This was a lecture I delivered on the 22nd of May to a group of Kenyan students and faculty from Strathmore University visiting Rome.
What does it mean to be a Roman Catholic? While there are only four marks of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, we began to use a fifth mark, Roman, during the Reformation period to distinguish us from other Protestant Christians. It does not mean that the Church is universal like the Roman empire, for that is what catholic means. It does not mean that the line of bishops descends from Peter, for that is what apostolic means. So, what does it mean to be Roman? Was it just a convenient title for the times of reformation or is it a necessary title for all time? During your visit to this eternal city, Rome itself will ask you what it means to be Roman. For we are all Roman. And you must provide Rome with an answer before you leave. I hope to offer you here some suggests that will aid you in your quest for an answer.
Rome is not accidental to the Church, it is essential. We know that we are in the wrong Church where the Church is not Roman. I am not an American Catholic and you are not a Kenyan Catholic, but we are both Roman Catholics. This title is not just another mode of European hegemony, but a true characteristic of the Roman primacy. We honor the other ancient Churches of early Christianity, some of which are older than the Roman Church like that of Jerusalem, but we do not call ourselves Jewish Catholics. When the canon of scripture was codified, they looked to the liturgy of Rome. When there was a pastoral or doctrinal issue in a particular church, they looked to Rome for guidance. Yes, Rome is first among the others, for Peter and Paul left Jerusalem and came to Rome. They came not by their own will but by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit so as to fulfill the plan of Providence designed before the foundation of the world. When Peter tried to flee Rome along the Via Appia during the height of Nero’s persecution, he had a vision of the resurrected Jesus. He asked, “Quo Vadis? Lord, where are you going?” Peter had asked this question to Christ 30 years before while Christ walked the earth. At that time, our Lord answered, “Where I am going, you cannot follow now, but you will follow later” (Jn 13:36). Our Lord answered Peter 30 years later, “I am going to Rome to be crucified again,” showing Peter that his time had come to follow him to the death. Peter returned to Rome in order to suffer a crucifixion like Christ. As with Peter, so with Paul. Paul heard the voice of the Lord after preaching in Jerusalem, “Be constant: for as you have testified of me in Jerusalem, so must you bear witness also at Rome” (Acts 23:11). Thirteen centuries later, when the Pope moved his residence to Avignon, God sent St. Catherine of Siena to convince the Pontiff, whom she affectionately called “the sweet Christ on earth,” that he abandon his hesitation to return to Rome, born of earthly prudence, and follow eternal Providence back to the tomb of Peter. Needless to say, he returned following her encouragement. Clearly, God destined the Church to reside in Rome and no other city.
So, in order to answer the question, “What does it mean to be Roman Catholic?” we must show how the Church found its fulfillment in Rome and Rome found its fulfillment in the Church.. The history of Rome covers more than two thousand years, from its founding in 753 BC to its fall in 1453 AD. Throughout this era, many words and works defined the identity of Rome, such that it became the name not only of a city but also of a civilization. Given this long and honorable tradition, it would be presumptuous of anyone to think he could present it in a single lecture. Despite the daunting task of telling that history, a religious fear impels me to dare to tell a story of the key features that make our Church Roman and make Rome the home of our Church.
To begin, it is not clear that Rome and Christianity are compatible: many think Roman Catholicism is an oxymoron. Historians have long debated if Christianity is a friend or enemy of Rome. Most of the time the question arises when they search for the causes of the fall of the empire. On the one hand, some argue that Rome fell because of Christianity. From the modern statesman Benito Mussolini, who tried to resurrect the ancient and honorable pagan Rome, to the enlightenment historian Edward Gibbon, who blamed the decline and fall of the Roman Empire on Christianity because it taught the proud city humility, to the renaissance political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli, who advised the Italian princes not to denounce Christianity but to use it as a means for personal ends —all of these thinkers proposed that Rome is what Christianity is not: Rome is pagan, not Christian, Rome is proud, not humble. The two realities seem more like enemies than friends.
On the other hand, some argue that Rome fell because it did not become Christian enough. In the City of God, St. Augustine goes so far as to say that pagan Rome was a band of highway robbers that worshiped demons, but Christian Rome earned the title of a true Republic that worshipped the real God.
