Bishops & Priests

Details: 24 June 2011

Hierarchy

The Catholic Church, founded by Jesus Christ (Matthew 16:18-19), which has His guaranteed continued presence and guidance (Matthew 28:20), as well as always enjoying the constant instruction and care of God the Holy Spirit (John 14:16-26: & 16:7-14), was instituted by her sacred Lord with an intrinsically hierarchical constitution. Because of the divine nature of this arrangement made by Christ Himself, that hierarchical constitution must and will abide until the end of the world, as Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition attest, and it may not and cannot be substantially varied or changed. What God has revealed about this constitutional arrangement has become clearer and more specified in the course of the more than 2,000 years through which the Catholic Church has journeyed since her founding, especially in the Church’s replies to innumerable questions and sometimes to the vicious attacks that she has faced over the centuries.

The Second Vatican Council, teaching about this matter, proclaimed, "This most sacred Council, following the footsteps of the First Vatican Council, teaches and declares with that Council that Jesus Christ, the eternal Shepherd, established His holy Church by sending forth the Apostles as He Himself had been sent by the Father (John 20:21). He willed that their successors, namely the Bishops, should be shepherds in His Church even to the consummation of the world. In order that the episcopate itself might be one and undivided, He placed Blessed Peter over the other Apostles, and instituted in him a permanent and visible source and foundation of unity of faith and fellowship (John 21:15-17; Luke 22:32). And all this teaching about the institution, the perpetuity, the force, and the reason for the sacred primacy of the Roman Pontiff and of his infallible teaching authority, this sacred Synod again proposes to be firmly believed by all the faithful. Continuing the same task of clarification begun by the First Vatican Council, this Council has decided to declare and proclaim before all men its teaching concerning Bishops, the successors of the Apostles, who together with the successor of Saint Peter, the Vicar of Christ and the visible Head of the whole Church, govern the House of the living God."

Catechism

There has always been a temptation by people outside the Catholic Church, and sometimes even by some of her own mistaken and ignorant children, to regard her erroneously as simply a man-made sociological or political construct, as are the myriads of Protestant sects and denominations, instead of the God-made institution that she is. This is why the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, "Christ is Himself the Source of ministry in the Church. He instituted the Church. He gave her both authority and mission, as well as orientation and goal. To proclaim the faith and to plant His reign, Christ sends His Apostles and their successors. He gives them a share in His own mission. From Him they receive the power to act in His Person."

"The Lord made Saint Peter the visible foundation of His Church. He entrusted the keys of the Church to him. The Bishop of Rome, the successor of Saint Peter, is the head of the college of Bishops, the Vicar of Christ and the Pastor of the Universal Church on earth. The Pope enjoys, by divine institution supreme, full, immediate, and universal power in the care of souls. The Bishops, established by the Holy Spirit, succeed the Apostles, They are the visible source and foundation of unity in their own particular Churches. Helped by the priests, their co-workers, and by the deacons, the Bishops have the duty of authentically teaching the faith, celebrating divine worship and above all the Eucharist, and guiding their Churches as true pastors. Their responsibility also includes concern for all the Churches with and under the Pope."

This echoes the Second Vatican Council which says, "The divine mission entrusted by Christ to His Apostles will last until the end of the world, since the Gospel which was to be handed down by them is for all time the source of life for the Church. For this reason the Apostles took care to appoint successors in this hierarchically structured society. For they not only had helpers in their ministry, but also, in order that the mission assigned to them might continue after their death, they passed on to their immediate cooperators, as a kind of testament, the duty of perfecting and consolidating the work begun by themselves, charging them to attend to the whole flock in which the Holy Spirit has placed them to shepherd the Church of God. (Acts of the Apostles 20:28). They therefore appointed such men and authorized the arrangement that, when these men should have died, other approved men would take up their ministry. Among those various ministries, which, as Tradition witnesses, were exercised in the Church from the earliest times, the chief place belongs to the office of those who, appointed to the episcopate in a sequence running back to the beginning, are the ones who pass on the Apostolic seed (as Tertullian says). Thus, as Saint Irenaeus testifies, through those who were appointed Bishops by the Apostles and through their successors down to our own time, the Apostolic Tradition is manifested and preserved throughout the world."

Popes

Pope Leo XIII wrote, "The order of Bishops could not be regarded as truly united to Peter, in the manner willed by Christ, if it were not subject to Peter and united to him. Otherwise it would inevitably be broken into a multitude, full of confusion and disorder. To preserve unity of faith and communion as it should be, neither a primacy of honor nor a power of direction is sufficient. There must necessarily be an authority which is real and also sovereign, obeyed by the whole community." Pope Pius XII wrote, " Certainly it was to the Apostle Peter alone and to his successors the Roman Pontiffs, that Jesus entrusted the whole of His flock. But while each Bishop is the special Pastor only of that portion of the flock entrusted to his charge, his character as a lawful successor of the Apostles by divine institution also makes him jointly responsible for the Apostolic mission of the entire Church. This mission has not ceased with the death of the Apostles. It continues in the person of the Bishops in communion with the Vicar of Jesus Christ, in them who are the envoys, the missionaries of the Lord. In them resides the dignity of the episcopate, which is the highest in the Church, as Saint Thomas Aquinas declares in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans."

The Second Vatican Council says of Bishops, "These Pastors, selected to shepherd the Lord’s flock, are the servants of Christ and the stewards of the mysteries of God (1 Corinthians 4:1). To them has been assigned the bearing of witness to the Gospel of God’s grace (Romans 15:16; Acts of the Apostles 20:24), and to the ministration of the Holy Spirit and to God’s glorious power to make men just (2 Corinthians 3: 8-9)." Father Joseph Urtasun observes, "The Catholic Church is a supernatural mystery. The body of Bishops, which perpetuates in time the Apostolic college, shares in that mystery of life and unity, under the guidance of the Bishop of Rome, the successor of Saint Peter and the Vicar on earth of Jesus Christ."