Church Unity and the Papal Office: An Ecumenical Dialogue on John Paul II's Encyclical Ut Unum Sint.

Church Unity and the Papal Office: An Ecumenical Dialogue on John Paul II's Encyclical Ut Unum Sint. Ed. Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2001. viii and 166 pages. Paper. $20.00.

This book is a collection of papers presented at the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology's 1999 Conference on Church Unity and the Papal Office. The essays are offered in direct response to and appreciation for Pope John Paul II's invitation to other church leaders and theologians in his 1995 encyclical letter, "Ut Unum Sint," to engage him in a "patient and fraternal dialogue" on the ministry of the Bishop of Rome, in particular the way that papal primacy is exercised on behalf of the unity of the whole church (p. 2). The contributors include several prominent ecumenists, each of whom considers ways to rethink the role of the papacy for a "new situation." Representing both Catholic and several Protestant traditions, the authors discuss the papacy in light of changing definitions of power, the challenges of democratization and the ecumenical movement, and the call to evangelization.

The most suggestive and far-reaching proposals are found in the essays by Catholic Brian E. Daley, Anglican Stephen Sykes, and Lutheran David S. Yeago. Daley argues that the papal office must serve the communion of the whole church, meaning that the church both accept and find ways to support and enhance diverse traditions and expressions of Christian diversity "as something willed by God and compatible with communion" (p. 55). Sykes deals forthrightly with the difficulty of exercising any ecclesial power in light of modern concepts of power and the contemporary pluralistic context, which is ambivalent about any exercise of power and offers a theological understanding of power grounded in a doctrine of creation.

Yeago, on the other hand, wishes to place the exercise of papal authority in the context of the mission of the church. The witness of the church demands a ministerium, because the Word has specific truth content. Yeago stretches to make a "Lutheran case" for a special Petrine ministry. Since the church exists in its most basic form as congregations presided over by pastors who proclaim the Word, the analogical argument can be made that for the church to exist as a universal communion it must be gathered by a pastor who speaks the Word of God to it (pp. 104-5). Although Yeago appeals to the Lutheran affirmation that the church is the "creature of the word," it still stands in the face of Luther's argument in On the Papacy in Rome that the church has no other head than Christ, even on earth.

Yeago's most concrete proposal is also his most controversial. Building on the notion of "magisterial mutuality" offered by the 1978 U.S. Lutheran-Catholic dialogue, Yeago suggests that Lutherans formally request the advice and counsel of the Holy See in matters of faith and morals. Given the recent pronouncements from the Congregation of Doctrine and Faith, one wonders how "mutual" this conversation would be.

Those who wish to find a place for a Protestant recognition of the Petrine ministry on the journey to full communion will appreciate the perspectives offered in these essays; others will be less convinced. Nonetheless, the underlying issue raised in these essays is one no Christian can afford to ignore: How do we, as separated ecclesial communions, embody a common witness to the one gospel of Jesus Christ?

Cheryl Peterson

Marquette University