Autor: Little, Joyce

Buch: The Church and the Culture War

Titel: The Church and the Culture War

Stichwort: Papst, Kirche: Verteidiger d. christlichen Gedächtnisses; Macht - Autorität (Christus, Gehorsam); Gottes Allmacht, Schöpfung; Ratzinger über Autorität

Kurzinhalt: Today that authority is under attack as never before, and those who seek to destroy it do so, first, by trying to undermine the tradition which links today's bishops to the apostles and, second, by trying to undermine the validity of the New Testament ...

Textausschnitt: THE POPE: DEFENDER OF THE CHRISTIAN MEMORY

41b Although God is omnipotent, Jesus Christ made it abundantly clear that the Kingdom of God is ruled by authority, not power.1 He impressed people because he spoke with authority, and his authority is, like all authority, derivative or representational, for to see him is, as he tells us, to see the Father, the source of all authority, even his. Thus, at the end of his earthly ministry, he counselled obedience among his followers and practiced it himself, undergoing death in obedience to the will of his Father. As Guardini puts it, "Jesus' whole existence is a translation of power into humility. Or to state it actively: into obedience to the will of the Father as it expresses itself in the situation of each moment.... For the Son, obedience is nothing secondary or additional; it springs from the core of his being."2 His authority to speak for the Father lies in nothing but his obedience to the Father. (Fs)

42a Our ability to speak authoritatively as Christians also lies in nothing but our obedience to Jesus Christ. Such obedience, however, is possible only because Christ's authority continues to make itself visible in the office of the Magisterium by virtue of that unbroken line of succession which links the authority of all bishops today to the authority of the apostles who were specially chosen by Christ to witness to and participate in the founding event of the New Covenant. Today that authority is under attack as never before, and those who seek to destroy it do so, first, by trying to undermine the tradition which links today's bishops to the apostles and, second, by trying to undermine the validity of the New Testament or the apostolic testimony itself. That they seek to do so is understandable. For, as Jeremy Rifkin has observed, "The devaluation of history is a prerequisite for the free exercise of pure power."3 (Fs)

42b Nothing could be more opposed to Catholic authority than this repudiation of the past, for, as Ratzinger points out, "the Church is not something that we make today but something that we receive from the history of those who believe and that we pass on as something as yet incomplete, only to be fulfilled when the Lord shall come again."4 The Church's history is our history, and that history is the common memory we share, not, as Russell would have it, of some non-existent future Utopia, but of those great primordial and historical events by which God has created and redeemed us. (Fs)

43a It is the special obligation of the Magisterium in general, and of the Pope in particular, to safeguard our history. For, to cite Ratzinger again, "The true sense of the teaching authority of the Pope consists in his being the advocate of the Christian memory. The Pope does not impose from without. Rather he elucidates the Christian memory and defends it."5 At the same time, we all have a stake in this authority, since it is our history, our memory he elucidates and defends. Because the Magisterium defends our memory, it is vital that we defend the Magisterium. For if there is one lesson to be learned from the path feminist theologians and others have taken, it is that, to those who deny the authority of the Magisterium, the whole of the Catholic faith is lost. (Fs)