This is a strawman argument.
Great Post! I especially liked how you spoke of the office of the pope as compared to the person. I think that is a very important distinction, one that many overlook. Peter probably didn’t see himself as the Vicar of Christ or the head of anything. We always lose sight of the fact that the church is not the same today as the 1st century church but then the world is not the same. It is a little like a fledgling company with one or two workers doing everything and having all the responsiblity which then goes national and becomes a big corporation. None of the Apostles knew what they were really doing and I imagine, didn’t have a clue as to what the future held for Christianity. I find it compelling that though it was the Jewish leaders who called for the crucifixition of Jesus, it was the Romans who carried it out. Later, it is through the Roman empire that Christianity comes out of the catacombs and spreads throughout the world. God uses people and peoples for His own plan. We seldom understand that plan for we have only the knowledge of our own times and that is shaded by our human limitations. As Catholics we do not worship the pope or anyone but God, the Father, Jesus, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We respect the authority of the office of the pope even when the man in that office is not deserving of that respect. We trust the Holy Spirit to guide us through this office because we understand that as humans we are prideful, headstrong and prone to error. This doesn’t mean that the Holy Spirit doesn’t infuse us with gifts when we are baptized into the body of Christ, but those gifts are not only for ourselves but for the entire body. Those gifts according to the Church are: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord. However, these gifts are not perfectly formed when received, it is the duty of all Christians to develope them. We as Catholics do not rely on ourselves alone for this developement, for we are all different parts of the body and necessary to its life. No part stands alone. Most important for this body is a Head and while every Christian acknowledges Jesus is the Head, He is not here in person teaching and guiding me the way He did with the Apostles and the first disciples. You might argue that He left the Spripture for our instruction and that is true, but in and of itself it is not enough, for as we know, there are different interpretation of nearly every passage of the Bible. Therefore, I believe that He did in fact leave someone to be Head of His Church on Earth. Scripture, history and Catholic tradition points to Peter and His Successors as this head. I have neither seen nor heard any evidence to refute this belief. Even though the arguements presented by dissenters are intellectually reasonable, they don’t answer what to me is the basic question posed by Philthy i.e. why is there no unity among Christians if indeed the Holy Spirit will guide us to the truth. There are now as many 20,000+ “truths” in the world. It is never easy to humble oneself to another, nor is it easy to admit that to some more is given. We cannot all be the shepherd, most of us are sheep and need to be led, otherwise, we will follow anything and find ourselves outside the fold, easy prey for the world. Whenever you allow a pastor or preacher to interpret for you, you have accepted his authority as infallible. If you don’t then you have to go looking for another who agrees with you. Many just give up on organized religion completely thinking that they alone suffice to interpret and live the Christian life. Jesus did not intend for this to be the case, we are all called to brotherhood and service to the body. One last question for the dissenters, where exactly in the NT does Jesus explicitly say that He does not want a church with a hierarchy etc.? His remarks to and regarding the Pharisees are about hypocrisy not against the organized church.
When we look at God’s plan in the OT for leadership, Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, etc, we see single rulers over God’s people. It doesn’t take away from those who ruled under these figures, it’s just that God selects one prime figure over the others.
You’ve got this all wrong.continued to Anna Elizabeth
Firmilian compares him with Judas betrayer of Christ in disrupting the unity of the Church and he was thankful that Cyprian settled the matter once and for all.
“They who are at Rome do not observe those things in all cases which are handed down from the beginning, and vainly pretend the authority of the apostles”.
“The folly of Stephen” is that he “boasts of the place of his episcopate, and contends that he holds the succession from Peter.”
“Contends”, not only was the whole Church unified in Christ’s command “it will not be so among you”, but Stephen, and Victor, both tried to claim sole authority from Peter, to do so they had to reject Paul completely. All the Church knew that both Peter and Paul helped to found the Church in rome so how could these pretentions have been taken seriously by them?
Rome was schismatic breaking away from unity of the Church here, and this claim kept returning over the following centuries until the Franks made it quite solid in their takeover of the Church in Rome and it continued to grow because of its entwinement with secular power, not for any spiritual reasons. And the claims grew more grandiose through the centuries until even successor of Peter wasn’t good enough, it became in place of Christ and then even more grandiose claims, that the Bishop of Rome was infallible. It was used as a club to beat other peoples, like the Lithuanians, and other Christians, as in Briton, into submission. It has no redeeming qualities, it’s built on a lie and it continues to create disharmony because of that. Reclaim your Church! Write to your bishops…
Yup. We see Abram changed to Abraham, Jacob changed to Israel, Simon changed to Peter. Each marked a significant event in Biblical history.
Depends on the language one uses. If you say it in French it is as you say.
1st trump
The RCC demands submission of intellect and will regardless of faith in all its claimed infallible teachings from the Pope and from the magesterium in obedience to him. Christ made no such demands, quite the opposite. Your bishops belong to a different organisation than that established by Christ for the Church, you must then be one of the other flocks. Not a problem, I say, your Church, you can demand whatever you want of the members, but unfortunately your Church claims that is has authority over the Church organised by Christ and this pretention can’t go unchallenged.
First off, I didn’t say they are condemning themselves, where does that come from?
Papal pretentions then as now are considered audacious and prideful, un-orthodox Christian doctrine. Cyprian’s phrasing is so memorable that even Augustine quotes it I think, in his campaign against the Donatists.
But as Firmilian already noted, in Rome they were not teaching what had been handed down by the Apostles:
Vain pretence to the authority of the Apostles, and Firmilian notes also that Stephen ‘contends’ that he holds succession from Peter:
Who was the next pretender to the none existent ‘sole petrine chair’? Innocent, then Leo? How does Firmilian’s sarcasm measure up?
The history of the forgeries is too well known for RCC historians not to admit to them and I do recall several references to this, however, the subject is generally simply ignored by the RCC and its apologists. I did read somewhere that the RCC still uses something that it admitted was a forgery, but I can’t recall what that was, I’ll have a look for it.
As I wrote to you earlier, I don’t really know the arguments surrounding this point, however, logically if Christ had been referring to that passage in Isaiah 22 he would have said “key” and not “keys”, it has a particular meaning in Isaiah which does not correspond to the subject matter in Matt 16, where the subject is forgiveness not stewardship.
I heartily agree with you here, but we need to bear in mind that it can be a painful process.
As the early fathers understood this, the Apostles didn’t appoint anyone as personal successors, they appointed bishops and after the days of the Apostles a bishop would be chosen for a particular community by all the members of that community. This is still the principle behind some of the varied practices around, Orthodox and Anglican communities for example.
Not sure about the Paul/Saul, but what about the sons of thunder - does anyone know what that meant?
Steve,
Hello Greg, not my argument, I’m arguing that Rome has no valid claim to ‘sole petrine primacy’.
If Rome says that why doesn’t it honour Paul and accept that he is Peter’s equal?
The argument that Rome was the capital is still used by the Orthodox today because it explains the confusion the RCC creates by teaching it has universal jurisdiction.
The point being made is in reference to the pretention to authority by one bishop/patriarchate over the other bishops in the Church, so Basil’s response is theirs - they, Constantinople, Antioch and Jerusalem, prefer to address themselves to the Head over them. Basil was saying Christ was the Head over them, not Rome…
That’s a whole other discussion, but the Balamand agreement which was an outcome of Constantinople’s change from the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, under Metaxakis, is disputed as being Orthodox doctrine. Sister Churches are those holding the same faith. It’s counterproductive to include the last hundred years of Orthodox history without caveats in any discussion on the differences.