If talking about apostolic succession and/or infallibility, I would try to say something like this…
God the Father passed His authority on to Jesus (cf. Matthew 28:18), Who passed it on to the apostles (cf. Luke 10:16 and Matthew 28:19), who passed it on to their successors. The apostles ordained the 7 to ministry in Acts 6:6. Paul and Barnabas “appointed elders… in every church” (Acts 14:23). Paul told Titus to “exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you” (Titus 2:15); and he also told him to “appoint elders in every town” (Titus 1:5). Similar instructions about appointing the subsequent generations of leadership within the Church were given to Timothy (cf. 2 Timothy 2:2), who was told to “not be hasty in the laying on of hands” when appointing an elder (1 Timothy 5:22). Timothy’s own gift of authoritative leadership was similarly in himself through the laying on of hands by those already in authority (cf. 1 Timothy 4:14 and 2 Timothy 1:6). Paul tells him to “Command and teach these things. Let no one despise you” (1 Timothy 4:11-12). We see that there was no diminution of authority from Jesus to the successors of the apostles, but that they were to carry out their office, just the same as He, “
with all authority,” i.e., they are exercising
His authority (compare Matthew 28:18 and Titus 2:15).
Again, God established a teaching office in the Church that is gifted to teach “with all authority” (Titus 2:15); the gift to teach is passed on through the laying on of hands in unbroken chain from the apostles and their associates (cf. Acts 6:6, 14:23; 1 Timothy 4:14, 5:22 ; 2 Timothy 1:6, 2:2; Titus 1:5). “[T]he apostles were enriched by Christ with a special outpouring of the Holy Spirit coming upon them, and they passed on this spiritual gift to their helpers by the imposition of hands, and it has been transmitted down to us in Episcopal consecration” (
Lumen Gentium, 21). The visible sign of ordination to the ministerial priesthood, “from the New Testament onward, is the imposition of hands” (ITC,
Catholic Teaching on Apostolic Succession). The New Testament bears witness to the fact that the one who lays hands on the other, himself must have first had hands laid on him by someone, who, himself must have first had hands laid on him by someone, who, etc. until we reach the apostles who were chosen and consecrated directly by God Himself (cf. Mark 3:14; John 15:16; Acts 1:24-26; Galatians 1:1, 15-17). To try to set up a new line of succession apart from the one that Jesus Himself established should cause us to recall the prophetic word, “They made kings, but not through Me. They set up princes, but I knew it not” (Hosea 8:4).
This teaching office was given the gift of infallibility to determine what is the true interpretation of Sacred Scripture in such a way that whatever the Church binds on earth, we understand to have proceeded from a heavenly binding (cf. Matthew 16:19, 18:18). And it is binding on all Christians in such a way that the one who does not submit to this authoritative teaching is no longer a Christian but “a Gentile and a tax collector” (Matthew 18:17). This teaching office is part of the Church (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:28; Ephesians 4:11), part of the “body of Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:27). Therefore, if we are not in communions with and submitted to this teaching authority, we are not in the body, we are not in Christ.
Faith not only
believes in Jesus, but it
believes Jesus (cf. John 4:21, 5:46, 8:45-46, 10:37-38, 14:11). “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life” (John 5:24). And the one who hears Jesus’ word, hears it through the Church (cf. Ephesians 3:10) as He taught us: “The one who hears you hears Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me, and the one who rejects Me rejects Him Who sent Me” (Luke 10:16). Therefore, to reject the faith as it is definitively proposed by Christ’s teaching Church is to reject both Christ and God the Father. We have to present our doctrine to the established authorities to be adjusted by them. If we think that God is calling us to proclaim His message to the world, then we have to proclaim it in unison with the unbroken chain of authoritative leadership established by Jesus while he was here on earth and continuing till today, lest we too “run in vain” and find ourselves proclaiming a Gospel that has already been anathematized by His Church (cf. Matthew 18:17; Gal 1:8-9).
The authority of Christ’s Church is known to be infallible because it binds and looses in the manner of a one-to-one correspondence, as God’s mouthpiece, what He Himself binds and looses, and it relegates to the status of non-Christian whoever rejects this authority, which is God’s own, ministered through the Roman Catholic Church.
With love in Christ,
Pete
“
If everything that the Roman Catholic Church taught were true…”
