Even before that founding of the papacy, though, Jesus had made Peter the chief of the Apostles. In the New Testament, the Apostles are the twelve chosen disciples who are His constant companions. They thus receive His most complete instruction. They all witness the Resurrection, after which Christ commissions them, by conferring on them the Holy Spirit, to carry on His teaching. The Twelve (Judas having been replaced by Mathias) then do go forth to feed His lambs and sheep. They teach what they have been taught, preaching the message of Jesus out of their personal knowledge of Him.

The oral teaching of Jesus then became the content of an oral tradition, to be handed on without change or addition. As the Apostles preached this Tradition, they become bishops (literally, "pastoral overseers") of the various flocks of their converts. These first bishops appointed others, who eventually formed colleges under their respective founding Apostles and elected successors to the original Twelve as they died.

Peter has, in all four gospels, a primacy over the other Apostles as head of the primary Christian community in Jerusalem. His primacy was thus from the beginning a special office to which he was commissioned by Jesus and which he shared with no others. It was the primary office of teaching and governing. Moreover, Peter was not disqualified by his human weaknesses, for the continuing presence of Jesus to His Church would compensate for these. The exact nature of the office was quite vague, allowing for doctrinal development, as the Church would go on into new historical situations. A strong tradition puts Peter finally in Rome as its bishop, where he was martyred under Nero. (Thus far John McKenzie, Dictionary of the Bible, entries at "Apostle," "Bishop," "Elders," "Tradition," and "Peter.")

Since then Popes have been Bishops of Rome, successors of the martyred St. Peter, and have retained his pastoral primacy. Their primary function continues to this day to be what it has always been, teaching. The food which nourishes us sheep and lambs of Christ is His authentic Tradition, as He gave it in person to the Apostles. We who come to believe the Tradition are the Church, whose Magisterium interprets it for us. This teaching office consists of all the bishops in communion with the Bishop of Rome. Thus by adhering to the authentic teaching of the Magisterium we are faithful to the teaching and brotherhood of Christ, as well as to the Euchar istic worship and other prayers of the Church. (So far the new Catechism of the Catholic Church # 84, citing the Vatican II document Dei Verbum.) The pope, then, is not a monarch. He is primus inter pares, the first among equals, namely, the other bishops.

It was to the apostolic college alone, of which Peter is the head, that Our Lord entrusted all the blessings of the New Covenant in order to establish on earth the one Body of Christ into which all those should be fully incorporated who belong in any way to the People of God (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #816).

The primary task within the full papal primacy is to guard the four marks of the Church. The pope has, above the other bishops but along with them, responsibility for preserving the Body of Christ on earth as One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. One way to understand the papacy, then, is to see just how the office of Bishop of Rome guards each of these four marks. And we can then see Pope John Paul II as an epitome of that guardianship.

The bond of unity in the Church is the Holy Spirit, dwelling in the Church as charity informing the souls of believers. The ultimate source of Church unity is the Unity of the One God in Three Persons. But in the Church herself, the unifying bond is the love of Chris tians for each other that draws the admiration of those who see it: "See how these Christians love one another!" The fundamental task of the papacy, then, is to teach us how to love.

A pope, then, even in union with the other bishops, has no magic power for unifying the church. Her unity absolutely depends on her people, on the free choices by which alone each of us can receive the Holy Spirit into his own soul. Once received, the indwelling Spirit then enables us to keep the two great commandments. "Thou shalt love the Lord, your God, with your whole heart, your whole soul, all your mind, and all your strength. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself." Love alone, not dogma, can preserve the unity of the Church, the love exercised by you and by me. Thus ecumenism, completely dependent on charity, begins at home. The task of the bishop of Rome is to teach us how to love and to urge us on. But love cannot be forced. (Cf. nn. 813-822 of the Catechism, where the Vatican II Decree on Ecumenism is a rich source for these points as well as for an account of the rightful diversity within the Church. These passages also make it clear that, while there is much that is right and good and true in other churches, those precise features call the churches to full communion with the One Church of Christ, which is the Catholic Church.)

