Holy See, Holy Seen
Newsletter for March 28, 2025
During our Lenten Synodal Practice this week, a paragraph from part III of the Synod’s Final Document gave several of us pause:
The Fathers of the Church reflect on the communal nature of the mission of the People of God with a triple “nothing without”: “nothing without the Bishop” (St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Trallians 2,2) “nothing without your advice [of Presbyters and Deacons] and the consent of the People” (St. Cyprian of Carthage, Letter to the Brothers Presbyters and Deacons, 14,4). (88)
It was the phrase “nothing without the Bishop” that tripped us up, as it seemed to invalidate any communal activity of the People of God without a hierarchical presence—as if the discoveries of the small cells of holiness, the base ecclesial communities and formal and informal associations of lay faithful who are committed to living out a gospel witness, were somehow demoted by their very nature.
I began to wonder if it wasn’t the phrase that was the problem, but rather our limited conception, brought about by centuries of legalistic thinking, of what the bishop’s office might be. In a world where the managerial language of the market has insinuated itself into every social sphere—politics, education, even the church—we tend to think of the bishop foremost as an administrator who makes day-to-day business decisions on behalf of a diocese. There is obviously much more to his role than this, but in a time of widespread parish closures and mergers, of lawsuits and settlements, of bankruptcies and restructurings, this aspect of his office lamentably becomes the focus.
The word bishop comes from the Greek episkopos, or “overseer.” Though the term “Holy See” is derived from the Latin phrase Sancta Sedes, meaning “Holy Chair,” the pun on the optical quality of the central governing body of the Catholic Church as it looks out over the world provides a visual clue. But what if we didn’t interpret this as the eye of surveillance or authority as traditionally understood, but as something more prophetic, more poetic, the eye of the servant-leader reflecting the best of his community in every direction back upon itself?
Standing on the bare ground,—my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space,—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.
I don’t think Emerson was considering clerical offices when he wrote this seminal passage in his essay “Nature,” yet the image of the “transparent eyeball” is an apt way of imagining the bishop’s special sight: the dissolution of ego within the community, absorbing its hopes, dreams, ambitions, and fears without judgement, collating them spiritually, and breathing them back out as synodally discerned directives.
The image also contains the idea of transparency in terms of honesty and clarity in economic and governance decisions as well as in the “evangelical sense,” which the Final Document describes as “a fundamental attitude grounded in the Sacred Scriptures and not to a series of administrative or procedural requirements” (96). The servant-leader seeing with the “transparent eyeball” testifies to the words of the Apostle Paul as quoted in the document: “[W]e refuse to practice cunning or to falsify God’s word; but by the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God” (2 Cor 4:2).
Bishop Mark Seitz made such a commendation earlier this week, when he spoke at a march and vigil to stand with migrants in the Diocese of El Paso. The march coincided with the 45th anniversary of the murder of St. Oscar Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador who said before his death: “If they kill me, I will rise again in the people of El Salvador.” Drawing on St. Romero’s example, Bishop Seitz expressed the vision of the servant-leader who is one with, and among, his people: “We are here tonight to celebrate our community. Community is an exchange of gifts, where we gift our lives to one another, for the benefit of one another; we grow together, and we bear one another’s burdens.”
Michael Centore
Editor, Today’s American Catholic