The Vatican as a World Power

Front matter

JOSEPH BERNHART

THE VATICAN

AS A WORLD POWER

Thou Art Peter

THOU ART PETER

The great dome of St. Peter's is filled with light, making plain the words inscribed in gold within the circle: Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram ædificabo ecclesiam meam, et tibi dabo claves regni cœlorum—Thou are Peter the rock, and upon this rock I build My Church, and to thee I give the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. Far beneath the dome and bathed in its light, the high altar rises; and under it the Fisherman of Galilee lies buried in the earth—the Fisherman to whom, Saint Matthew's Gospel says, those words were spoken.

The nineteenth century cast the shadow of doubt upon the faith of centuries which had prayed and chanted on this spot a good thousand years before Bramante, Michaelangelo and Bernini began to build. Some said that Peter was not buried here, and also that Paul did not rest under the stones of the Basilica on the Ostian Way. Indeed, had either of them ever come to Rome? Nor (it was thought) could any such saying have ever crossed the lips of Jesus.

Science it entitled to every doubt, but it has also the duty of rendering the most scrupulously accurate verdict to which it can possibly arrive. Faith may well be, in its deepest depths, impervious to attack; but knowledge nevertheless buttresses it with testimony. And today the inscription there in the light of the dome and the tomb in the darkness of the earth are given a new significance by the affirmation of science that a genuine Gospel saying is here placed above the the grave of Peter. Here on Vatican Hill, in the soil of a pagan burial ground on which the ancient Petrine Basilica was erected about 350, rests the disciple who, like Paul, died a martyr's death during the reign of Nero (between 64 and 67). Both were legislators of the Christian community, which had taken form long before its establishment in the metropolis.

These facts constitute the firm points of vantage from which we shall glance at the early history of the Papacy, The roots of this most long-lived of trees rise from out of God's earth far into the spaces of the antique world and dig deep into the soil of centuries.

The Roman Empire of Augustus; time stretched in a northerly direction from Spain to the border of Scotland, and from France across THOU ART PETER

Southern Germany and the Balkans to the Black Sea. To the south it extended from Morocco across "Algiers and Tunis to Egypt; and it went eastward across Central Asia, Syria and Palestine to the Tigris and the Euphrates. The political calm which rested on the World Empire was like the quiet of a summer's day, in which all that lives can grow and thrive. Caesar Augustus, it was declared, had brought the answer to every prayer: he was the father of the fatherland, the saviour of the whole human race. Men sang the praises of the Pax Romana, the peace which all earth owed to Rome. This peace had been created through might and wisdom, with the merciless sword and the ploughshare of ordering law. And now all peoples appeared to be free for the task of fashioning their own inward happiness.

Deep yearning was abroad and the hour ripe for satisfaction of that yearning. But there was a melancholy sky over the still waters, and under them stirred the serpents of human passion. The world was noisy with dissatisfaction, and Orient and Occident joined in the search for a redeemer from distress. Just what was this distress? The money then in circulation bore the image of the Greek goddess of plenty, symbolized by the cornucopia, . or that of Victory with lance poised over the victim of the victor. Nevertheless that money passed through hands that knew no peace. For, no matter how many gods of East and West peopled the heavens, money itself remained the real divinity of those times. During the pauses in the chase after the good things of life, one realized that life itself had escaped. Earnest men looked sadly at the world. They saw that culture had been degraded, because it, like all else, was served only for money's sake; that luxury made more victims than even war did; and that the Pax Romana took more from a people than it gave. By Her- cules! life itself was declining lust was now in its place! The Empire was safe from without, but its citizens were oppressed and threatened from within.

Neither scholars, poets, philosophers, critical fatalists or satirists bear such eloquent testimony to the sodden despair which rested on the late first century of the Empire as does the general resurgence o religions. Thanks to the cosmopolitan spirit, the freedom of inter- course, and the dominance of the common Greek language, the East could carry its gods, its teachings and its initiating rites to the West.