This unity, the first mark of the Church, the charity that is "the love of God poured forth in our hearts," is practically identical with the holiness that is the second mark of the Church. For Christian love is our way of participating in the very life of the One God. "God is love, and he who lives in love lives in God, and God lives in Him" (1 John 4:16). Thus, guarding our holiness is another part of the primary papal task. We first receive our holiness from God, Who alone is Holy. But once we receive it, we are then compelled, by love itself, to follow our chief pastor in communicating it to all men. Urged on by love, we seek to bring to them the various means of grace that constitute their salvation. Most of us, imperfect in our holiness, continue to be sinners. And so, our life is one of constant penance and renewal. The Church sustains our hope in this struggle. When she canonizes some of her members, she shows us that it can, indeed, be done. These saints then become our examples and our effective intercessors. Mary is, of course, the paradigm of holiness, the greatest of the saints, and so our firmest anchor of hope.

Since the One God has made us all one in our common human nature, His call to share His very life goes out to all men, women and children, of all times and places. Thus the holiness that is unity, both of these being love, also constitutes the third mark of the Catholic Church, her catholicity or universality. She is potentially catholic in having the means of salvation for all. But actually drawing all men, without exception, into her fold is a third part of the papal task. The Bishop of Rome leads the rest of the college of bishops in the quest to actuate the catholicity of the Church through sanctifying all men, women and children. They seek to bring the Spirit Who is Love into the hearts of all.

This third mark of the Church, her catholicity, is thus a mission to bring correct faith, full sacramental life, and a validly ordained ministry to all. That mission is identical with her fourth mark. For just as her unity is her holiness, so is her holiness her catholic need to have all men in her holy union of love. And her need to be catholic is nothing but her need to be faithful to her Apostolic origins. Thus is the one, holy, and catholic Church apostolic as well. And she can only be apostolic by being Apostolic, that is, by having validly ordained ministers whose ordination comes from Christ through the Apostles and their successors. For different men belong to the Church with different degrees of unity, depending on how much they love God and each other. And that love depends on how much of her teaching they believe and on how much of her sacramental life they share.

But fundamentally, salvation comes only with final perseverance in the life of charity. Thus some who are baptized but do not persevere in that life may belong outwardly, but not inwardly, to the body of the Church. They may participate in her outward actions, such as the sacraments, but the Holy Spirit does not dwell in their hearts.

Thus any individual’s membership in the one, holy, catholic Church is interior and may be only apparent, not real. In other cases, it may be real but not apparent. Some individuals, those of sincere but erroneous conscience, may belong to her in their hearts, by living an interior life of charity, even though they are not joined to her bodily. Among these are holy baptized non-Catholic Christians, especially those of the Orthodox Churches. Sincere Jewish faith is also a partial response to God’s revelation, accepting the Old Testament as the one God’s true revelation. Conscientious Muslims worship the One God of Abraham and thus have some share in the catholicity of the Church. Other non-Christians can also share in the bond of unity, for they have the same origin and destiny as the rest of mankind, and such goodness and truth as they possess are a preparation for their full acceptance of the gospel.

We must assume, then, that anyone we meet may be sharing, in his interior life, in the unity, the holiness, and the catholicity of the Church. Should such holy people persevere to the end, they may well have a higher place in heaven than others who, having participated fully in the externals of Catholic life, may have lacked charity in their hearts. The truth re mains, then, that "outside the church there is no salvation." But God can and will save all of those who follow a sincere conscience, even when it mistakenly keeps them out of the body of the Catholic Church. Thus does her mission appreciate and preserve every bit of partial truth and goodness in those whom She evangelizes. And yet, she continues to seek to change them so as to enable them to accept the full truth and goodness found only in full membership, body and soul, in the one Church of Christ (the First Trinitarian Church, we might say — First and Only). The catho licity of the Church is thus one of the more delicate responsibilities of the papal office. (On the catholicity of the Church, see the Catechism of the Catholic Church, nn. 830-856. See also Inculturation and Ecclesial Communion, by Car dinal Francis E. George, O.M.I.., of Chicago, pub lished in Rome in 1990 by the Urbaniana Uni versity Press. Its author draws from the archives of his own missionary order, the Oblates of Mary Im maculate, and from the public addresses of the present Holy Father.)

