Category Archives: Papacy

A Book Review in Several Parts: “From Apostles to Bishops: The Development of the Episcopacy in the Early Church” by Francis A. Sullivan, S.J.

20 Saturday Sep 2014

Posted by in Christianity, Papacy, Reformation, Roman Catholicism

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Apsotlestobishops

A few years ago I began to study the Catholic faith in which I was raised. And the findings of that study were disturbing. Whereas we had always been taught that the Pope of Rome was the “Vicar of Christ” and one who is directly descended from St. Peter – in unbroken succession no less – who was the first bishop of Rome. And that was a “truth” that we were required to accept de fide, which means something foundational and beyond question. But the truth of the matter as I was to find out – and affirmed by any number of Catholic scholars today is that not only is that not true – it is not even possibly true. And so I had to ask myself how the Catholic Church could require me to believe something that is not true and make believing in it a requirement for membership and even for my salvation? Would Christ build His church on a lie?

And so it was with great interest that I came upon Francis Sullivan’s book cited in the title. My first reaction was skepticism because I wasn’t sure how Fr. Sullivan would approach this topic. Those two letters after his name – SJ – identify him as a Jesuit; one of the “pope’s men”. So I doubted very seriously whether his station in life would allow for him to make an honest assessment of the matter. But I was pleasantly surprised by his candor throughout the book while maintaining my disappointment at his conclusions the disunion of the two being fertile soil for observations I may make later.

The book is comprised of eleven chapters which cover the period from the Apostles to Cyprian and includes an introductory chapter outlining the nature of the issue and a concluding chapter inquiring whether the successors to the Apostles were so because of divine institution, or not.    The depth of Fr. Sullivan’s effort is such that this review must cover several parts.

The divisive nature of the Catholic stance on the episcopacy is acknowledged by the author in his introduction:

The question whether the episcopate is of divine institution continues to divide the churches, even though Christian scholars from both sides agree that one does not find the threefold structure of ministry, with a bishop in each local church assisted by presbyters and deacons, in the New Testament.[i]

And shortly thereafter he notes what historians now universally affirm that the development of the episcopacy “took place earlier in the churches of Syria and western Asia Minor, than it did in those of Phillipi, Corinth and Rome.”  And that not even Rome – whose later claims bind the consciences of its members to the contrary – had a bishop:

…but hardly any doubt that the church of Rome was still led by a group of presbyters for at least a part of the second century. [ii]

It is helpful at this early point to reflect.  What Fr. Sullivan has done so far is establish that the Catholic stance on episcopacy is a divisive issue, but for whom?  It is not divisive within the confines of Roman Catholicism which teaches its necessity.  Nor is it divisive within the ranks of Protestantism which proclaims its novelty.  I suspect that at this early point we may discern the working of the Holy Spirit in Fr. Sullivan’s heart such that he tacitly acknowledges that the true Church of Jesus Christ does not subsist wholly in the church of Rome.  In other words, he believes – at least implicitly – that Christ’s church exists truly beyond the bounds of Rome.  How else could this issue be divisive?

The author then does an about face as he lays out Rome’s case for the episcopacy.  Relying on the work of a 1998 conference of British bishops, Sullivan ties “eucharistic communion” with “ecclesial communion” seeking to justify Rome’s aberrant practice of “closed communion”.

There is a basic incongruity involved in regularly sharing the Eucharist in a church with which one is not in full communion, and in receiving it from a minister whom one does not recognize as one’s pastor.[iii]

But apparently Greek Orthodox priests can be considered “pastors” for Roman Catholics:

What justifies the sharing of Eucharist between Catholics and the Orthodox and other Eastern Christians is that they not only share the same faith with regard to the sacraments of Holy Orders and Eucharist, but also recognize one another’s Eucharist as fully valid, for those who celebrate it are ordained by bishops who stand in the historic apostolic succession.[iv]

But isn’t one justified in asking how a Roman Catholic can be bound by such a proclamation when the author has already shown that there were NO bishops in Rome for a century and a half after Christ?  Does Fr. Sullivan mean to say that Roman Catholics can only take communion from Orthodox bishops who are descended in the episcopacy from the early Eastern Church as he notes above?

Glossing over such obvious contradictions, the author digs deeper:

Belief that bishops are the successors of the apostles by divine institution grounds the Catholic insistence that episcopal succession comprises an essential element of the permanent structure of the Church, on which the validity of its sacramental ministry and the authority of its official teachers depend.[v]

Now this ahistorical insistence is not without its problems.  And to the author’s credit he is able to ‘fess up to one instance the implications of which undermine his assertions and the unresolved nature of which negates his premise:

In Sweden and Finland, however, the first Lutheran bishops were ordained by a man who had been a validly ordained Catholic bishop. To my knowledge, the Catholic Church has never officially expressed its judgment on the validity of orders as they have been handed down by episcopal succession in these two national Lutheran churches.[vi]

Have not these Lutheran churches participated in the “essential element of the permanent structure of the Church”?  Cannot these “validly ordained bishops” in “apostolic succession” administer the Eucharist just as a Roman priest?  The reason that Rome has not pronounced on this issue is obvious.  Any decision would undermine Rome’s position on the episcopacy and its necessity as laid out by Fr. Sullivan.