THE FIRST CENTURY 3

Rome was flooded with the professors of alien faiths. Morning and evening the servants of Isis, with shaven heads and white linen tunics, follow the gong of the sistrum to the temple of the goddess for choral song. As soon as spring has melted the ice of the Tiber, they dive three times daily into the stream in order to cleanse their sinful bodies; or they crawl on their knees across the Field of Mars to appease the angry divinity.

So also did the Phrygian processions move toward their Holy of Holies on the Palatine, bearing the silver image of the great mother Cybele, or the pine enshrouded like a corpse which signifies Attis, her dead lover. Thus also did the Syrians, busy merchants in their Roman shops and passionate worshippers in their chapels, participate in the strange cults honouring their god Baal. And so did Romans and alien folk gather at the table of the astrologers outside the Circus Maximus, where fortunes were read from a globe or a planetarium for patrons who did not need to feel ashamed since Caesar, Augustus and Tiberius had come here, too.

What was it that attracted Rome to these cults, mysteries and abstruse teachings of the East? Many abandoned their gods in the same spirit in which the marriage tie may be broken for a mistress' sake. These religious services offered something to the imagination. Out of the wealth of myths and teachings every one could take that which satisfied his own need; and the light of a new life, of a higher reality and of a dawning eternal existence of man mystically renewed, reborn, shone irresistibly through the grey mist of the everyday. Religious forms offered might be manifold, but the mood of the people who sought them out was prevailingly one yearning for the soul's salvation now and after death.

In the dirtiest quarter of the city, beyond the Tiber, the Jews had their Ghetto. Doubtless it had been there a good two hundred years. Pompey, the conqueror of Jerusalem, had brought back hosts of cap- tives, and had freed them after his triumphal return. Roman policy was more favourable to them than was public opinion. While there were no pogroms like that which broke out in Alexandria in 38 A.D., the Jew was a stock figure for ridicule on the comic stage, and the poets from Horace to Juvenal made him the butt of their satire. Nevertheless some looked with different feelings on these bankers,

4 pedlars and palm readers. Their religion was unique. It had nothing in common with an overpopulated Olympus where so mockers said the gods quarrelled about places at the table, and where the price of ambrosian nectar went up by reason of the increasing demand. They served the One Invisible God without the help of temple or images. In their houses of prayer, He was proclaimed the Creator of Heaven and Earth, the Author of the true moral law according to which He would judge all men. This was the heart of the Jewish religion: all else, customs and cult, retreated into the background. For the Jews in the diaspora, though they still sent their moneys to Jerusalem for the temple, had loosened many an ancient tie as the result of living in the midst of a world fashioned by Greek influences. They were far more receptive to the cosmopolitan spirit of the great Empire than were their brethren in the Holy City. But what philosophers and wandering rhetoricians taught them could not shake their faith in Jahwe and their hope that His Anointed would come. With the oldest Book of the world in their hands, they confronted the ride of new and old religions with their own mission. By reason of this they felt strong enough, and success justified their confidence* Though the Romans might point out the alien, dark and sinister aspects of this despised people, they could not prevent the crowds from going from the metropolis to the synagogues.

Moreover since the days o Augustus an unobtrusive conquest had been in progress. It was not curiosity merely, it was the seething human heart, which drew more and more Romans and their women to the Jewish houses of prayer. They heard o Moses and the prophets. They grew interested in the Bible, which had long before been translated into Greek and was also read by pagans, Roman families, too, practised fasting, burning oil lamps on the eve of the Sabbath day; and the strict rest which Jewish businesses and banks observed on the Sabbath reminded the whole city each week of this people and its faith. The attraction of Judaism was felt by all classes Unqualified conversion, which would have necessitated circumcision, was probably rare; but the number of "God-fearing* 1 who professed the One God Jahwe and who observed both Sabbath and dietary law* was very large. In these circles there were many forms and gradations of adherence to the teachings and customs of the synagogue; IN ROME 5

the Jewish mission was not narrowminded, and it knew how to wait. Whenever a wandering teacher came, it was for the head of the syna- gogue a duty to invite him to lecture.