Just as her unity is identical with her holiness, and her holiness with her catholicity, her catholicity is, in turn, the missionary feature of the Church. This mission, a mission to be true to herself, is her faithfulness to her Apostolic origins. Thus the first three marks of the Church logically require the fourth. The Church needs, for the sake of her own full unity and holiness, to become fully catholic. She becomes one, holy, and catholic in love by preaching the gospel of love to all men, thus becoming the universal sacrament of salvation. She must, moreover, preach the gospel of love to all, with a view to their conversion, for only as love becomes catholic does the Church become one and holy. While she must be Apostolic in preserving the "good deposit" of teaching left to the Apostles by Christ, she must not hug it to herself. She must be apostolic as well, in telling all, until the end of time, what the Apostles saw and heard.

The Apostolic origin of the papal office thus makes the Church herself, and each of her members, apostolic. For each Catholic, in his or her own way, must accept the commission from Christ to bring the gospel to all men. Every Catholic, in one way or another, has a missionary vocation. Each, then, is obliged to manifest in his or her own life the same four features that mark the Church. Each one’s life must be one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. The fostering of Christian lives that bear this four-fold marking is the immediate task of each one’s bishop. But the primacy of the Bishop of Rome gives him the ultimate responsibility. (For the apostolic character of the Church, see the Catechism of the Catholic Church, nn. 857-865.)

In brief, the papacy is the sacramental, pastoral, collegial, apostolic bishopric of Rome. The charge of the office is to bring all men to achieve and preserve the Church of Christ as one, holy, catholic and apostolic. Thus the person who occupies the office need not be holy, nor a theologian, nor any other kind of intellectual. He need not enjoy robust physical health. He need not be skilled in languages nor in the modem technology of communications. He need not be politically shrewd, nor diplomatically adept, nor endowed with social graces. He need not be an efficient administrator, nor an avid traveler. He only really needs to be the sacramentally ordained Bishop of Rome who knows the Tradition of Jesus and teaches it, in his own and every other diocese of the world. Only in this task does he have primacy over his fellow bishops. This primacy of his teaching authority, and this alone, is what commands the faith of his flock.

Pope John Paul II, already being hailed by some as John Paul the Great, has been the quintessential bishop of Rome, guardian of the four marks of the Church. As we have seen, these marks are connected, and all are rooted in love. It is precisely a pastoral love for his flock that this pope has displayed to such a stunning degree. Love has inspired his writings and drawn unprecedented crowds to every one of his numerous public appearances. Love, in fact, underlies and informs all of his other personal achievements. Love has led him to acquire his astonishing competence in languages, so as to speak more clearly to his flock of the love of Christ. Love has, led him to preach wherever he goes the undiluted gospel of Christ, making no adjustments for the sake of a misguided multiculturalism. The gospel of love is clearly and always his norm for human cultures, not vice-versa. Hence he has not hesitated to tell us Americans, to our faces, that our wealthy, high-tech, democratic culture, supposedly the most advanced of all times, is a culture of death, diagonally opposed to the Civilization of Love.

Love motivates his extensive and arduous travels. His jetting around the world, even as he ages and his health begins to fail, has been no series of pleasure cruises. And love has drawn his crowds, enormous crowds wherever he goes. His appeal to young people is not that of a rock star to eager fans hoping for a glimpse of their entertainment idol. They come to hear the straight, undiluted Catholic truth, and, loving them as he does, he gives them just that. When he was in Denver for World Youth Day in 1993, the locals were astonished that the city’s crime rate went down rather than up under the influx of several hundred thousand teens and young adults. It seems that they expected a bunch of hoodlums rather than an international love feast of a shepherd with his flock.

Love is fundamental to all the four marks of the Church, because love and love alone unifies us. Unity then makes us holy and extends to all men the apostolic mission of Christ. Pope John Paul II’s expertise in philosophy has brought us, as perhaps no one else could have done, a new understanding of love, especially of the way in which love unifies, and the way in which the absence of love means an absence of unity. Nothing could be more fundamental to the feeding of his flock than a new clarifying, in this our time, of the unitive power of love. For nothing is more basic than love, both as understood and as practiced, to the unified holiness of the catholic, apostolic Church. And nothing has been more perversely distorted, in both thought and practice, in our time.

