Rome and the Papacy
through the Ages

 
Edmund Hill  O.P.,  M.A.,  S.T.M.
 and 
 Giles Hibbert  O.P.,  M.A.,  S.T.L.,  D.Phil. 

____
 

IT IS necessary to begin with some clarifications and distinctions. By “the Roman Church”, throughout at least the earlier part of this work, will be meant the local Church constituted by the Christian community in the city of Rome, and never the Roman Catholic Church or Communion as a whole. And throughout a distinction will be made between the Roman Church in the local sense and the papacy, which, as will be seen, is an institution that developed gradually within the local Roman Church. The two tend to get confused when the idea of primacy is introduced. But it is important to distinguish between the primacy of the Roman Church over other local Churches and the primacy of the Pope, the bishop of Rome, over the universal Church.

The first 100 years of the Roman Church
It is clear that there was a Christian community in Rome, well established before ever Paul, let alone Peter, came to the city; the community, the Church to which Paul wrote his letter. So it was not a Church founded by the Apostles. It is worth noting, incidentally, how Paul at the beginning of his letter to the Romans says that “their faith is proclaimed in the whole world” (cf. 16:5)). It is evident too from the greetings at the end of the letter that he knew many of the members of the Church there, Jewish Christians for the most part, but also gentile converts like Epainetus, “the first-fruits of Asia” (16:5).

This Christian community, ecclesia, in Rome, or these little house churches, ecclesiae (cf. 16:5), were presumably run on the same lines as Jewish synagogues; that is by a kind of committee or board of elders, presbyters, assisted by stewards, deacons. And no doubt the several little ecclesiae in Rome, which as the capital of the Empire was a real megalopolis, of several 100,000, if not even 1,000,000 inhabitants, either all met together from time to time, if they could find a suitable place big enough, or at least sent representatives to joint meetings. In any case, the point is that their system of government was very definitely presbyterian, and remained so for about 100 years, long after all the other Churches, except that of Alexandria, had followed the example of Jerusalem and Antioch, and adopted the episcopal system, government by one man, whom we can henceforth call a bishop. In the N.T. “bishop”, episkopos, and “elder” or “priest”, presbyter, are just two names for the single office, the first defining the job, that of overseer or superintendent, the latter the rank, senior, elder (cf. Acts 20:12 & Phil 1:1, and Bp Lightfoot’s commentary on that epistle.)

So what was the contribution, then, which first Paul and then Peter made to the Roman Church? The answer is: they gave it its primacy among all the Churches by their martyrdom in Rome, and then by the presence there of their tombs, their victory monuments or tropaea, their memorials. And we find the Roman Church exercising its primacy very early on, in the letter of Clement to the Church of Corinth, written about AD 96. While tradition ascribes this letter to Clement, making him third bishop of Rome after Peter, this is just a piece of theological tidying up of history. Clement, a distinguished member of the Roman Church, may well have composed the letter; but this is how it begins: “The Church of God which sojourns in Rome to the Church of God which sojourns in Corinth ...”; and it goes on to rebuke the Corinthians for the way in which they have treated some of their presbyters.

But, basically the Roman Church, according to Irenaeus writing about 175, on account of its potentior principalitas (A.H. III, 3, 2) its more excellent origin in the apostles Peter and Paul, was the one which all other Churches had to agree with when it came to establishing against heretical teaching, what the authentic tradition of the apostles really was.

Roman Primacy, 150 - 453, the Council of Chalcedon
When the Roman Church finally adopted the episcopal system of government, its primacy over the other Churches naturally came to be embodied in its bishop; and he as representing his Church was seen as the supreme guardian of the tradition of the apostles. So from now on the language is about the primatial see (sedes, chair, the bishop’s throne) rather than of the primatial Church; and the bishops of Rome come to be treated, at least by Churches in Gaul and Spain, as well as Italy, as the final court of appeal in ecclesiastical disputes of all kinds. At the Council of Nicaea, 325, the Roman See is formally acknowledged as no. 1 in Christendom, Alexandria as no. 2, Antioch as no. 3.

It was during this period that the occupants of the Roman see, the chair of Peter, began basing their primatial authority on the Petrine texts in the gospels, above all on Mt. 16:18, “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church.” Thus Pope Stephen about 260 in his disagreement with St. Cyprian of Carthage, who for his part refused to accept the text as applying exclusively to the bishops of Rome; he said Peter there represented all bishops; other Fathers interpreted the text as meaning that the rock on which Christ built his Church is Peter’s faith in Christ the rock.