Perhaps (we do not know for certain) , such teachers brought, be- tween the years 40 and 50 A.D., tidings of Jesus, in whom they said the Messiah had verily appeared. At all events Jews from Pales- tine did so. It was Jesus Who set the spirits of Judaism at sword's points in the West as in the East. The Roman synagogue became the scene of an inner conflict evoking such unrest that the Emperor Claudius decided to dissolve the whole Jewish colony. When this returned after a short while, the teachings of this "certain Chrestus" had spread still farther, no doubt particularly among the "God-fear- ing.** The Jews were now divided; there were Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. Both elements were united in the flourish- ing community to which Christ's great missionary in the Hellenic East sent his Epistles about the year 58. He wrote that he, Paul, the servant of Jesus Christ, was a chosen apostle elected to preach the joyous message of God . . . that the Gospel is a divine power, a means of salvation for all who receive it, believe in it, whether they be Jews or Gentiles. With these thoughts the Epistle, which has been so fateful a message to all peoples in all centuries, concerned it- self. It was a forerunner of the visit which the author was to make to the Roman community as soon as his projected trip to Spain could be undertaken.

In the spring of the year 62, after a perilous journey he came up to the capital from Sicily. He arrived a prisoner and for a time re- mained one. The Roman authorities had arrested this apostate Jew on the charge of having fomented a revolt. Paul, who appealed to the Emperor as a Roman citizen, had now to defend his position be- fore the Roman courts and the ciders of the Jewish congregation. During all of two years he lived under light arrest, guarded only by one soldier in a rented room, which he knew how to turn into a pulpit for his teaching* While he was winning his case at court, the op- position between Jews and Nazarcncs became clearer. Paul, the persistent, passionate advocate of the New Testament, separated him- self sharply from the Old. Let the Jews persist in their legalism the Gospels shall then be preached to heathen. Here the teaching

6 THOU ART PETER

of the Apostle was identical with that he had preached for two decades past in the cities of Central Asia. For the Kyrios Christos, Who had appeared to him on the way to Damascus so that Saul might be trans- formed into Paul, he pleaded with each breath and on every foot of earth which his restless feet traversed. For Him he had founded congregation after congregation, each one of which was to remain united by a firm, living bond to the mysterious centre, Christ the Master of souls, the Strength of hearts, the Judge of all things human, the Sacred Meaning and Moving Force of history. Paul, who spoke to Roman Jews, Christians and heathens, already drew from the treasury of a highly developed world of thought. This one may call the pattern for a Church filled with the spirit of Jesus, but also with the spirit of Paul, who in following His Master also cast his own tremendous shadow upon the earth.

Besides Paul another spoke to the early Christians of Rome. He had never been a Saul, was a man of totally different stuff. There was in his eye no dark glow of desire for conquest, but the light of that spirit which is of the Kingdom of Heaven because it resembles the heart of a child. To flesh and blood he permitted the first word, but to the higher power which supersedes these he gave trustingly and rev- erently the second and the final word. He is truly soil on which the eight beatitudes can thrive, though stones and weeds may hinder their growth. So at least he seems to us as we read the Gospel nar- ratives. And so, with convincing honesty, he doubtless also set forth the story of his past life for the benefit of the Roman congregations; for what his companion Mark, who had known him since ';arly youth, wrote there is Peter's own story. In Mark's Gospel as well as in the other Gospels Peter grows beyond his stature more than docs any other figure in history. Small natural endowment becomes the lever of a great destiny. Like Paul he too was seized upon by An- other, not by a sudden grasp from out the world of mystery, but through patient guidance amidst events which very gradually ht learned to understand.