Love has been variously equated with negotiated, quid-pro-quo contracts; with a psychologically un healthy altruism; and with foolish adolescent wishful thinking. All of these equations are false. And all are destructive to human relationships. But this Holy Father has given us, through a truly creative synthesis of contemporary Phenomenology with Thomistic Metaphysics, a new understanding of love and of ourselves as naturally communal. We are, all of us hu mans, neighbors in a common human nature, with a common human fulfillment that comes in the "communion of persons." This communion of persons comes about in only one way — through a very specific, almost unnameable, kind of love. The basics of this teaching are from St. Thomas Aquinas, in his "Treatise on Love," Summa Theologiae, I-II, 26-28, where he distinguishes two kinds of love. The first is amor amicitiae, literally "loving love," love in the primary sense of the term. Its Latin name is the noun "love" modified by an intensifying adjective formed from the same root. The present Holy Father has referred to it, variously, as "self-giving love," (opposed to self-seeking), as "self-gift," and as just "love"(opposed to use). Most recently he has used a Biblical term, the"fairest love" of Sirach 24:24. It is neither romance, nor masochism, nor adolescent wishful thinking. It is a realistic, clear-headed decision to look upon people, and treat them, as our other selves. When we do so, we identify their wellbeing as our own good, and then freely will it to them for their sakes.

The other kind of love, amor concupiscientiae, is desirous love. In this kind of love, we do not see others as our other selves, but as our inferiors. We do not identify their wellbeing as our own good. Nor do we freely will it to them for their sakes. We do, however, wish them their wellbeing. Desirous love is not hate. It is a form of benevolence, as is all love. But it is benevolence with what we rightly call an ulterior motive. Instead of wishing the one we love his wellbeing for his own sake, we wish it to him for our own sake, seeing in it a means to some benefit to ourselves. We love for the sake of a desire to fill a lack in ourselves.

Loving love and desirous love are not, however, the familiar modern opposites, love of others and love of self, known as altruism and egoism. Loving love and desirous love are both forms of benevolence, whereas egoism allows us to harm others if we can thereby benefit ourselves. But the two loves differ in their motives. In loving love, we will a good to another for his sake, thus making him the primary object of our love, an end. The good we wish to him is the secondary object of our willing, seen as a means to our beloved’s wellbeing. In wishing it to him for his sake, we make an implicit gift of ourselves to the one we love.

Such love joins lover and beloved in a communion of persons. We come to be one with each other, even as our unique identities remain intact, through our joint possession of a single good. That good is the wellbeing of the beloved, which belongs to him as part of his ontological make-up. But it also belongs to the one loving because he chooses to make it the end, goal, or motive of his action. In loving in this primary, self-giving mode, we identify a beloved’s well being as our good, too. And thanks to the realism of willing, it really becomes our good. We don’t possess it as a part of our own ontological make-up, but we do cling to it with our supreme personal, spiritual power, our will. It is ours psychologically, then, rather than physically. But in the realm of personal life, the psychological is also real, even more real than the physical. A communion of persons in loving love is a more real union than that between a cannibal and his dinner.

Take a simple but profound example: if I offer a neighbor a ride to work, I will some good to him. But I can do so in two different ways. The difference is psychological, a matter of my possible motives. But it is all-important for our communion of persons or lack thereof. If I will my neighbor’s arrival at his job for his sake, simply because that is beneficial to him, I am loving him with loving love, the primary kind of love. He is the end, the final purpose, of my willing. Since his wellbeing is "what I am really after," so that I have no further, ulterior motive, I have identified his well being as my good, too. And by that very fact, it is my good. It is a desired outcome, effect, of my action. As Aristotle would put it, his wellbeing is an extension of my very self into him. As we would say, he is "a part of my life," and I am a part of his, at least for the time being.

Moreover, as I come into my psychological possession of his good, without any loss to either of us, my own emptiness is somewhat fulfilled. My neighbor’s on-time presence at his job satisfies my need for some good outside myself, to fill my emptiness. And so, we both own his on-time presence at his job. He owns the good of being there in a physically real way. But I own that good, too, in a psychological, volitional way that is just as real. It is my achievement, which I willingly claim as such.

