Is the Church Roman?

The Church of Rome is the head and mother of all the churches, and the pope in Rome is the primate of the Church universal. We who commune with her do so because we believe in her authority, as we believe in the authority of the Church universal, because of the testimony of her founder, Jesus Christ. We believe this on the basis of the written testimony of Sacred Scripture and the witness of apostolic tradition. This much is uncontroversial, I think, for those in communion with Rome. We assume that Rome’s authority is a permanent feature of the universal Church and not merely a custom unique to the Western Church. Thus, the universal Church can be said to be “Roman,” at least in this limited sense.

Such thoughts came to mind while reading a recently published book. Alan Fimister’s The Iron Sceptre of the Son of Man: Romanitas as a Note of the Church makes the case for the Church being Roman in a much more expansive way. According to Fimister, this means that not only the spirit of ancient Rome but even its imperium is a constitutive part of the Church. Because the Church is a perfect society, he argues, she needs a temporal power to achieve her spiritual ends on earth, and he argues that the imperium of Rome is an imperishable part of the Church, which is therefore Roman. 

Fimister’s basic idea is easily stated: the Roman Empire’s authority was translated from the temporal to the spiritual order, from the Roman Empire to the Roman Church. This is not original to him, and he cites St. Thomas Aquinas, among other authorities, to bolster his case. He spends most of this slim book discussing the role of Rome in Old and New Testament prophecy. He argues that prophecies about Rome—that of the four kingdoms in Daniel and, more bizarrely, that of Rome/Babylon in the Book of Revelation, where “Babylon” is persecuting the saints—somehow convey the permanence of Roman Imperial auctoritas to the Church. 

He claims that after the end of the ancient state of Israel, the people of God needed a successor. This was the Roman Empire, in which both Peter and Christ himself were born. Fimister says this is the result of Christ’s crucifixion at Roman hands, which brought “about that the Romans” would “become the Messiah’s people.” 

His argument has more to do with the interpretation of prophecy than with history, and not only Christian prophecies. Fimister cites The Aeneid, Augustus’ Res Gestae, Josephus, and even a prophecy of Aristotle regarding the city of Constantinople to claim that the entire Church is Roman—and not merely the Latin or the Byzantine Churches (which he conflates together as “Roman” for the purpose of his argument, something I am not sure many Byzantine Christians will agree with). On the basis of these, he concludes that Romanitas is not merely a matter of communing with the earthly Head of the Church but that “Romanness” constitutes the Church’s very DNA. 

These are audacious claims, to say the least. While I am eager to assert that “Romanness” is integral to the Western Church, and perhaps the Byzantine (if qualified very carefully, more carefully than the present author does), it is not to the Church as a whole. The four traditional “notes” of the Church (one, holy, catholic, apostolic) are general in nature, universal qualities that have no connection with a particular civilization or culture. But Fimister appears to assert just this, that the particular civilization or culture of ancient Rome is essential to the Church. 

Despite his attempts to demonstrate this from Scriptural prophecies (he spends a good deal of time on the Book of Revelation, a notoriously challenging work to interpret) I am not convinced the Church requires the auctoritas of the Roman Empire to fulfill its mission. One may agree with him that the Roman Empire played a providential role in the spread of the Christian faith, but nothing in Scripture or Tradition suggests it will play such a role till the end of time. Whatever its merits, the ideal of translatio imperii is not an article of faith.

Moreover, making Romanitas a mark of the Church makes it seem like adoption of Roman traditions is obligatory to be in communion with her. At one point, Fimister claims that the “Church’s Roman character…integrates the Latin, Byzantine and other ritual traditions.” This may sound innocuous to him because he thinks Romanitas is universal, but I doubt many of the Eastern churches in communion with Rome would see it that way. I imagine they would see it as justifying the imposition of a distinct, particular ecclesial culture and tradition on their own. 

The long and complicated history of “Latinization” in the Church supports this, as does the history of “Hellenization,” the enforcement of Greek customs by the Church of Constantinople on other churches in that communion, as happened after the Ottoman conquest. Declaring Romanitas as a note of the Church, if ever done in a meaningful way, would create a powerful incentive for this abuse. After all, if the Church is by definition Roman, it would be natural to expect that communion with the Church is dependent on the adoption of Roman customs.

The Church is indeed Roman in a sense, but not in the sense that The Iron Sceptre of the Son of Man would have it. Fimister is well-intentioned and inspired by love for the Church, that much is clear. That said, his arguments are simply not tenable. I can understand why one might want to associate the Church with the glories of the Roman Empire, but such associations, though they may be historically important, are not essential for her. 

Though the Church does need a lay power to guard it, no particular such power ever lasts or was meant to, including that of Rome. I must respectfully disagree with Newman who claimed that “it is not clear that the Roman Empire is gone.” On the contrary: few things are more clear. Though the Church might carry within her some of its DNA, it is only a part of her identity, even if it is vital and necessary. But the Empire itself is gone and is not coming back.

All this might seem obvious, and one might wonder why someone would write such a book or take time to review it. The answer lies in the “auto-demolition” of the Western Church carried out in that body since the 1960s, often led by Church leaders. Even those who do not care for such things are aware of the campaign to stamp out the Latin Mass in recent years, and those who wish to jettison the historic, theological, and spiritual heritage of the Latin Church often make the excuse that the Latin Mass and other treasures are disposable because they are merely cultural artifacts of an earlier era in the Church’s history and not a permanent part of its Tradition. 

I say this because I am supportive of Latin Mass traditionalism and many of its aims, and I pray it will continue to flourish. I certainly think it will play a role in her eventual renewal. And I have learned a great deal from many good souls in that particular corner of the Church. This is especially the case with the liturgy because traditionalists have defended the old Mass with love and much sacrifice. I am grateful for their efforts and what I have learned from them. 

Their critics sometimes accuse them of engaging in empty nostalgia with regard to the liturgy, which I completely reject. The classical Roman Rite is part of the Church’s permanent heritage. But Roman imperium, “translated” or otherwise, is not. Not everything in the Church’s history needs to be restored, and traditionalists would do better to focus on promoting the Church’s traditional liturgy than trying to conjure up ghosts from her past.