Justice and injustice fought so intensely for the heart of Rome that the greatest Roman poet, Virgil, represented this tension in his epic poem The Aeneid. When Aeneas seeks the counsel of his father, Anchises, in the underworld, Anchises advises, “You, Roman, rule the world with these arts, to crown peace with justice, to spare the vanquished and to crush the proud.” Unfortunately, Aeneas does not take his advice, for the poem ends with Aeneas cruelly killing the vanquished Turnus who begs for mercy. Virgil represents a dilemma at the the founding of Rome that he saw in the founding of the empire: Rome must choose: justice or injustice, peace or war. So what will it be? Pagan Rome opted for the latter, but Christian Rome opted for the former. In sum, then, the issue is whether Christianity is the enemy or friend of Rome. My view is that Rome became what it wanted to be when Christianity came. Although Mussolini, Gibbon, and Machiavelli believe that the two powers are at odds, I still believe that Christianity did not kill Rome. If it killed anything, it killed paganism. Christianity resurrected Rome.
The resurrection of Rome: that is what makes our Church Roman. Resurrection is a curious thing because, unlike resuscitation which just calls the dead back to temporal life, resurrection calls back the dead to eternal life. The Church made Rome the Eternal City. In other words, it reversed the city’s old letters into a new word: from ROMA to AMOR. Rather than just tell you that Rome is the city of resurrection, I want to show you in the city’s defining figures and monuments.
Let us begin at the beginning of Rome. The city has two founders: Romulus and Remus. The myths tell us that these two brothers were raised and nourished on the milk of a she-wolf. You see statues of this moment throughout Rome. The fierceness of a wolf aptly describes the infamous warlike spirit of the Roman army. Although these two brothers of blood founded in Rome the earthly city, two other brothers of faith would found in Rome the seat of the heavenly city. Peter and Paul, the two Apostles of Rome, complete the city’s twin founding. Nevertheless, a wolf raised Romulus and Remus, a lamb raised Peter and Paul. With the lamb's gentleness, these two Jewish boys conquered more of the world than the entire Roman army at its height. In the origin of the founders, we see the resurrection of an old spirit made new.
A similar transfiguration happened to Rome’s original purpose. In order to increase the population of the newly founded city, Romulus and Remus opened up the city as a sanctuary in which every man might find asylum and absolution of all crime. In other words, it was the city in which criminals became free men. Romulus and Remus’s Rome is a remarkable foreshadowing of Peter and Paul’s Rome as the place where one finds salvation from their sins and for their freedom. While the pagan brothers offered a legal lie, Christ through his Church offered a true absolution. What is more, Rome’s founders not only welcomed outsiders to come in but also compelled them. This newly organized band of criminals famously abducted the daughters of the Sabine tribe and inducted them into the Roman tribe. This continued into the character of the empire, for Rome is known for dominating and then domesticating other civilizations. While Romulus and Remus planted this seed in the spirit of Rome, Peter and Paul nourished this same sprout to evangelize other civilizations. Rome became the center of the imperial apostolate. The Church welcomed in new comers as much as it sought out new converts. Paul is the perfect example of this: he was born as a Jew, a citizen of Rome, and educated in Greece, but he synthesizes and used all of these existential aspects to spread Christianity throughout the empire—“I have become all things to all people in order to save all” (1 Cor 9:22). Here again, Peter and Paul resurrected this old desire for a new goal.
More than anything else, Rome is a city, and a city is a location. The geography of a city often reveals more about the city than one would think; we could say that before we cultivate the land, the land cultivates us. It is the last thought for the city’s philosophers but the first thought of the city’s founder. Rome’s Tiber River hugs the city center like two arms. Although myths highlight that the Tiber and Rome lie in this embrace, the Tiber is nothing other than a river offering nothing more than protection. When the Popes and the Church came to Rome, they gave the arms of the protective Tiber a body and the body a personhood. Indeed, St. Peter’s Basilica has the intentional shape of a crowned Christ embracing the universe. Inspired by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius, who modeled Roman architecture on the beauty and proportions of the human body, the architects of St. Peter’s Basilica, Bramante, Michaelangelo, and Bernini, designed the Basilica in such a way as to make the dome the head’s crown, the facade a face, the windows the eyes, the portal a mouth, and the colonnade of pillars in the plaza as the arms. In the arms lies the oval plaza, imitating the newly discovered shape of the planets’ elliptical orbit. Taken all together, the city and the cosmos lie in the embrace of Christ the King. Here again, the Christian city planners resurrected the desires for Roman anthropological geography and architecture and gave them the form of Christ.
