Primacy as Internal to the Particular Church is the teaching that the ministry of the successor of Peter belongs from within to each particular Church's full catholic constitution rather than operating only as an external coordinating authority.
An interior universal principle
Every particular Church is constituted after the model of the universal Church, and the supreme authority of the episcopal college with its head is a proper element within it. The Pope's primacy reaches each pastor and faithful directly according to divine institution and canon law, not by permission borrowed from local bishops.
No competition with the diocesan bishop
The diocesan bishop's power is proper, ordinary, and immediate; he is not a papal field officer. Papal and episcopal authority are coordinated within one sacramental constitution. Abuse of central administration can be criticized without recasting primacy as foreign to the local Church.
No self-sufficient local Church
A bishop and Eucharist do not make communion with the whole accidental. The episcopate itself is one, and every Eucharist is celebrated in ecclesial communion extending beyond the assembly. A local body that treats universal communion as optional damages the catholicity it claims to possess.[1]
Separated Eastern Churches
The absence of Roman communion does not destroy their valid episcopate or Eucharist, so they remain true particular Churches. Yet it deprives them of an internal constitutive relation. The Catholic formula is deliberately both-and: genuine Church, genuinely wounded condition.[2][3]
Restoration of communion therefore cannot be described as mere diplomatic recognition between wholly complete institutions. Nor should it mean suppression of venerable synodal, liturgical, theological, or disciplinary traditions. Primacy serves a unity that preserves legitimate diversity.[4]
Limits of the proposition
Internal does not mean that every Roman dicastery decision is an essential mark of the Church or that present administrative arrangements are immutable. The proposition concerns the Petrine ministry itself; the forms by which it is exercised can be reformed while remaining faithful to divine constitution.
References
- 1.Lumen gentium — Vatican II's dogmatic constitution on ecclesial communion, the episcopal college, hierarchical communion, and canonical mission
- 2.Communionis notio — The CDF letter on communion, mutual interiority, Eucharist, episcopate, primacy, and the relation of universal and particular Churches
- 3.Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church — The CDF's authoritative clarification of subsistit in, separated particular Churches, internal constitutive principles, and communities lacking apostolic succession
- 4.Ut unum sint — Papal teaching on real but incomplete communion, the wounds of division, legitimate diversity, common witness, and the ministry of unity