His name was Simon, son of Jonas, Him, the fisherman of Ca- pharnum on the Sea of Gennesaret, Jesus enrolled among His very own. The Galilean race to which he belonged had characteristics quite its own it was simple and confiding, fond of liberty and

A FISHER OF MEN 7

fearless of death, sanguine both in the sense of being open and sensi- tive to the strange or the new, and in the sense of being subject to quick changes of mood. This Simon was a genuine Galilean. The Scriptures reveal him as a man of contradictions, but fully in accord with the temperament of his race. The blaze of great decisions burst from the power to love that is hidden in his heart, and in weak moments his timidity changes like the shadow of a swift-moving cloud over the brightness of his courageous will to be loyal unto death. These Galilean farmers and fishermen from beside the lake are like children in good and evil. Loathsome to them is the "yoke/* under which term they understand the law the 613 rules which the Pharisees deemed the will of God. A new Teacher who removed it from them and said that His yoke was sweet, won their hearts for His joyful tidings.

Simon was also among those who followed the Call of Jesus. For this he may have been prepared as a result of a popular movement which John the Baptist had created in the Land of the Jordan. From the beginning he was a member of the inner circle. When Jesus sent him out, together with the rest, He gav^him the name Kepha, which in English means "Rock" and in Greek "Peter." For these men and their times a name was more than a name. It was the sum- mary of a character and a destiny. Peter is, to be sure, not by nature a man of stone unless one thinks that his great, loyal willingness to self-sacrifice justifies the title. This willingness the fisherman, who is henceforth to be a fisher of men, does not lack. He is married, but gives up his trade; his house becomes a haven of the new Gospel. He gets out of his ship and places his feet on the water when the Master bids him come. When he suddenly recognizes Jesus calling from the shore, he casts himself from the skiff in which the others are straining to reach land and swims toward Him. But the "Rock" is also hard stone for the seed of the Sower. Jesus speaks of His Pas- sion that is to be, and Peter is frightened. God forbid! He places the voice of flesh and blood the hope that a mighty Messiah King is to be across the way of the Master whom he has even yet not understood. Jesus speaks sharply to him: "Get thee behind Me, Satan!" On the Mount of Transfiguration he desires three tents for his comfort; and beneath the olive trees of Gethsemane he sleeps

8 through the hours of His Master's agony. In defense he strikes with his sword at a soldier; and in the courtyard of the high priest he denies Him thrice before the cock can crow.

These are the definitive pictures of Peter retained in the memory of centuries. He is of great heart but despairs easily; he has energy to strike but no clear knowledge of the target to be struck at; and he is a man of contradictions entrusted with a lofty mission which over- whelms him. Nevertheless, the traits of human nature in its greater and meaner forms are placed against a majestic background by die Bible. This is revealed dark and difficult to fathom in the scene of Gesarea Philippi.

Jesus had awakened the enthusiasm of the people. Herod Antipas, ruler of the land, who had caused the Baptist to be beheaded, thought that a second John had come. The High Council in Jerusalem heard of the happenings in the north and suspected a breach with the Jewish religion. Earthly and spiritual power already began to tie the tragic knot in the life of the Nazarene. Scribes came to the Sea of Gennesaret in order to see for themselves. They realized that there was danger and sundered the people from Him. For this was only a wavering folk willing to obey the keepers of the law. Jesus lost followers, sentiment turned against Him, and He was deserted even by disciples. He went northward toward Phoenicia taking with him a little band that included Peter. They did not know where to lay their heads. Soon they were turned back into the heathen country east of the lake. Jesus taught and Jews also came again. These were no important personages, but just a mass of men; and to them was directed the Sermon on the Mount that tells of God's King-dom, in which everything is totally different from what prevails in the world of humankind. But the Pharisees were again in pursuit* And so He went up the Jordan to the green hill country of the wells which lies at the foot of snow-capped Mount Hermon, Near Caesarea Paneas, the city of Prince Philip, there stood above a high terrace a temple in honour of Augustus. There He began to talk about His Person to His companions. Now His influence had already grown deep enough to permit wrestling with the questions which the Jewish people perhaps even more than the other peoples of the Orient asked whenever in their history men and events FISHER OF MEN 9

seemed definite messengers or signs from God. Whence did the inner power of this Jesus come? How was one to understand the mystery of His personal Being? What did His activity mean in the plan of Divine Providence?