To appreciate how Rome brings to life, let’s now turn to how Rome treats the dead. Pope St. John Paul II advised pilgrims and students who came to Rome to be sure to visit the catacombs. This is a fitting fulfillment of the Ancient Roman proverb that said “your home is where you bury your dead.” In the catacombs, you will discover not just the tombs of the dead but the early life of the Church. The tombstones of the dead became an altar of life when the ancient Church celebrated the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass upon the graves and developed her most mysterious symbols of faith there. This city does not grow upward in time like other cities, but it grows downward with every excavation into the ancient tombs. Yet these excavations bring the dead back to life. It is the kind of history that does not bring the present to the past but the past to the present. The Christian tombs of the dead show not a sad and morbid pessimism about death, but a joyful and hopeful approach to eternal life. Take an example from the floor tombs of Santa Maria della Vittoria, where skeletons dance on their tombstones. For what other reason could they be dancing than to the heavenly music of the life to come? Take another example of the Capuchin Crypt, where the bones of past monks now serve as the materials for the altars and chapels. Either this is a sick joke that tends to necromancy, or a serious cheerfulness that shows just how hopeful the Christian is about life after death. More majestically, the tombs of the popes are marble orations—not eulogies to themselves but panegyrics to the Church. In this regard, perhaps more than any other, Rome became the city of the resurrection not only of the spirit over the body but of the body over the grave. For no little reason is Rome called the Eternal City.
Like the underground catacombs, the underground water system helps us to see the significance of Rome. The famous Roman aqueducts carry clean water from the mountains to the city where fountains refresh almost every plaza. For this reason, Rome is also called the city of fountains. A fountain is a curious paradox in itself for its water seems to fall upward, without any pumps or plumbers. It has a hidden source and a spectacular font. The Church has commissioned several of the fountains in Rome, each with its own particular symbolism that may have been not readily understandable to the average Roman. For example, Bernini’s fountain in the Piazza di Spagna was confusing enough that onlookers asked the sculptor what it meant. He said that the fountain was the Church in the shape of a ship that, despite the flooding, it still floats. What is more, the only drinkable water comes directly from the ship. Just as you must drink that water from its source and not from the dirty pool, we must drink the water of doctrine directly from the source of the Church and not from false conduits. Rome is very much like a fountain: there is some deep and mysterious force within the heart of Rome that gives life to the marvels of the city.
In fact, “the heart of Rome” is the name for the “Lost Waters of Rome,” a legendary subterranean river below the city. Legend has it that the noise of this water source can be heard in the underground temple of the cult of Mythras beneath what is now San Clemente near the Colosseum. This mystery cult sought for the hidden cosmic force, moving and saving everything. Now a church stands on top of this temple, where the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is celebrated every day, the true source of salvation. Above the altar, a golden apse, like an eye into heaven, depicts the tree of life as the cross. The hand of God, coming out of the clouds of heaven, wields the cross like a sword and plunges it into the earth out of which comes the rivers of life, giving life to the world and a habitat to many different species of birds. Here again, Rome resurrects the local legends and turns the pagan myths into Christian mysteries.
A city temple tells us a lot about a civilization since the temple incarnates the cosmology of a people. We can learn much from the Parthenon about the Greeks and from the Pyramids about the Egyptians. These temples, however, are no longer in use because their religion and rites are dead. In this city, however, you will rarely find a Roman temple that is not in use. Most of the pagan temples now serve as foundations for Christian temples. Such is the case in Santa Maria sopra Minerva, which used to be the site for a temple to the goddess of wisdom, Minerva, but now is a Church dedicated to Mary, who is the seat of wisdom. There is a similar superaddition in the Santa Maria in Aracoeli. This ara coeli “altar of heaven” has a curious origin in the reign of Augustus Caesar. The most popular book of the Middle Ages, the Golden Legend tells us the following story:
“The emperor Octavian (as Pope Innocent says) had brought the whole world under Roman rule, and the Senate was so well pleased that they wished to worship him as a god. The prudent emperor, however, knowing full well that he was mortal, refused to usurp the title of immortality. The Senators insisted that he summon the sibylline prophetess and find out, through her oracles, whether someone greater than he was to be born in the world. When, therefore, on the day of Christ’s birth, the council was convoked to study this matter, and the Sibyl, alone in a room with the emperor, consulted her oracles, at midday a golden circle appeared around the sun, and in the middle of the circle a most beautiful virgin holding a child in her lap. The Sibyl showed this to Caesar, and while the emperor marveled at the vision, he heard a voice saying to him: “This child is greater than you, and it is he that you must worship.” That same room was dedicated to the honor of Holy Mary and to this day is called Santa Maria Ara Coeli. The emperor, understanding that the child he had seen was greater than he, offered incense to him and refused to be called God.”
