(C) CATHOLIC ANSWERS NEWSLETTER
October 1987
by Karl Keating
P.O. Box 17181, San Diego, CA 92117, $12/year
Who is the Vicar of Christ?
Why, John Paul II, of course, you might say, letting it
go at that. Your answer would be right, but not necessarily
convincing. A fundamentalist would think you missed what is
really the obvious answer. He'd tell you the Vicar of Christ is
not the Pope, but the Holy Spirit.
Turn to the Gospel of John, chapters 14, 15, and 16. There
you will read Christ's promises to send the Paraclete, the
Comforter, the Holy Spirit:
"If you have any love for me, you must keep the commandments
which I give you; and then I will ask the Father, and he will
give you another to befriend you, one who is to dwell continually
with you forever. It is the truth-giving Spirit, for whom the
world can find no room, because it cannot see him, cannot
recognize him. But you are to recognize him; he will be
continually at your side, nay, he will be in you" (John 14: 15-
17).
"He who is to befriend you, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father
will send on my account, will in his turn make everything plain,
and recall to your minds everything I have said to you" (John
14:26).
"When the truth-giving Spirit, who proceeds form the Father,
has come to befriend you, he whom I will send to you from the
Father's side, he will bear witness of what I was" (John 15:26).
"And yet I can say truly that it is better for you I should
go away; he who is to befriend you will not come to you unless I
do go, but if only I make my way there, I will send him to you.
He will come, and it will be for him to prove the world wrong,
about sin, and about rightness of heart, and about judging" (John
16:7-8).
"It will be for him, the truth-giving Spirit, when he comes,
to guide you into all truth. He will not utter a message of his
own; he will utter the message that has been given to him; and he
will make plain to you what is still to come" (John 16:13).
"See!" says the fundamentalist. "It's the Holy Spirit that
is Vicar of Christ, not some pope."
Let's think this through. First of all, what is a vicar?
The dictionary defines a vicar as "one serving as a substitute or
agent; specifically, an administrative deputy." This means he
doesn't have to have all the power of the principal, just some.
He doesn't have to be the principal's equal.
We know from Matt. 16:18 that Christ founded a Church, and
we know from the appointment of apostles, presbyters, and deacons
that the Church was hierarchical and visible from the beginning.
(This is confirmed not just by the New Testament--look especially
at Acts--by an examination of early Christian writings outside
the New Testament.)
While he was on earth, Christ himself was the visible head
of the organization he was establishing. But he can't very well
be a visible head after he has returned to heaven, because he
isn't visible any longer. The Church needed someone to take his
place--not someone to do everything he did, but someone to act as
the visible head of a Church that was destined to exist until the
end of time. The first Christians had Christ himself to follow
about. Later Christians didn't--and don't.
Christ set up his Church not just for those who could have
seen him in Palestine, but for Christians of later generations.
He also set it up as the real home on earth for non-Christians
too. A visible organization can be located; an invisible one
can't. A visible organization with a visible head is what there
was when Christ was on earth, and the same thing was needed after
he left.
Keep in mind the relative newness of the idea of an
invisible Church. This notion was quite unknown before the
Reformation. No one wrote of the Church being identified as the
moral union of all true believers. Instead, it was that
organization composed of all identifiable, true teachers--the
successors of the apostles. Only at the Reformation did the idea
of an invisible Church come up. It was a necessary consequence
of the rejection of the papacy, but the rejection of the papacy
was only the first step. The Reformers couldn't stop at doing
away with popes. The logic of their position wouldn't allow
them. The rejection of the papacy requires the rejection of the
episcopacy. If the popes are not the successors of Peter, the
other bishops are not the successors of the apostles.
There is a further consequence: if no popes and no bishops,
then no priests and no deacons. What remains is
congregationalism, an extreme form of Christian individualism.
The corporate form of the Church is emptied of meaning. The
Church can't be an authority because it can't even be identified.
The best you can do is identify individual Christians. Yet
guidance is still necessary, so it seems to follow, by default,
that the Holy Spirit must be the Vicar of Christ on earth. And
why the Holy Spirit? Because of the promises in John's Gospel,
say fundamentalists.
Read those promises again. Taken apart from the context,
they do seem to lend support to the theory that the Holy Spirit
is the Vicar of Christ, working in the individual Christian "to
guide [him] into all truth." But wait a minute. What's the
audience here? In these chapters is Christ promising the Holy
Spirit to all Christians, or is this to be a special visitation?
If you begin reading at chapter 13, you see that the whole
discourse is made to the apostles, not to all the followers of
Christ. The Holy Spirit is to come to the apostles alone in this
special way. He is, indeed, to guide them--but not all
Christians. Not for the multitude will there be this plenitude
of guidance into "all truth." (Yes, there is also the practical
reaction to the fundamentalist claim: If the promises were to
all Christians, if all were to be guided into "all truth," why
such divisions even among fundamentalists?)
Christ was on earth in several aspects. He wore several
hats, so to speak. One of them was as the visible head of the
organization he established. That organization needed a visible
substitute once Christ ascended, and that substitute is the pope.
It was Peter, the first pope, who received Christ's insignia: He
was named the rock (Matt. 16:18), the key-bearer (Matt. 16:19),
the judge (Matt. 16:19), the shepherd (John 21:15-17). He took
over Christ's duties as visible head of a visible organization.
Our acknowledging this doesn't falsely minimize the role of the
Holy Spirit, since it's the Holy Spirit that guides the Church,
which is lead by the successors to the apostles, but it does mean
we shouldn't confuse the role of the Holy Spirit.
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