Theology
What happens at Baptism? The Ratzinger-Kasper debate
By Fr. Daniel Callam, CSB

Hardcopy Issue Date: May 2002
Online Publication Date: May 24, 2002, 11:34

In December 2001, I published my "Notes on current theology." There I touched upon a debate between Cardinals Josef Ratzinger and Walter Kasper. Father Callam discusses this debate in greater depth. Editor

What happens when Cardinal Ambrozic of Toronto baptizes someone? Many things indeed, but they can all be summarized by saying that the baptized person becomes a member of the Church. The meaning of this simple statement has been the subject of a debate between two famous theologians, each of whom occupies a prestigious office at the Vatican: Josef Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Walter Cardinal Kasper, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

The origin of the debate was a document issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on 28 January 1992: Letter to the bishops of the Catholic Church on some aspects of the Church understood as communion. The matter of debate can be phrased as a question: through baptism does one become a member of a local, i.e., diocesan, Church and consequently a member of the universal Church as Cardinal Kasper thinks, or does one become first a member of the universal Church which is made present in the local Church, which is Cardinal Ratzinger's position?

Such questions, interesting to theologians, are apt to be dismissed by ordinary Catholics as quibbles. But ideas have consequences, and so do these-mighty ones!

Unity of the Church
Cardinal Ratzinger's approach is one that emphasizes the unity of the universal Church in a Catholic way. I specify "Catholic" because all churches and all ecclesial communions have unity of some sort. Among the Orthodox, for example, unity is maintained by a common liturgy and an unchangeable tradition, while Protestant unity is based on an exclusive reliance on the Bible. Catholics can rightly boast of a unique form of unity which is at once both visible and flexible. Visible unity is assured by the communion of all the Catholic bishops with the Pope, the bishop of Rome. Flexibility, the shibboleth of Orthodoxy and the plague of Protestantism, is also a consequence of the papal Magisterium (official teaching authority) which, as even the most liberal Catholics recognize, makes change possible without fracturing the Church. In Cardinal Newman's powerful phrase, we "change in order to remain the same."

Each religion also has a downside: Orthodoxy's traditionalism can become fossilized; Protestantism's fragmentation can seem hopelessly disconnected. And Catholicism? Its critics, from within and without, complain of a stifling central bureaucracy which, since the Middle Ages, has continually hamstrung the functioning of diocesan and national Churches.

Cardinal Kasper: too much centralization
Cardinal Kasper fears that giving priority to the universal Church means, at the practical level, that Vatican bureaucrats will be interfering in local concerns in a way that will inevitably be confusing to Catholics. As an instance, he cites Rome's "adamant refusal of Communion to all divorced and remarried persons" ("On the Church," America, 23-30 April, 2001). The point is that Rome has already made a change in Catholic practice with regard to intercommunion by allowing, for example Orthodox Christians to communicate at our Eucharists. But the Orthodox Church allows divorce and remarriage. Hence, it could well happen that a divorced Catholic would be barred from receiving Communion at a Mass in which an Orthodox Christian in the same situation would be welcomed.

It is practicalities such as these that can make Roman regulations seem remote, arbitrary and confusing. What then is a bishop to do? "The Bishop must be granted," Kasper says, "enough vital space to make responsible decisions in the matter of implementing universal laws."

The theological principle at the basis of this view is the role of the local bishop whose powers come, not by delegation from Rome but from his ordination as a successor to the Apostles with the immediate consequence that the local, diocesan Church "is the church at a given place." Roman interference betrays a practical denial of apostolic succession in the office of bishop, as do frequent appeals to Rome against the local bishop. Furthermore, Kasper notes, there was a tradition of adaptation at the local level in the Catholic and, especially, in the Orthodox Churches. He merely recommends that this traditional usage be reinstated in allowing intermediate organs of responsibility to function.

Summoning a Roman watchdog at every hint of danger, therefore, is not only impractical; it is contrary to Scripture and tradition, both of which, Kasper insists, identify "the Church" first with the individual diocese. In what has become almost a scholarly cliché, he says that until about A.D. 1000 a balance existed between the autonomy of the diocesan Church and the role of the papacy; but after the break with the East an excessive centralization developed in mediaeval Europe, especially with the canonical formulation of the pope's universal jurisdiction-which is his power to intervene directly in the affairs of any diocese in the world, whatever the sentiments of the local bishop or his flock.

The Holy Spirit
Ultimately, the topic of discussion between these two Cardinals concerns the role of the Holy Spirit in the Church, and so in each baptized person: "Do not quench the Spirit . . ." (I Thess 5:19). Vatican II emphasized the presence of the Holy Spirit in all believers: "The whole body of the faithful . . . cannot err in matters of belief. This characteristic is shown in the supernatural appreciation of faith (sensus fidei) on the part of the whole people, when, 'from the bishops to the last of the faithful,' they manifest a universal consent in matter of faith and morals" (Lumen gentium, no.12). In principle, therefore, a baptized Catholic knows his faith and lives it, exhibiting in his appropriate mode the Gospel truth for today. There is no need for a parish priest to monitor, for example, a mother teaching her children their prayers, just as a bishop should not have to tap the telephone lines of a rectory, or Roman agents open a bishop's mail.

