[The discussions between Joseph Ratzinger and Walter Kasper on the relationship between the universal Church and the local/particular churches touch on one of today’s major theological and pastoral issues. If the universal Church is ontologically and temporally prior to the local church, then how is the local church fully Church, and how are bishops truly vicars of Christ and not simply delegates of the pope? Does a renewed eucharistic ecclesiology and a renewed theology of the episcopal office compromise the character of the universal Church and papal primacy? Does the simultaneity of local churches and universal Church point to a solution?]