While reading
The Primacy of the Successor of Peter in the Mystery of the Church, I came to this sentence at the bottom of section 7:
What did Cardinal Ratzinger mean by martyrological nature of papal primacy?
The way I read it is that he is saying that the pope will sometimes suffer forms of martyrdom exactly because his role is to defend the Divine Revelation, which might sometimes be in conflict with the priorities of this world.
Maybe an example will help.
Bl. Paul VI wrote
Humanae Vitae which articulated (among other related teachings) the Church’s position on artificial birth control. It was, and it remains in many circles, an unpopular teaching; and as a result, Paul VI suffered insults to his personal popularity.
There are Truths which the Roman Pontiff simply cannot change. Some popes have suffered literal martyrdom for keeping the faith. Some have suffered a figurative martyrdom because they refused to abandon all or some part of the faith.
In contrast, secular politicians sometimes have a “way out.” Where they either defer to popular opinion by choice, or (as in the case of a binding referendum) are forced to accept popular opinion. A pope does not have the luxury of giving-in to (as he says) “arbitrariness” or “conformism” but instead must sometimes stand against these.
The pope must defend the faith whether it is popular or not; even at the expense of his own popularity, or in the extreme, the expense of his own life.
I think this brings up the question: does the same not apply to all Christians? Yes, we must all defend the truths of the faith, no matter the cost. I think this is simply a way of saying that such an obligation applies to the pope in a special way exactly because some might wrongly think that he has the power or authority to change the faith.
Here is the entire paragraph:
The Roman Pontiff - like all the faithful - is subject to the Word of God, to the Catholic faith, and is the guarantor of the Church’s obedience; in this sense he is servus servorum Dei. He does not make arbitrary decisions, but is spokesman for the will of the Lord, who speaks to man in the Scriptures lived and interpreted by Tradition; in other words, the episkope of the primacy has limits set by divine law and by the Church’s divine, inviolable constitution found in Revelation. The Successor of Peter is the rock which guarantees a rigorous fidelity to the Word of God against arbitrariness and conformism: hence the martyrological nature of his primacy.
