THE RELEVANCE OF THE PRESENT THEME

In the contemporary “global village” in which a new and more or less autonomous Christian church or community is formed almost every minute, the Roman Catholic Church could not survive intact without a dogmatic (hence indirectly cultural) centre. That centre is provided by the Roman see, the principal reason why the “Western” Church, unlike Orthodoxy, has thus far not fragmented further. By fragmentation I refer not merely to the existence of autonomous (or autocephalous) churches but (as with Anglicanism) of autonomous doctrines. To make that case as strongly as possible would require a book on the history of the see of Rome – which for both practical and intellectual reasons I could not now write – to show how its gradual emergence as the ultimate doctrinal centre of Catholicism has inhibited the disintegration of Christianity, as well as entailing its own development not only as a doctrinal but also as a juridical centre. What I can manage, within the limits of the present chapter, is an argument that the doctrinal role of the Roman see – amid other often more vigorously intellectual local churches – had already begun to emerge in the early centuries, though, of course, the development was by no means complete. Nor, humanly speaking at least, was it yet irreversible. Yet a pattern had been set which others, from both more and less sympathetic viewpoints, have shown to have continued to the present day.