Incidentally, although we now refer to all bishops of Rome from the beginning as popes, at that time this was an affectionate honorific (it only means “Daddy”, after all) given to all bishops, particularly to senior ones. It was only in the 11th century that Gregory VII decreed it should be used exclusively for the occupants of the chair of Peter.

Leo the Great to Gregory the Great, c. 450 - 600
It is during this period that we begin to see developments in the way what we can now call the papal primacy was exercised. Leo I, 440-460, really flexed papal muscles at the Council of Chalcedon, 453, a) when his doctrinal statement on the one person, two natures of Christ, called the Tome of Leo in fact set the frame for the Council’s definition of the dogma; b) when he rejected its 28th canon making the see of Constantinople, “the new Rome”, no. 2 after the old Rome, instead of the see of Alexandria.

But we now begin to see clear distinctions in the manner of exercising the papal primatial authority: a) while it is universally recognized, both by the Greek Churches of the East and the Latin ones of the West, it is only asserted in the East as making the pope the final arbiter in upholding the “tradition of the apostles”; there is no attempt by the Popes in any way to govern or direct the Eastern Churches: b) over the Latin Churches of the West – and also over Dalmatia and Achaea – Leo and his successors do claim the right, which is for the most part accepted, to exercise a kind of supervision, leading to occasional intervention; or to making the bishop of Thessalonica the Pope’s vicar over the Churches of Dalmatia, Illyria as it was then called, and Achaea or Greece; c) but in Italy and the islands – Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily – the Popes did exercise, in the name of the Roman Church, a kind of direct government, often appointing bishops, convoking them to Roman synods, and legislating for them. By Italy, incidentally, is meant the peninsular south of the Rubicon – that otherwise insignificant stream which Caesar had been presumptuous enough to cross without the Senate’s permission. Northern Italy was then known as Cisalpine Gaul, and the leading Church there was that of Milan, with all the prestige of St. Ambrose behind it.

Again, during this period of barbarian invasions, and the break-up of the Roman Empire in the West, all bishops in the region, the bishops of Rome in particular, came to acquire more and more civil, secular authority, as indeed the only persons left with any real authority. A peculiarity about the Pope, however, was that while he was in effect the ruler of the city, he acted as such in the name of the Byzantine Emperor in Constantinople, especially after Justinian’s reconquest of Italy from the Visigoths in the mid 6th century. And in fact throughout this period the Roman Church was not so much the head of the Latin Churches of the West, as the all-important link between the Latin West and the Greek East; it was still very much a bilingual Church.

Gregory I to Nicholas I, c. 600 - c. 850
This link function continued after Gregory’s time, but was undermined by Charlemagne in 800 getting himself crowned in Rome by Leo III as Roman Emperor of the West. This naturally led to a rift with the Byzantine Empire, and meant that from now on the Roman Church came more and more simply to be identified as the leading Latin Church, with the Pope just the “Patriarch of the West”; and it prepared the ground for the breach between Rome and Constantinople 60 years later, known as the Photian schism, for which Nicholas I (858-867), a rather arrogant asserter of Roman rights was about equally responsible with the patriarch Photius himself. The schism was patched up not long afterwards, but it paved the way for the permanent breach 200 years later in 1053.

However, another extremely important expansion of papal authority was initiated by Gregory the Great’s mission to the Anglo-Saxons, and the subsequent establishment of new young Churches in northern Europe from England, through the Low Countries and Germany to Poland, thanks to the labours of English and Irish missionaries like St. Boniface and St. Gall, who saw themselves as acting on behalf of the Holy See, and the Churches they founded as being very much the daughter Churches of the Roman Church.