Israel, like Babylon, Persia and India, believed that its greatest spirits could return to earth in the guise of epochal men who gave body to, perfected, the "spirit and power" of their precursors. Moses, Elias and Jeremiah were like suns behind the clouds of contemporary time. The universal expectation of One who would come to fulfill the deepest hopes of the people was coupled with such names. This superhuman Bearer of a new era was also termed the "Son of Man" in the apocalyptic writings which prophesied the "future state." His name and person were set down in the Book of Daniel, which was given its final form about 300 B.C. The author of this book beholds in a vision the coming Perfecter of the history of God's chosen people One in whom the Divine Spirit shall dwell. To Him the visions of die seer point, incorporating a daringly new attempt to comprehend the meaning of world history, indeed of history itself. For centuries the Jewish people had derived an incomparable strength and depth of insight into die flood of historic events from these Prophecies of Daniel. Nor was die fountain dry in Jesus' rime.

The great culture of the Greeks took man for its starting point and fashioned him, after the manner of a sculptor's hand, into a harmonious whole which rested in itself or rather only seemed to rest, for when die work was done it was apparent that man as man was not yet the whole, complete Man. Israel never parted company with the idea that everything human rests within a super-human reality and is significant for that reason. It lives out of the hand of its God, Who is holy, just and wise, even though He permits His people to fall into misery and allows the enemy even Jahwe's own enemy to triumph. For all things are but tools in His hand and serve His end. But this end: the day will come when it shall be attained and one of His holy people shall be His instrument, the founder of a Divine do- minion over all nations for all rime. Heavy, stifled eras seek to breathe by taking refuge in a bygone age of gold, or in the liberating visions of hope. From the human point of view, the Apocalyptic Books up until the time of the Baptist also possessed this character.

10 Jesus was familiar with their language. Visibly in connection with the Book of Daniel, but surely also with other writings which fascinated those to whom He spoke, He urged the disciples gathered in Gesarea to reach a decision concerning His Person.

"What do men say concerning the Son of Man, Who He is?*' They said: "Some, John the Baptist, others, Elias, and still others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets (Moses) ." Then He asked them: "And ye? Whom do ye hold Me?" Then Simon Peter answered and said: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Then Jesus answered him and said: "Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh W blood have not revealed it to thee, but My father Who is in. Heaven. So I say to thee also, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock (Petra) will I build My Church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it. I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of Heaven, and what thou bindest on earth shall be bound also in heaven, and what thou loosest on earth shall be loosed also in Heaven."

In these words of Jesus the Catholic Church reads the document with which the Papacy was founded. They have played a fateful part in history for those who said yes, or said no, to them. Some have, not without a modicum of reason, questioned their authenticity* Some have looked upon them as a later interpolation with which the spiritual Roma domina wished to insure beyond the grave of Peter its leadership inside Christendom, the primacy of its bishop as the successor of Peter, and the power and authority of his position. In shore the primacy of the viceroy of Christ on earth is involved. But the reasons advanced are not compelling ones and have been undermined more and more by objective science which, quite unconcerned about whether its findings did ill or good to Rome, sought to learn the truth of the matter. To mention just one point: if Rome had really invented this statement during the second century, the declaration would have had a different form. It would surely have provided for words assuring to the successors of Peter equality with him and a tide to the same powers; for of these things the words of Jesus do not expressly speak. Only with difficulty could it have hit upon a passage as natively Jewish as this passage in Matthew, nearly every word of which leads us back into the deeps of Jewish ideas and their Biblical expression. THE SON 11

