Jesus gave the authority to the apostles.
who else?
to MEN.
The apostles.
so what?
Not your priest…
Jesus DEATH paid the ultimate price so that HE alone will be your intecessor.
You are selling Jesus out for 30 pieces of silver every time you enter the confessional.
shame on ya.
So you acknowledge that He gave the authority to forgive sins to the Apostles. Excellent, good start. Note that His death, resurrection and sole intercessorship didn’t prevent His giving the Apostles a share in His authority to forgive sins. And it doesn’t change the fact that you, whenever you pray for anyone as He bid you do, are an intercessor too!
Now for the next step. Did He not ALSO say to them ‘what you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, what you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven’?
In other words that He would ratify in Heaven ANY authoritative teaching they made and any authoritative action they took? Not that they dictated to Him, far from it, but nonetheless that through His guidance and that of the Holy Spirit that their official teaching and actions at least (as opposed to their private behaviour) would be spot-on.
Now what WAS almost the first action they did, under guidance by the Holy Spirit after Pentecost, among the first of these ‘binding’ actions that was to be bound in heaven also? THEY CHOSE AND LAID HANDS ON A SUCCESSOR! Matthias was chosen to replace Judas.
He succeeded IN FULL to Judas’ office (as Peter said ‘let another take his office’) and thus to all the power and authority that the other Apostles had. Nowhere is it indicated, for example, that he lacked the authority to forgive sins. They surely passed that on to him along with all the other authority and all the other responsibilities of Apostleship. So he too became subject to the promise that what HE bound on Earth would be bound in Heaven, no? It’s one of the perks of Apostolic office, no?
Likewise with Paul, if I recall rightly he sought out the endorsement of the other Apostles - their blessing and approval - before beginning his ministry to the Gentiles. So what Paul bound on Earth too would be bound in Heaven. That’s why we recognise the infallibility of HIS Epistles and that they are authentic Apostolic teaching along with those of Peter, James and John.
So these two, at least, had full Apostolic power and office. More than that, they too, also chose and laid hand hands on successors (Paul, for example, is known to have consecrated one of the men who succeeded Peter as head of the the Roman church - I think it was Linus).
Now Apostolic power didn’t get diluted in any way by this, any more than it had been when Paul was tapped on the shoulder by the original 11. So logically … Linus ALSO had all the authority of the Apostles (including the power to forgive and the promise that HIS actions would also be bound in heaven).
And so it went down the generations - we can trace an unbroken line of consecrated bishops, ALL with full Apostolic authority and powers (including each new generation of bishops having both the power to forgive sins and Christ’s promise about the binding and loosing - it’s His means of keeping the Church on track and free from error in its official teaching).
Among all this passing on of Apostolic authority comes the fact that all priests were granted (as it is well within the rights of the Bishops as successors of the Apostles) the authority to forgive sins. Just as the original 11 appointed Stephen and other priests and ‘presbyters’ who had some but not all of their power. That’s where my priest comes into the mix.
It’s an unbroken chain of power and command and authority (including many other things, of course, than simply the authority to forgive sins) - it’s what’s called Apostolic Succession, and every Catholic priest has a share in it.
.
Jesus does NOT exit when the priest takes up the water or pronounces a couple husband and wife, neither does he when you confess (as James tells us we need to) to each other.
So…apostolic authority vanished with the death of the last Apostle?