By our joint ownership of that one good, we have a bond that constitutes us a communion of persons. And in that communion, neither of us is diminished or destroyed in our unique individual identities. Such love is also implicit self-giving. That is, in my doing him the favor of a ride to work, I am implying that he can expect further help from me in the future. My secret thought isn’t, "This is O.K. for now, but don’t ask me for anything else. I have my limits." I am implicitly saying, "If you need me again, I’ll do what I can to help." I am making myself available to him for the future. I am saying, in the best definition of love I’ve ever heard,"When you need me, I’ll be there."

Self-giving love, then, is a paradoxical way to the fulfillment of the one who gives it. It helps the one loved. But it brings the one loving into a communion with the person he loves, thus healing his isolation as the individual that he is. In one of Pope John Paul’s favorite, most frequent quotations, "Man can fully discover his true self only in a sincere giving of himself." That quotation is from The Church in the Modern World (II, 24), the final document of Vatican II. The then-Cardinal Archbishop of Krakow played a major role in its writing.

The key notion is that we humans, limited as we are in our very being, find an increase of our being in our communion with each other. Our communion is paradoxical, as its very name indicates. It allows us to be intimately united to each other while yet keeping our unique individual identities intact. Such a communion is spiritual, or psychological. That is, in a communion of persons we don’t merge physically into a single entity. Instead, we are, as we say, one in mind and heart. But this psychological life is as real as our physical life, indeed, more so. And it is our moral life as well, the place where we are either good or evil persons. For it is in our thoughts and choices that we first do moral good and evil, sometimes without any outward action or spoken words. "He who looks on a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart."

But the paradox requires that we watch over our motives. Self-giving love requires a certain purity of heart which is lost the very moment we begin to be motivated by our own fulfillment. As John Stuart Mill says, "Our happiness comes as a side-effect of our working for the happiness of others." Once we seek it directly, we have desirous love, and that love reveals the other side of the coin of paradox. Self-seeking love, in which we are kind to someone for any ulterior motive, even our own personal fulfillment, destroys the possibility of a communion of persons. Ironically, self-seeking is self-defeating, just as self-giving is self-fulfilling.

The opposite of love is thus not hatred, in which we wish an evil to someone, but self-seeking benevolence, in which we use someone for our own purposes. Hate obviously alienates the one who hates from the one hated. But desirous love, which is a self-seeking kind of benevolence, is just as destructive to the communion of persons. Desirous love is not egoism, because it is benevolent. But it is benevolence with a self-seeking motive. It is, then, not hate, but use — using another for some benefit to myself. Such love is self-defeating. It paradoxically brings the defeat of its subject’s personal fulfillment, in a fashion that is just as paradoxical as the way in which loving love is personally fulfilling.

Imagine once again my giving my neighbor a ride to work, thus wishing some good to him, but with a different motive. Perhaps I want to borrow his lawn mower on the weekend, and want to demand its use as something he owes me as a return favor. Here I am willing a good to someone for my own sake rather than for his. My primary object, or end, is my own convenience in using his lawn mower. I would not give him a ride to work without that ulterior motive. I wish him a good, then, his timely presence at his job, but that is only a secondary object with me. It is a means to an end, to my primary object, which is my own convenience. I do make a kind of gift of myself to him, but only in a diminished way. My secondary concern for his wellbeing circles back into my main concern, which is my own convenience in using his lawn mower.

Here, then, lies a seemingly small psychological difference, a difference in why I do what I do. But that difference makes all the difference for the communion of persons. My orientation toward my own wellbeing rather than that of someone I love leaves us two separate individuals, having two separate goods, rather than being united in sharing a single good. My neighbor has the benefit of getting to work on time, which I have willed to him. But I cannot claim that benefit, which belongs to him ontologically, as my psychological good, simply because I have chosen not to identify it as such. My own ontological good, my weekend convenience, is where my will is fixed. And where my treasure is, there my heart is also. And so I possess only my own ontological good, and my neighbor possesses his. We are not in a communion of persons.