The Aramaic spirit of its origin shines through the Greek of the Evangelists in this passage. When Jesus gives the first confessor of His Messianic mission the name "Kepha" and terms him the foundation of His new kingdom, He uses the language of a venerable ancient symbol. The myth of the sacred rock which has the heaven of God above it and the kingdom of death and destruction below it was the common property o the Old World. Gesarea itself must in all probability be looked upon as the illustration of a kindred sym- bolism. Above the grotto of Pan, from which one source of the Jordan arose, stood the holy rock on which the temple of Augustus had been built. The Old Testament and its Jewish interpreters spoke of men upon whom rests the Divine bidding under the symbol of a holy cosmic rock which, as a connection between the heavenly and the earthly worlds, affords approach to God above and shuts off the as- sault of the primitive flood which brings destruction from below. Thus Abraham, the Father of the Faith, was the fundament of the old law. In actuality, however, the, Jews still possessed the holy stone in Jesus' time. It was the slab of rock in the holy of holies in the Temple, on which the Ark of the Covenant had formerly rested. This signified the central point of the world, the nurturing heart of the earth, the place where God's presence was manifest, the gate of Heaven, the seal against the kingdom of death and of evil which struggled up from beneath.

In the symbolistic language of the later Judaistic view of life, Jesus was manifesting His resolve to make a new foundation and was at the same time laying down the position and function of Peter in that foundation. Opposition to the Temple is not expressed but is never- theless obvious. In simple language this is the meaning of what oc- curred: Jesus wishes to build a communion sundered from the old Jewish world. The fundament is to be this Peter, to whom the Father has given faith and the power to confess it not the Peter who when counselled by flesh and blood becomes "Satan" and seeks to put obstacles in the way of Christ and therewith of God's plan. To Peter, believing and illumined from on High, there is promised permanence and victorious resistance to the powers of darkness. To him there are given the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven: that is, the power to open and to close the heavenly gates. He has authority

12 THOU ART PETER

to bind and to loose, which means (in the Rabbinical language of the time) the power to reach decisions in the sphere of teaching, permit- ting one view or forbidding another, and the right in the sphere of morals to impose or remove the ban. He proclaims this two-fold authority in God's name, and may therefore be assured of divine co- operation. But that Kingdom of Heaven of which he is the steward possessing the keys is Jesus' community the ecclesia, the Kingdom of Heaven, the newly created order of the Christ. Peter is the cosmic rock which stands athwart the tension of Heaven and Hell. Placed in the drama of a two-fold cosmic contradiction, open to in- fluences from above and below, he is called upon to preserve the order that reigns above against the powers of darkness.

Jesus died. In the eyes of the Jews and the Romans His death was the most ignominious of ends. He hanged Himself from the Cross as a kind of ghastly jest at His own expense. To the faithful, however, this was not the last view they were given of the Lord. They beheld Him again as the Risen One and Peter was the first of the disciples to whom He appeared transfigured. This occurrence cannot be expounded rationalistically. Therefore nothing is easier than to doubt it and to toss aside the narrative of the Gospels. But immediately there arises the question: what can have brought it about ' that in the same city of Jerusalem where this grave which was giving scandal existed a grave everyone could see for himself the fol- lowers of Jesus, an inconsequential minority sandwiched in between the scornful folk and the bitter ruling caste, should have managed to become a first community possessing inflexible faith, and able to main- tain itself so well as to spread its inner strength like fire over the world of Jews, Greeks and Romans? Some have listed a hundred causes in order to dispel the one incredible cause. There are so many of them that the insufficiency of all is proved. When there is question of the Resurrection, the faith of the non-believer and the faith of - the believer will always stand opposed. All we know is the message of the New Testament that the primitive community believed in the Resur- rection of Christ because of the testimony of those who had seen Him after His death. And the chief among them was Peter.