The Photian Schism to the final breach in 1053
The establishment of the Carolingian Empire had done little to protect Italy, previously ravaged by European barbarians, Goths (and Lombards, from sea-borne raids by Saracen pirates and in due course, Vikings. The consequent disorder meant that Rome itself fell into the hands of local barons. One of them, Lambert of Spoleto, who had been a powerful figure for a decade or two already, got a prot'82g'82 elected pope as Stephen VI in 896. This man had his predecessor, Formosus I, dug up, the corpse subjected to a mock trial, and then thrown into the Tiber. He thus initiated perhaps the darkest period in papal history, lasting with just a few glimmers of light until just before 1053. From about 900 to 930 there was a powerful lady in Rome called Marozia, and named by Gibbon “the mother, the mistress and the murderess of popes”. It was a period of almost 150 years during which the Roman Church was run by robber barons like Lambert, some of whom got themselves made pope, or put in sons or brothers – one of them a lad of 19 – but there was intermittent intervention by Bavarian Emperors, successors of Charlemagne, beginning with Otto I, who would step in and appoint their own nominees. Although several of these were no better than they should have been, it was eventually the Emperor Henry III who cleaned up the papacy by appointing good and upright bishops from Lorraine to fill the post in the middle of the 11th century. These, however, began asserting their authority in a way none of their degenerate predecessors had dreamt of doing; and thus it was that in 1053 the final breach came with Constantinople and the Eastern Church.

A point worth noting about this first “dark night” of the papacy: because neither popes nor the Roman Church had as yet any pretensions to govern other local Churches, outside Italy, the corruption of the Roman Church did not spread to others. The Anglo-Saxon Church in particular was a model in the late 9th and 10th Century, with saintly bishops like Dunstan of Canterbury, Ethelwold of Winchester and Oswald of Worcester, and flourishing monasteries like Glastonbury.

High Papal Monarchy, Gregory VII to Boniface VIII, 1073-1307
The reformed papacy almost immediately set to work as the reforming papacy, intent on reforming the whole western, Latin Church. The new style popes and their advisers and agents, men like St. Peter Damian and a little later St. Bernard, aimed to eradicate two evils (what they regarded as such) in particular, clerical concubinage and simony. As regards the first, it was in fact in very many cases plain clerical marriage; thus St. Aelred of Rivaulx was the son and grandson of the priests of Hexham. And this fact, not unique, illustrates the real point behind the insistence at that time on clerical celibacy; if this had not been enforced as law in that feudal age, Church benefices, hence ministry, would rapidly have become hereditary. As for simony, although technically it meant the sale of clerical office, in fact it meant control of appointments to sees and abbacies and also to lesser offices, by lay rulers. So the period is marked by what are known as the Wars of Investiture against the German “Holy Roman Emperors” (I don’t know if that full title was yet in use), and indeed against the other European sovereigns, chiefly the kings of England and France.

The popes were not claiming the right to appoint bishops themselves; only asserting the “liberty” of the Church from lay control, and defending the rights of chapters and monastic communities to elect bishops and abbots. But so important were these high clerics in the political, feudal structures of the age, and so involved now in those structures was the papacy itself, that very soon these rights of election were in practice ignored, and such offices became a matter of bargaining between the secular rulers and the papal curia. The popes also claimed the right to “provide” to benefices which fell vacant by their holders dying in Rome – a frequent occurrence, since they were constantly going there with appeals from lower ecclesiastical courts, and not infrequently poisoned by their adversaries or rivals.

The high point of this period was the pontificate of Pope Innocent III, 1198-1216, a great man who summoned, and presided over, the IVth Lateran Council in his last year. Its low point was Boniface VIII, 1294-1303, a ruthless and ambitious man, who claimed papal sovereignty as vicar of Christ over the whole of mankind, in particular of course over kings and potentates, and particularly over the king of France, Philip IV, who downed him in the end. A few years later, in 1307, a Frenchman was elected as Clement V, and he moved the whole papal court to Avignon in the South of France, thus inaugurating the first stage of the second and longest degradation of the papacy, lasting in all up to and beyond Luther’s protest in 1517.

The “Babylonian Captivity” and the Great Schism, 1309 - 1417
The Avignon papacy was not particularly scandalous – but it left the city of Rome more or less to go to rack and ruin. Gregory XI finally returned to the city in 1378, forcefully urged on by St. Catherine of Siena, and died there the next year. And then began the Great Schism. The cardinals, all Frenchmen, were obliged by the Roman mob surrounding the conclave to elect an Italian, and they chose the archbishop of Bari, a stern and upright man, as Urban VI. He soon also showed himself to be a cruel and tyrannical man, and so the French cardinals in Rome fled from the city, and with their colleagues who had been left behind in Avignon they elected a rival, Clement VII, who took up permanent residence there once again – and for little short of 40 years, 1379 to 1417 – there were never less than two, and occasionally even three rival popes – the most colourful and notorious being the first John XXIII.