Whether you believe this legend or not, its character fits with what Augustus Caesar’s rule was all about. He saw himself as the herald of an age of peace. He built next to his mausoleum the Ara Pacis, the Altar of Peace, which is an altar inside of a temple signifying the whole of Roman culture and cosmology arriving at the Pax Romana, the age of imperial peace, that he introduced. Every year all of Rome gathered and organized themselves into their proper classes to sacrifice a bull on September 23, which is both Augustus’s birthday and the autumnal equinox, in which the axis of the earth is perfectly vertical and the earth balances on that axis. Not too far away, an obelisk crowned with a representation of the earth’s vertical axis casts a shadow upon the altar to symbolize that the birth of Augustus Caesar also means the birth of universal peace. Pope Benedict XVI interprets this symbolic altar as true, but not in the sense that Augustus Caesar thought it true. His Pax Romana was the birth of peace because in his reign the prince of peace, Jesus Christ, was born. Here again, the Roman dream comes true with the arrival of Christianity.
I propose a final example of the most famous Roman site to show how Rome is the city of resurrection. The Colosseum was built in the pools of Nero’s Palace. The terrors of torture that happened in the Colosseum cry out to the heavens about Roman decadence. The thousands of martyrs who died in that arena watered the seeds of the Church's faith with their very blood. Also found in the ruins of Nero’s Palace was the most expressive statue of misery the Roman world produced, which is now found in the Vatican museums. The statue is of Laocoon, a Trojan priest who, Homer tells us in his Iliad, warned the city of Troy not to let the Trojan Horse into the city, suspecting that it hid Greek soldiers. Not only did no one listen to him and the Greek soldiers took Troy by night, but the gods of the Greeks sent serpents to punish Laocoon for almost spoiling their designs for a Greek victory. The face of Laocoon shows pure misery calling out to unmerciful gods. Now contrast this statue with the thousands of martyrs who not only died for the faith in the Colosseum but also died singing Palms of victory and joy. They express pure hope calling out to the merciful God. Here again, Rome finds the answer for everything it desires.
Although I have been studying ancient history and Church history since grade school, I had never felt the distinct Roman character of the Catholic Church until I first made a pilgrimage to Rome; I had never asked myself “What does it mean to be Roman Catholic?” until I moved to Rome. Between the classical temples and the Christian Churches, the underground catacombs and the sky-high cupolas, a force of history motivated me with some secret desire for Rome. Before the other Roman sites, Rome itself is a site.
When I first visited, I sensed that within the treasures of Rome lies a key—to what exactly I did not know, but the answer was crucial to flourishing as a person, as a citizen, and as a Catholic. Now that I live here, I found my answer by contemplating the Basilica of St. Peter’s with leisure, walking through the grand nave unto Bernini’s Baldacchino, reading the monolithic verses underneath the dome, or better, hearing Christ proclaim Peter’s mission: “You are 'Peter' and on this rock I will build my Church, to you I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” I found my answer in the fulfillment of this prophesy, in the tomb of Peter beneath the alter as the rock upon which the Basilica is built, and leaving the Church and looking into the plaza, I saw the shape of a key in the design of the Church and plaza together, a key to unlock not earth but heaven.
As you visit Rome, I hope that you too discover what it means to be Roman, for we are all Roman. Indeed, in a certain sense, you were born in Rome, for you were baptized into the faith of Rome. By your baptism, you too have undergone the resurrection of Rome—now you just need to discover what that means.