Two persons with two goods have no unifying bond. I have ironically defeated my own fulfillment as a person by a failure in motivation. For my real fulfillment as a person comes not in having a nicely mowed lawn, but in communion with other persons through self-giving love. To paraphrase The Church in the Modern World, I have failed to fully discover my true self in the only way in which I can, through a sincere gift of myself in love.

Nothing is more fundamental to human life, and thus to the four marks of the Church, than this correct understanding of human love and of human fulfillment, of self-donation as the way to human fulfillment, and of the importance of motivation in our interactions with each other. It literally dissolves all the current misunderstandings of love, from a denial of its possibility to its equation with masochism. By calling it to our attention Pope John Paul II has given a rock solid foundation to the unity of the Church. He has made it a major theme in all of his talks and writings, beginning with the poems and plays he wrote. The full truth about man, that he finds himself only in sincerely giving himself in love, is moreover a powerful counter to the view of human relationships that prevails in our culture. If it were put into effect by every Catholic man, woman, and child, it would lay to rest our culture of death and usher in the Civilization of Love.

The view that currently pervades western culture originates in the 17th century, with Thomas Hobbes. Enamored of the physics of his day, Hobbes viewed us individual humans as atoms with no natural ties, rather than as neighbors in a common human nature. We have no common destiny and no common path to it. We are born into a "war of all against all," and are forced, as natural egoists, to negotiate, our own wellbeing with other natural egoists whose projects conflict with our own. We negotiate, and renegotiate, social contracts, reciprocally sacrificing various degrees of our wellbeing in exchange for preserving the rest. Human life is a web woven by ceaselessly repeated acts of desirous love, in which we do good things for each other for the sake of some greater benefit to ourselves. But as we have seen, with the present Holy Father, cost/benefit human relations are built on use, not love. And so they leave us isolated from each other. They allow no communion of persons. We agree to occasional truces in our war, but we never end it, and the truces have to be constantly renegotiated.

Pope John Paul II (with a large assist from Kant) makes this distinction between the two kinds of love, now called love and use, into the content of a basic law for all of human behavior, the Personalistic Norm: "PERSONS ARE ALWAYS TO BE LOVED, AND NEVER USED." This norm is the law and guide for every interaction of our daily lives, in our families, in the work place, in business, medicine, international relations, and every other area in which one person interacts with others. Our lives are meant to be interconnected communions of persons reaching to the ends of the earth. The law of love, not use is, then, the law and foundation for our life in the Church. For loving love, self-giving love, love tout court is the super-glue that instantly and permanently unites her members. It is the rock-bottom requirement for a Christian life. That life is our salvation, God’s living in us and we in Him. For "God is Love, and he who lives in love lives in God, and God lives in him."

Once we see the importance of just this one teaching by the present Holy Father, we see how he has been preeminently a shepherd of the four marks of the Church. In teaching us how to love, and urging us to do so, he has clearly transmitted to us the most important single item of Our Lord’s Tradition. For love, the loving love that forms a communion of persons, is the unity of the Church. Without unity, there would be no Church. There would be, at best, only a collection of more or less like-minded individuals. But with love, there can be a universal communion of persons, of all human persons with the Divine Communion of Three Persons in One God. Thus is our unity in the Church our holiness in God. For — mercy of mercies — He commands us to accept that communion as the gift of His Loving Love. We receive it by keeping the two great commandments, love of God and love of neighbor.

To the extent that we come to be unified in love, the Church acquires the holiness that is her second mark. Her holiness, in turn, urges her to a catholic inclusion into her sheepfold of all men, women, and children. For the God Who is Love seeks to save all members of the one human species, uniting us as participants in His own life. This participation marks the Church as apostolic in two senses. She is apostolic in her mission to bring all into the one, holy Church outside of which there is no salvation. But that mission, not of her own invention, was given to her by Christ through His Apostles. And so she is Apostolic as well, her continuing growth nurtured by sacraments that are guaranteed by ministers whose ordination is Apostolic, and thus derived from Jesus Himself.

In Pope John Paul II, who has taught us anew how Christ would have us live in love in His Church, we have been blessed with a Bishop of Rome who is an epitome of the office of the papacy.