That the Spirit is active in every locale and in every person is manifest by the Church's being inculturated as she re-expresses for our day the timeless truths of the Gospel, a work especially mandated by the Second Vatican Council: "The principal task entrusted to the Council by Pope John XXIII was to guard and present better the precious deposit of Christian doctrine in order to make it more accessible to the Christian faithful and to all people of good will" (Pope John Paul II, "Fidei depositum," Apostolic Constitution on the Publication of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 11 October 1992 [emphasis added]).

These ideas are far from being a complete novelty: consider the cultural differences that already exist between the celebration of Christmas in Mexico and on Baffin Island. But cultural diversity extends to more than the externals of worship. Theology itself draws on European, African, or Asian cultures as well as those of North and South America. This vitality Cardinal Kasper fears will be lost if an overemphasis on the universal Church-and so on universal jurisdiction-invites the pope or, more likely, the Roman curia to intervene too readily in local affairs.

Cardinal Ratzinger's position
These are practical matters, and Cardinal Ratzinger has no quarrel with any of them. Certainly, when he speaks of the universal Church he does not mean the Vatican: "The church of Rome is a local church and not the universal church-a local church with a peculiar, universal responsibility, but still a local church" ("The Local Church and the Universal Church," America 19 November 2001). He too would honour 1 Thessalonians 5.19, but he would want to call our attention to the full verse: "Do not quench the Spirit, but test everything and hold to what is good."

As Kasper fears centralization, Ratzinger fears fragmentation, for Orthodoxy and Protestantism, each in its own way, indicates the dangers of a one-sided localizing of Christianity. Cardinal Ratzinger's starting point, as opposed to Cardinal Kasper's, is theological: in the teaching of Vatican II, the Church is a sacrament. Admittedly, the only way for anyone to encounter the Church is at the diocesan level. As sacrament, however, the local Church effectively symbolizes the universal Church, in that all that Church means is found in the local Church: Christ's work as priest, prophet, and king. But the Church on earth also symbolizes the eternal Church, the eschatological Church, spotless bride of Ephesians 5, the heavenly Jerusalem of Revelation 21 which includes-if I may be permitted some old-fashioned terminology-the Church militant on earth, the Church suffering in purgatory, and the Church triumphant in heaven.

Hence, a particular Catholic will be identified as a member of a local Church in that he is already a member of the universal Church. The local Church, as a sort of sacrament, makes present in this particular congregation under this particular bishop the universal Church. Rome is not primarily a watchdog; rather she is the effective means by which external unity is maintained-the unity that must be a perpetual mark of the Church, since Jesus prayed for it: "May they all be one; even as you, Father, are in me and I in you" (Jn 17:21).

Role of bishop
Another indication of the priority of the universal Church can be discerned by considering the role of the bishop which in a certain manner extends beyond the boundaries of his diocese. By being in union with Rome, each bishop is in communion with all bishops of the world. And so it follows that each bishop has a universal responsibility. Through the pope-himself a bishop-the diocesan ordinary preserves the communion in faith and morals which is the foundation of the universal Church. But communion is more than harmony in doctrine and moral principles; it is primarily, as the Eastern Church witnesses, a union in worship.

Our common faith and practice are eucharistic in orientation, which is merely a way of saying that they are sacramental. In other words, the whole range of the sacramental life in the Church confirms Cardinal Ratzinger's view. The practical difficulties that Cardinal Kasper identifies do have to be overcome, but not by actions that could alter our understanding of the meaning of the Church.

One way to settle the matter would be to invoke Vatican II's "supernatural appreciation of the faith" mentioned above as one of the organs of infallibility in the Church. How do Catholics generally answer the question about Church membership: local or universal, which comes first? Cardinal Ratzinger himself provides the answer: "Anyone baptized in the church in Berlin is always at home in the church in Rome or in New York or in Kinshasa or in Bangalore or wherever, as if he had been baptized there. He does not need to file a change-of-address form; it is one and the same church. Baptism comes out of it and delivers (gives birth to) us in it." Dioceses, like parishes, change boundaries, but the faithful do not enter another Church in the process. The body of Christ is the universal Church, throughout the world.

It is clear that I side with Cardinal Ratzinger. The danger facing the Church today is not over-centralization but fragmentation and compromise with a radically secularized, materialistic, and profit-oriented world culture. The external unity that the diocesan bishops-including the bishop of Rome-together assure is more necessary than ever. Only when the essential unity of belief and practice is intact can local adaptations be successful in re-expressing the Gospel for our time.

Daniel Callam, a Basilian priest and a contributing editor to Catholic Insight, is associate professor of theology at the University of Saint Thomas in Houston, Texas. Before moving to the United States, he was a member of the Department of Religious Studies at Saint Thomas More College in the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon. In 1983 he founded The Canadian Catholic Review, which he edited for fifteen years.