This past Thursday (19 November 2009), Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, gave an address at the Gregorian University in Rome as part of an event celebrating the centenary of the birth of Cardinal Willebrands, the first President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. In it, he made a distinction between first-order theological understandings of the Church, on which he thinks that there has been considerable convergence between Anglicans and Catholics since the Second Vatican Council; and second-order questions, the answers to which still divide, but  consensus about which, he thinks, is not as “vital for its [the Church's] health and integrity” as is that about first-order questions.
He distinguishes three putative second-order topics: the question of authority in the Church; the question of Petrine primacy; and the question of the relations between local churches and the universal Church. And he notes that the fundamental issue is the importance of these (and perhaps others), because it is about them that Anglicans and Catholics are divided. How can we, he asks, “properly tell the difference between ’second order’ and ‘first order’ issues”?
This is the right question. Williams clearly thinks that the three divisive topics he identifies are second-order, and that in light of agreement about the first-order theology of the Church differences about them should not remain a barrier to (some form of) sacramental unity. He asks of those who disagree with him that we provide a theological account of why what he thinks are second-order questions have sufficient theological importance that they ought to remain church-dividing.
I think he is wrong. Brief comments on authority — not just the authority of the Bishop of Rome, but also magisterial authority in general — may point to why. Obedience, I suggest, is intrinsic to filial holiness and communion with other believers, phrases Williams uses to identify first-order agreements about the Church’s nature. To separate obedience from filial holiness and communion by calling the former second-order and the latter first-order is already to set off in the wrong direction. As a Catholic I am required, by the doctrine and discipline of the Church, to exhibit obsequium religiosum to magisterial teaching, whether that comes in the form of personal instruction from my bishop, or in textual form from the Roman curia or the bishops of my national conference teaching in concert. (I here make a complex matter simple, perhaps too simple, for magisterial teaching comes in grades and kinds, and the response required to it also does; but a simplified version will suffice for the simple point I wish here to make.) That kind of submissiveness to authority, which is an enacted acknowledgment of heteronomy and dependence in matters intellectual and practical, is inseparable from sanctification — just as, to use a very imperfect analogy, submissiveness to the authority of my teachers in mathematics and to the community of mathematicians whose wisdom they have received and passed on to me is necessary for the development of mathematical skill.
Recall that vows governing the religious life typically include a promise of obedience. Those who are married know that such a promise belongs also to married life, whether made explicitly or not. Obedience is a feature of human life, and its enactment requires institutional forms. Obedience in an institutional vacuum is not possible.
Ecclesial obedience is, therefore, not a second-order issue. It is ingredient to filial holiness and communion. There are then two consequent questions. The first is practical: where, among the various ecclesial communities, are there structures that make enacted obedience possible? And the second is theological: where, among the various ecclesial communities, is Christ present in such a way that obedience to him is most fully possible? The answer in both cases is the Roman Catholic Church, the community of the baptized in full communion with the Bishop of Rome. The Anglican Communion has, effectively, no institutional forms to which obedience is possible. And it is Catholic doctrine that the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church, which answers the second question.
None of this calls into question the importance of theological convergence on the ecclesiological questions that Williams identifies as first-order. That convergence is indeed very important. Neither does it mean that entering into full communion with the Bishop of Rome requires abandonment of all local particularities: the question of how, exactly, to construe the relations between center and periphery is one of constant negotiation within the Catholic Church. And it certainly does not mean that the already-baptized need conversion in order to become Catholic. What they need is, rather, a clearer recognition of the telos of what they already are. But it does mean that there is a theology of obedience and a corresponding theology of authority which is not incidental to ecclesial identity. An act of submission belongs properly and essentially to the acceptance of the vocation of a Christian; and the partial forms of that act possible outside the Catholic Church yearn for fulfillment, even when that yearning is hidden from those who make them.
