What happens at Baptism? The Ratzinger-Kasper debate

What happens at Baptism?
                     The Ratzinger-Kasper debate
                            by Fr. Daniel Callam, C.S.B.
Before his election as Pope Benedict XVI, the then Cardinal Ratzinger had
an exchange of opinions with Walter Cardinal Kaspar.

W          HAT HAPPENS when the Bishop 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 was the subject of a debate between two
famous theologians, each of whom occupied at the time 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 thought,
or does one become first a member of the universal Church which is made
present in the local Church, which was 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 was one that emphasized 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;
and 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 feared that giving priority to the universal Church
would mean, at the practical level, that Vatican bureaucrats would be
interfering in local concerns in a way that is inevitably confusing to
Catholics. As an instance, he cited Rome’s “adamant refusal of Communion
to all divorced and remarried persons” (“On the Church,” America, 23-30
April, 2001). The point was 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 said, “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 noted, there has been 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 insisted, 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, i.e., of 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 the two Cardinals
concerned 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 its 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). These ideas are far from being a complete novelty: consider
the cultural differences that already exist between the celebration of
Christmas in Mexico and, say, 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 feared would be lost if an
overemphasis on the universal Church—and so on universal jurisdiction—
invited 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 had no quarrel
with any of them. Certainly, when he spoke of the universal Church he did
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 honoured 1 Thessalonians 5.19, but he
also wanted 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 feared fragmentation, for
Orthodoxy and Protestantism, each in its own way, indicate the dangers of a
one-sided localizing of Christianity. Cardinal Ratzinger’s starting point, as
opposed to Cardinal Kasper’s, was 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 that 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 identified 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 provided 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.