The paper outlines the Catholic and the Evangelical standpoint on the primate’s function served by the Bishop of Rome and its origin. The controversy revolves around the key phrase, iure divino and iure humano, which points to the divine or human origin of the primacy. In the Catholic perspective, Jesus Christ brought the Church into existence and provided this institution with permanent structural elements: primacy and apostolate. This thesis, considered an imperative of faith, is based on the texts of the Gospel which underscore the primacy of Saint Peter the Apostle among the Twelve and in the early Church. According to the Catholic ecclesiology, it was not only a private privilege enjoyed by Peter but a permanent element of the structure of the Church, which received the formal status of a dogma at the First Vatican Council. From the outset, the Reformation has assumed that primacy is an element shaped in the course of the historical development of the Church. The ecumenical dialogue between Catholicism and Lutheranism led to the establishment of a standpoint veering towards the consideration of the origin of primacy as a matter of lesser consequence. This step was taken in order to underscore the communal dimension of the Church, with its important function in unifying Christianity and presenting it to the world. The basic premise giving credence to this function is its foundation in the Gospel.
Pope Francis often speaks about the new evangelization. He notices areas that need a special care of the Church. One of them is the problem of poverty. The Pope encou-rages all the faithful to engage in the transformation of this situation . It can be called a “throwaway culture” and a sign of real poverty of the whole society when people remain indifferent to the cause of the poor. It is one of the negative consequences of the culture of prosperity. The Pope also calls it a “globalisation of indifference” and calls on all people of the three states in the Church to care for those who are poor and abandoned and to act against poverty. In a particular way Francis addresses his appeal to the consecrated persons, encouraging them to contemplate the poor Jesus, to the consecration of their lives through a faithful fulfilment of their vow of poverty and to the apostolate among the poor and the marginalized . By means of such an attitude of men and women religious they would contribute to their own sanctification, to bearing witness to love to the poor before the world and at least partly they will help those in need among whom they live and serve.
The article tries to find a possible model of role that the papal office can play for ec-umenical dialogue. First, the author reviews opinions about the pope and his office issued by the Evangelical Church in the 16th century, especially in Martin Luther’s theology. In the second step, there is an analysis of the ‘pope’ understanding presented by the modern Polish Lutheran theology. According to the applied method of “unity in reconciled diversity” it seems that the pope, as a head of the Roman Catholic Church could be understood as primus inter pares. The article develops the possible consequence of this papal duty in the vision of the ecumenical Pentarchy. It would be an ecumenical collaboration between the 5 biggest traditions of the modern Christianity: Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Eastern Pre-Chalcedonian Churches, Anglicanism and Lutheran Protestantism. This model does not mean a way to the institutional primacy of the Bishop of Rome.
The Catholic image of Martin Luther in the course of the centuries evolved from the literally negative one during the time of the Reformation and the centuries that followed, through the theological attempts and historically in-depth analyses inspired by the ecumenical movement up to contemporary acceptance of several theological postulates. Contemporary movements of Roman-Catholic thinking of Luther well summarize historically vulnerable and dogmatically deepened opinions of the recent popes: John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis. Following the agreement texts of the Lutheran-Catholic Commission at the world forum, ecumenically open popes can find out in Martin Luther a profoundly religious man, the witness of the Gospel whose theological thought is still relevant and a challenge for the presently secularized world.
Joseph Ratzinger discusses papal primacy in the Church, which is a communio based on the relationship between primacy and collegiality. Therefore, he supports jurisdictional primacy executed not in a monarchical way, but collegially, with the Pope as the head of the college of bishops. Joseph Ratzinger discusses the Petrine primacy in the New Testament, which he considers a starting point for a discussion about the succession of Peter’s office, choosing (via media) between papalism and conciliarism. He, therefore, focuses on the personal aspect of primacy connected with a given person. Moreover, the article discusses the relationship between the papacy and doctrinal infallibility. It also poses the question whether after his renunciation Benedict XVI still retains the charisma of doctrinal infallibility (or authentic orthodoxy) and how this refers to the current Pope Francis.
The article compares two models of the Church government, which since Vatican II are often in a certain antagonism in the Catholic Church. The model of „Communio” builds the Universal Church from the local church (i.e. the diocesis); the model of „Iurisdictio” (or „Hierarchy”) starts from the primacy of jurisdiction of the bishop of Rom (and separates „ordo“ and „iurisdictio”) The author proposes (with Walter Kasper) a synthesis of „iuris-dictio” and „ordo” as a theological theme for the third Christian millennium. A special place is given to the discussion of the ecclesiology of Joseph Ratzinger, who demonstrates a development from the significance of the collegiality of the episcopate to the „martyria” of the single bishop in the relation of primacy and collegiality