The Renaissance Papacy, 1417 - 1517
The schism was terminated by the Council of Constance, assembled by the Emperor Sigismund in 1415, and continuing for three or four years; the Council itself elected the first one-and-only pope for 40 years, Martin V, and passed a decree, Frequens, requiring the summoning of a Council every three years; it was an attempt to transform the papacy into a kind of constitutional monarchy – which never worked.

With its prestige seriously diminished through the schism, the papacy no longer played a leading role on the bigger stage of European politics. But as rulers of the papal state, the popes were inevitably involved in the intricacies and squalors of Italian politics, Italy of course by this time being no more than a geographical expression. The popes also found themselves in a position to be great patrons of the new Renaissance culture, collectors of ancient works of art, supporters of the new humanism. Outstanding in this line were Nicholas V (1447-1455) and Pius II (1458-1464).

But the latter, hailing from Siena, carried the common papal vice of nepotism to rather extreme lengths, and so opened the way for that series of popes, from Sixtus IV (1471-1484) to Leo X (1513-1521) whose corruption, in one form or another did infect nearly the whole Latin Church, and so form the background to the Reformation; for although no longer dominating European politics, they were still the supreme rulers of the European Latin Church.

The Reformation and Counter-Reformation, 1517 - 1563
Leo X, and the popes immediately succeeding him, were quite unable to comprehend the significance of the movement of protest against the Church’s style, morals and doctrine – the Reformation – which was beginning to spread throughout Europe. It wasn’t until Paul III (1534-1549) that, with the Council of Trent (convoked in 1545), the Roman Catholic Church embarked upon the Counter-Reformation. The initiative came from the central administrative apparatus at Rome, with its emphasis on the Papal Primacy. The shock troops of the Pope, in what followed, were above all the Jesuits, founded in 1540.

Undoubtedly much was achieved in this counter-reformation, but it would seem that for the most part few, if any, in Rome, or in support of Rome, really stopped to examine the roots of the ‘protest’ and the extent of its validity; they were concerned primarily with negation of opposition, and with contradiction: the affirmation of the ‘real presence’ of Christ in the Eucharist, the supreme importance of Papal primacy and the hierarchical structure of the Church. This, as we shall see, was to grow and grow. Pius V’s excommunication of Queen Elizabeth (1570) stands out as a typical act of a leader who was both incorruptible and puritanical; but whether it was wise politically is another question.

From now on, and into the next two centuries, the Church at large was effectively divided into a number of sects, one of them claiming to be the true and ‘only true’ Church, whilst its overall drive was directed towards the missions. These sects vied with one another, and within the Roman communion Rome itself, and its style and customs, dominated the scene, with the Pope as its focus. The missionary drive of Rome was directed both towards the world at large and towards its ‘lost’ provinces.

The Enlightenment and the French Revolution, XVIIth - XVIIIth C.
Mainly as the result of the Reformation, scholarship and intellectual thought in general began to develop and thrive through Protestant Europe. (In the Roman communion such openness was severly squashed with, for example, the condemnations of Galileo in 1616, under Paul V, and again in 1633 under Urban VIII.) Not only scientific theories were being developed, but political and philosophical ideas as well. ‘The divine right of kings’, at the same time as being supported in some areas of Protestantism, was being questioned, and concepts of human liberty were being developed. In all this the Papacy was the bulwark against advance.

At the same time, however, increasing ‘Gallicanism’ in the European Catholic states reduced the popes progressively to political impotence. The nadir was perhaps reached when in 1773 Clement XIV, under pressure from the Bourbons, suppressed the Jesuit Order – the papacy’s most loyal supporters.

This entire development came to a climax with the French Revolution and the accommodations the Papacy had to make under Napoleon. With the defeat and imprisonment of Pius VII in 1809 and the ultra-gallican concessions that followed, it looked as if the papal office had effectively come to an end. But throughout this period, ideologically the Roman Catholic Church, with its hierarchical, monarchical structure either effective or in disarray, systematically led the reaction and became the main support of ultra-conservatism.

