I have mostly just commented on answers up to this point, but I want to address some things said in other answers/comments. I defy any Catholic to show where in the Bible authority is established for the Catholic church and for Peter as the first Pope without using Matthew 16:15-18.
It can be done - but it would take a lot of time
A typical Catholic reading of that passage mixes two Greek words to create a false church structure. Christ told Peter that He would establish His church on the rock of Peter’s confession of Him as Christ, not on Peter himself. Peter is “petros”, a maculine noun meaning “stone”. Jesus told “petros” (actually, since “Peter” is the direct object of that sentence, the accusative form of this masculine noun would read “petron”) that He would build his church on this “petra”, a femine noun meaning “large rock, cliff, or ledge”. The words are completely different genders in the original text. This passage does not make Peter a pope. He was, instead, an elder in a congregation of the 1st century church as a reading of the letters he wrote will show.
Grammatical gender and natural gender do not always coincide. Christ is called “our righteousness” by Paul - and “righteousness” represents the feminine noun dikaiosune. This does not mean Christ is a woman. So why can’t the noun petra be applied to (the equally unwomanly) Simon Petros ? The noun korasion is grammatically neuter, yet its meaning, “little girl”, makes it applicable to the niece of Herod who asked for the head of the Baptist. So Mark’s Gospel calls her a korasion.
Agreed, Peter was not Pope - not if by this one means that the ecclesiastical life of the 3rd century or the 10th century was not that of the 1st.
However, what every successor of Peter does have as he did, is the call to exercise in the Church and for the Church the same office as that which was conferred on Simon son of Jonah. Denying that Peter was a Pope, is like denying that he offered Mass in Latin attended by deacons, subdeacons, acolytes, & thurifers amid clouds of incense, while vested infull pontificals at the High Altar of St. Peter’s.
But it does not follow that, because Pius V or John XXIII
did offer Mass like that, and that because** they **are Popes, Peter was not exercising the same position and duties as they did. They exercised it, because they had succeeded, not indeed to his apostleship, but to his function in the Church. (The apostleship of the 12 cannot have successors: it is a constitutive element in the Church much as the NT is: both are unique, unrepeatable, and determine the character of the Church for all time to come.
It is not the title of Pope that is fundamental to the Petrine office, but the exercise of that Petrine office in the Church, “by Divine Permission”. The Papacy is simply one of the forms that this office has taken. The permanent thing is the Petrine office, which is itself a manifestation of the episcope = function of overseer] common to all the Apostles and to their successors the bishops.
The exercise of an office does not depend on clothes, or appearance: Washington was clean-shaven, both George Bushes are clean-shaven, Lincoln was not: are we to conclude that Lincoln’s beardedness excludes him from the succession of US Presidents ? One might as well argue that because John Calvin did not wear a tie or quote Spurgeon and Dabney, the Hodges, Warfield, or John MacArthur, Calvin and these Calvinists did not believe the same things.
IOW - some things in the Church are permanent
in their nature, but not in
how they are manifested. The successors of Peter were not always temporal rulers: then they did become temporal rulers; which made it very difficult for Pius IX to accept the loss of the Papal States. Now they are temporal rulers again, of a very small state. If the Pope were reduced to beggary, he would still be Peter’s successor: even if he lived in a garret in a back street in Rio.
The outward manifestations of the Petrine office that are essential to it, are very few. What would be dangerous, is if an office which takes its meaning from Christ the Servant, giving His Life that His enemies may live, were to become a means of earthly domination and lordship: this is a very grave deformation of the Petrine office, because Christ’s Lordship is the pattern for Christians - all of us - and it is a Lordship which is shown forth by the self-sacrificing Love displayed through the mystery of the Cross. Which makes Peter an exemplary Pope - and an example for all his successors.
[continued…]
and links to this site for follow up. It is not where I would go for answers about the faith…If you go there, just post the links to the CA ma(name removed by moderator)age and let 'em deal with the library there.
