The Pope is not some sort of King of the Church. He is the Union of the Bishops. From the Petrine See, all the Petrine office flows into all the bishops. Thus, conforming the Papacy as the unity of the Petrine faith on which the church was built.
Cardinal Ratzinger writes,
"The ‘‘we’’ of the Church begins with the name of the one who in particular and as a person first uttered the profession of faith in Christ: ‘‘You are . . . the Son of the living God’’ (Mt 16:16). Curiously, the passage on primacy is usually thought to begin with Matthew 16:17, whereas the early Church regarded verse 16 as the decisive verse for an understanding of the whole account: Peter becomes the Rock of the Church as the bearer of the Credo, of her faith in God, which is a concrete faith in Christ as the Son and by that very fact faith in the Father and, thus, a trinitarian faith, which only the Spirit of God can communicate".
In this matter the Church is an extension altogether of the Petrine faith. The church is built on "We", not "I". In this way, the salvation of the matter isn't based on the individual manifestation of a "personal-isolated" faith. On the contrary, salvation is a Communal participation in the sacramental nature of the Kingdom of God, which we access on Earth through the Church. Therefore, the papacy serves as an institution of primacy.
Such primacy can be seen across three main points:
1. Petrine Tradition (Roman in this matter)
2. Byzantine Theology from the 5th & 6th centuries on the understanding of Matthew 16:16-19, with the relationship of the Emperor to the Papacy
3. The pneumatological solution of Theodore the Studite seeing the reflection of the inner dimension of the testimony of the faith of Peter.
Cardinal Ratzinger once again writes,
"This personal liability, which forms the heart of the doctrine of papal primacy, is therefore not opposed to the theology of the Cross or contrary to humilitas christiana35 but rather follows from it and is the point of its utmost concreteness and, at the same time, the public contradiction of the claim that the power of the world is the only power and also the establishment of the power of obedience in opposition to worldly power. Vicarius Christi is a title most profoundly rooted in the theology of the Cross and thus an interpretation of Matthew 16:16–19 and John 21:15–19 that points to the inner unity of these two passages..."
The Papacy rather than a King among bishops, is the point of reference for the Church in the world. His position is not of free will, but one of limitations based on the articulation of the articles of the faith and the real established necessity of the sister churches of Rome.
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Note:
This summary is based on:
"THE PRIMACY OF THE POPE AND THE UNITY OF THE PEOPLE OF GOD" by Cardinal Ratzinger and Translated by Michael J. Miller
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