The Restoration and Transformation of Papal Power, XIXth Cent.
The Battle of Waterloo and the Congress of Vienna which followed it seemed, at least at first, firmly to put the clock back. It eliminated democracy and restored, or more soundly established, monarchical power. The wicked experiment in liberty and free thought was brought to a close. Amongst the powers restored was the Pope and his Papal States. Such restoration was, however, hollow. The seeds of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution were in the soil. France was soon again to become a republic and liberation movements were to develop on the Italian Peninsula. This is the period during which such outlandishly immoral concepts as the use of steam engines and the lighting of city streets with gas were condemned as contrary to Natural Law and the will of God (Gregory XVI, 1831-1846). One can perhaps look back at this with mild amusement, but at the same time such concepts as democracy, socialism, liberty of conscience and freedom of belief were being fought against tooth and nail – though stronger condemnations were yet to come.

After Gregory XVI, the next pope, Pius IX (1846-1878), was, on his accession, seen as an hopeful liberal, and the railway system (as well as gas lighting) entered Rome(!) and even political prisoners were given an amnesty – the modern world had arrived! But the modern world was getting closer in a different way. Political liberalism and new nationalism were pressing down on the Papal States from the North, from the South, and from France after the fall of Louis Philippe. A republican takeover drove the Pope from Rome and on his return, with foreign help, he had become a hard reactionary.

His position – the anti-gallicanism and the ultra-montanism – had received support from earlier reactionary romantic thinkers as, for example, the Frenchman Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821), but also from others – far from reactionary – countering ultra-gallicanism with ultra-montanism (e.g. the French Dominican Lacordaire, 1802-1861.) It encouraged papal absolute monarchism to be seen as the heart of Christianity in a way never before believed in so intensely. Backed by Austria, Pius set himself four square against progress – in fact the very concept was denied.

Pius’ political game can be seen to have been disastrous, there was no possibility of stemming the tide which was flowing. Under the influence of Cavour in the North and Garibaldi in the South and the triumph of the Risorgimento, the pope eventually retired to the Vatican, a self imposed prisoner – but spiritually a martyr. This was Pius’ triumph, since Roman Catholicism took, as a result, a distinctly new turn which it is not unfair to describe as papolatry. With hindsight one can see that this apparent victory, of tremendous proportions, was more like a disaster for the Gospel; the Vicar of Christ – of him who came telling us that we were his brothers and his sisters, and that God was ‘available’, revealed, through this relationship – was presented as father, ruler, autocrat of our hearts and minds, even our bodies. God’s will for us was dictated as never before. The self-incarceration of Pius in the Vatican effectively negated the validity of the whole physical/political world and substituted a ‘spirituality’ based on power and precedence in human hearts. Centralism and conformism became the dominant characteristics of Roman Catholicism.

Vatican I (1869-1870) to the end of the Century
Pius’ triumph had its full expression at the Vatican Council. The decree proclaiming Papal Infallibility, although hedged around with many conditions and provisos, placed the pope firmly on this new throne. He, and he alone, was able to speak for the Church; he was paramount, absolute, at the apex of the pyramid. If he spoke on behalf of the Church (but what exactly did this mean at that time?) Christ’s promise of the indefectability of his Church implied that, with regard to faith and morals, its two cornerstones, he was infallible.

The Council came to an end hurriedly and under external pressures. Its business was never really finished; the implications of what had so far been decided received no adequate working out. Ironically at the moment of his being declared ‘infallible’ the Pope finally lost all control of Rome to a united Italy, but ‘spiritually’ he had triumphed; popes could no longer be doubted, criticised, ignored, questioned – by the faithful. The Pope was supreme; he controlled the hierarchy, and through them the clergy, and all the laity had to do was to pull their forelocks to all above them at every level. The job of the bishops was to enforce the Pope’s will; of theologians to ‘explain’ – certainly not explore – what was in the Pope’s mind. “If things are in any way to change,” the authorities would say, “then it will be worked out in Rome, and we will be told what we have to, or are allowed to, do.” And still to this day this attitude dominates the Roman Communion and those who run it – primarily the Curia.

