In Dialogue : Avery Dulles and Ladislas Orsy continue their conversation about the papacy.

When I discovered that Ladislas Orsy, S.J., had written such a lengthy response (10/21) to my article on the papacy for a global church (7/15), I wondered how I could reply with reasonable brevity. But when I read his piece, I came to realize that I had in effect answered him already, in the very article to which he was responding. Let me explain.

Pope John Paul II in his encyclical on ecumenism (Ut Unum Sint, 1995) invited the leaders and theologians of other churches to make suggestions as to how he might use the resources of his office more effectively for the benefit of all Christians. A host of Catholic reformist theologians seized upon this request as though the pope were inviting them to air their grievances against Rome. Father Orsy in his America article offers a polite version of this genre.

In my article last July I did not presume to speak for representatives of other churches, to whom the pope's request was addressed. I chose rather to respond to some Catholic reform proposals that did not take sufficient account of the new situation of the church in a global age dominated by electronic communications. This situation, I argued, puts new demands on the papal office as well as on regional and diocesan churches within the Catholic communion. The papacy, while it always retains its essential features as the primatial office, has developed dramatically in the past two centuries, especially since the Second Vatican Council.

The council, without in any way cutting back on the power of the papacy, did give new importance to the diocesan and regional churches. I see this move toward a polycentric inculturated church as requiring a stronger office of unity to prevent mutual alienation among Catholics of different regions.

Father Orsy fails to deal with my central thesis. Instead he makes it appear that I am proposing to "freeze" the development and that I am not "open to the new situation." I do indeed call for a strong and energetic papacy, but I also call for lively churches on the local and regional level and for collegial involvement of all the bishops in the concerns of the universal church.