The Petrine Office and the Episcopacy

Abstract Ratzinger’s take on the relation between the Petrine Office and the episcopacy represents a changing application of stable principles. Inspired by Augustine, he adopts a ‘eucharistic ecclesiology’, identifying the Eucharistic celebration around the local bishop as the Church’s paradigmatic act. As the Eucharist is simultaneously one and many, so is the Church simultaneously universal and local, papal and episcopal, primatial and collegial. Adopting Bonaventure’s teleological historiography, Ratzinger traces these local-universal foci of ecclesial authority from their inchoate expression in the New Testament down to their more explicit formulation at Vatican I. Though Ratzinger’s commitment to Eucharistic ecclesiology never wavers, his application varies. He later distances himself from his early enthusiasms for empowering national episcopal conferences and installing a standing synod in Rome. In debate with Walter Kasper he clarifies that the ‘ontological and temporal priority’ of the universal Church is a statement about the Church’s ingathering telos.