Leo XIII (1878-1903), who followed Pius IX, was a widely-travelled man of considerable culture and in many ways the horizons of the Church were extended considerably under his jurisdiction. He had a genuine sense of justice and was responsible for Rerum novarum (1891). Within the limitations of the period he can even be said to have had an ecumenical sensibility. Above all he encouraged serious and critical biblical studies, setting up the Pontifical Biblical Commission. Nevertheless throughout his reign Roman centralisation of the Church continued apace. This was significant in the context of increasing colonialism and the missionary effort which went with it.

Pius X (1903-1914) and ‘Modernism’
With the decree Lamentabili (1907) Pius attempted to suppress what was denounced as ‘Modernism’ – a concept which he and his advisers largely invented. It was an outstanding attempt to reject in toto all modern culture and any Christian belief connected with it. An oath – the Anti-modernist Oath – was imposed upon all those holding positions of authority or holding a teaching post. Looking back on it now we can see that the ‘Anti-modernist Oath’ itself has the flavour of heresy. It was abolished shortly after Vatican II. Papal supremacy, papal ‘infallibility’ as understood by the commonalty – the ‘faithful’ – and the curialism that supported it, was having its malign effect on the Church. Denunciations and delations to Rome were common and damaging to the faith’s vitality.

Not dissimilar to the way in which Leo XIII followed Pius IX, Pius X was followed by Benedict XV (1914 -1922). The witch hunts were at least temporarily halted.

John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council
Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, of peasant origin and stupendous and superb ugliness (characteristically ironed out by all the official reproductions,) is seen by many as the outstanding saint of the 20th Century – though it is the above mentioned Pius X who has been given that official title. This ‘stop gap’ pope, in reading the signs of the time correctly, opened the doors of the Roman Church to the breath of the Spirit – the giver of life. The change was radical and tremendous, though not beyond the hopes and imagination of great swathes of the faithful. The Council which he convoked, though did not live to see completed, in many ways continued the unfinished work of Vatican I and readjusted the imbalance felt by many to have been its result. Its most prominent achievements were probably the emphasis on Collegiality in the governance of the Church, the openness to the world of today in which we live, and the admission of past (as well as present) failures and guilt. A new style of Papacy was inaugurated.

Whether John’s successor, Paul VI (1963-1978), lived up to this is as yet difficult to assess. It is certain that often enough little was done to encourage the dissemination of the Council’s teaching. When it was, it was quite often, not uncharacteristically, presented as “This is what we’ve been told we now have to do/believe/etc.” Paul VI’s great pyrrhic triumph (though emerging from considerable angst, not from triumphalism) was the encyclical Humanae vitae, (1968) on the moral status of birth-control within marriage. Seemingly not wanting to erode papal power by apparently going back on what had be ‘declared’ in earlier statements, despite the overwhelming advice and wisdom of a Commission which he himself had approved, he made a statement which in effect seriously damaged his credibility and thus that very power itself. Despite continuing efforts to uphold that power, it is not uncommon nowadays to hear people say of papal utterances: “He is ultra vires” – as, for example, when the present pope declared that the subject of the ordination of women couldn’t even be discussed. The Pope had seriously undermined his own influence – whether towards the health or detriment of the Church has still to be estimated.

John Paul II – World Showman and Reactionary
Where is the breath of the Spirit now? Undoubtedly the present Pope has considerably transformed his office. He has become a world figure, master of his stage, with enormous popularity and a huge following throughout the world. But what has he done to the office of the Papacy? Is this the sort of primacy which the Church needs?

He seems to have killed collegiality dead; he has packed the hierarchy with his think-alikes, often against the manifest hopes and desires of the people they are imposed upon but are meant to serve. Is he yet another pope for whom the title Servant of the servants of God effectively means nothing? As ever he is backed by a Curia which seems to ‘out-John Paul’ John Paul. He can hardly have much more time in office. Will all those who are just waiting hopefully, or even desperately, for something better, more open, more sensitive from the next pope, be given it? Not, I suggest, unless they stand up to the responsibility of working for it, the responsibility ultimately of proclaiming the Gospel, the ‘Good News’ – as distinct from the ‘Good News Media Service’ and its cultivation of popularity.

It has become common, within the Roman Catholic Church, to judge the loyalty of members – of priests, theologians, bishops – by their sycophancy towards the pope. Has not the time come to judge this by their fidelity, their commitment, to Christ and his followers – the faithful People of God – and to the proclamation of the ‘Good News’, the New Commandment of Love?