.3¢ The Roman Church could not possibly be
the one with which all the other local congregations of Christen-
dom must agree were it not endowed with a special infallibility.
In order to be effective that infallibility must be acknowledged in
a very practical manner by the other local units of the Church
militant throughout the world.
Actually the infallibility of the Roman Church is much more
than a mere theological opinion. The proposition that “the Church
of the city of Rome can fall into error” is one of the theses of
Peter de Osma, formally condemned by Pope Sixtus IV as errone-
ous and as containing manifest heresy.**
Since it is true that the local Church of Rome is infallible in its
faith, and that the Holy Father is the only authoritative teacher of
the local Church of Rome, it follows that he teaches infallibly
32 Ep. 59, in CSEL, 3, 2, 683.
33 Cf. Hosius, Confutatio prolegomenon Brentii (Lyons, 1564), pp. 170 ff.
34 Cf. Driedo, De ecclesiasticis scripturis et dogmatibus (Louvain, 1530),
lib. 4, c. 3, pp. 549 ff.
35 Cf. St. Robert, op. cit., col. 812.
36 This letter is listed among the epistles of St. Cyprian, n. 30.
37 Cf. DB, 730.
2
THE LOCAL CHURCH OF ROME 463
when he definitely settles a question about faith or morals so as to
fix or determine the belief of that local Church. Since the local
Church of Rome is an effective standard for all the other local
Churches, and for the universal kingdom of God on earth, in
matters of belief, the Holy Father must be considered as addressing
the entire Church militant, at least indirectly, when he speaks
directly and definitively to the local congregation of the Eternal
City. Thus it is perfectly possible to have a definition of the type
described in the Vatican Council’s Constitution Pastor aeternus,
one in which the Holy Father speaks ex cathedra, “exercising his
function as the pastor and the teacher of all Christians” and so
“according to his supreme apostolic authority defines a doctrine
about faith or morals to be held by the universal Church,’’’® pre-
cisely when he speaks to determine the faith of the local Church
of Rome.
It is a matter of manifest Catholic doctrine that the episcopate
of the local Church of Rome and the visible primacy of jurisdiction
over the universal Church militant are not actually two episcopates,
but constitute only one episcopal function. Today, unfortunately,
we are prone to imagine that the headship of the Christian com-
munity in the city on the Tiber is something hardly more than
incidental to the Sovereign Pontificate. Indicative of this tendency
is the declaration of a recent and well-written book about the Holy
Year, a statement to the effect that “One of the Holy Father’s titles
is Bishop of Rome.’’%®
Such a statement is not erroneous, but it might well be con-
sidered somewhat misleading. “Bishop of Rome” is not merely
one of the titles of the Holy Father, it is actually the name of the
office which constitutes him as St. Peter’s successor and as the
Vicar of Christ on earth. And, when the same volume speaks
of “the return of the Apostolic See to Rome,”*? with reference to
the end of the residence of the Popes in Avignon, it is using a
definitely bad terminology. The Apostolic See, the cathedra Petri,
never left the Eternal City. The men who ruled the Church from
Avignon were just as truly the Bishops of Rome as any others
38 DB, 1839.
39 Cf, Fenichell and Andrews, The Vatican and Holy Year (New York:
Halcyon House, 1950), p. 89.
49 Thid., p. 4.
464 THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW
among the successors of St. Peter. It is precisely by reason of
the inseparable residence within it of the Cathedra Petri that the
local Church of Rome possesses its extraordinary privileges and
charisms within the Church militant.
JosEPpH CLIFFORD FENTON
The Catholic University of America
Washington, D. C.
Topic: The TIA 3rd Secret of Fatima (Read 14743 times)