The author draws this chapter to a close with these obvious, of not contradictory observations:

Admittedly the Catholic position, that bishops are the successors of the apostles by divine institution, remains far from easy to establish… The apostles were missionaries and founders of churches; there is no evidence, nor is it at all likely, that any one of them ever took up permanent residence in a particular church as its bishop.[vii]

But isn’t the “Belief that bishops are the successors of the apostles by divine institution” the foundation for the “Catholic insistence that episcopal succession comprises an essential element of the permanent structure of the Church…”?  How can something that is “divinely” instituted and is an “essential element” of the “permanent structure” of the Church be hard to establish?  And how can Catholics “insist” on an office which allegedly rests on the Apostles none of whom ever held such office?

In closing, I hope to have whetted the reader’s appetite as mine was when I discovered this book.  The self-contradictory nature of Roman Catholicism is laid bare by the facts of history.  And in part of what makes these times so fascinating is that Roman Catholic scholars are now free to indulge in the miasma of Roman Catholic teaching.

Next time we’ll explore Fr. Sullivan’s analysis of the Apostles’ role in this fairy tale.

[i] Ibid. Kindle Loc. 37

[ii] Ibid. Kindle loc. 42

[iii] Ibid. Kindle loc. 74

[iv] Ibid. Kindle loc. 79

[v] Ibid. Kindle loc. 213

[vi] Ibid. Kindle loc. 98

[vii] Ibid. Kindle locations 217, 228.

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The Crisis of Authority in Catholic Modernity

14 Monday Jul 2014

Posted by in Charles Chaput, Papacy, Roman Catholicism

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The post-Vatican II era has created a serious problem for Roman Catholics.  And that problem is precisely how to reconcile the claims of the church with the facts of history – and sometimes with the facts of its own history!   It is not that this is a new problem but rather that the world and how the church relates to the world has so changed as to now lay bear the glaring contradicitons that previoiusly had been covered over by structures of authority[i] which Vatican II has made more transparent.   Perhaps the most obvioius examples are the claims made by Vatican I regarding the papacy and its foundation, continuity and extent.  As it turns out none of those claims is supportable in history and modern Roman Catholic scholars are now free to plumb the depths of these errors however much they are enshrined as “de fide” pronouncements.

But what is new in all this is not the errors but the fact that they can be discussed openly.  We know from history that John Calvin himself cajoled the Roman Church for its false claims and showed in his famous letter to King Francis I that all ordinations after the Council of Basel were fraudulent.[ii]   Calvin showed how political machinations and not “apostolic succession” had made necessary the removal of some popes and the appointment of others with little regard for ecclesiastical involvement.   And that those depositions and appointments had broken whatever alleged continuity Rome claimed theretofore from the Apostles.  And yet centuries later Vatican I was able, with full force of papal authority, to claim that all popes are “successors” of Peter that it “has always been necessary for every church…to be in agreement with the Roman church….”[iii]

And so it was with great interest that I found a collection of essays by legitimate church historians dealing with exactly these matters and it is their title that I have borrowed for this post[iv].  The first essay written by the eminent scholar, Francis Oakley[v], focuses on how the Council of Constance is a roadblock to modern Roman Catholic claims to authority.

Oakley begins with a fascinating expose of John Henry Cardinal Newman’s famous, Essay on the Development of Doctrine. In what seems a tangential departure from the period of Constance, Dr. Oakley shows how Newman misunderstood “development” in the context of Catholic history.  According to medieval scholastics (Oakley names Bonaventure, Aquinas and Scotus) Catholic doctrines were “immutable”, never changing.  So when something appeared to be different than what the church had proclaimed to be “de fide”[vi] these scholars insisted that whatever the variation it was either “implicit” in the original teaching or could be explicated therefrom.  The point is that the teaching itself was considered eternal and unalterable – it did not develop as Newman would have it.   This was the view of the Roman church from medieval times through the period Oakley refers to as the “second scholasticism” when” Spanish theologians in the 17th century”…had been at pains to make clear that, in so doing, it (the church) was not attempting to supplement revelation that was, in fact, immutable.”  Oakley uses this to lay the foundation for what will follow:

When he (Newman) wrote that work, he appears to have known nothing about the older scholastic views on doctrinal development.[vii]

 

 

The Politics of Oblivion

 The ignorance of history displayed by Newman and decried by many of his critics unfortunately continues to this day.  I have written how the Archbishop of Philadelphia mischaracterizes his church’s history here and here in our time.   And Oakley cites the work of the distinguished Catholic theologian John Noonan who has documented “the convoluted process whereby a pattern of behavior once denounced (by Rome) as contrary to nature has modulated across time into the routinely acceptable….”[viii]    All of this is to say that there has been an odd combination of historical forgetfulness in the Church of Rome.

So how does this happen?

…it may largely be due to the empire that the present continues to exert over the past in so much of Catholic institutional thinking.  And it certainly reflects the measure of genial institutional forgetfulness that seems to attend inevitably upon that state of affairs.  Under certain circumstances, moreover, casual forgetfulness has betrayed a disagreeable tendency to mutate into a proactive politics of oblivion reflective of the Orwellian conclusion that if he who controls the past controls the future, then he who controls the present would be well advised to control the past.[ix]

It is precisely that “politics of oblivion” that makes the study of Constance so fascinating.

 

The Problem of Constance

 The instance of radical doctrinal discontinuity in question is the great gulf that yawns between the position the general councils of Constance (1414–1418) and Basel (1431–1449) affirmed concerning the ultimate locus of authority in the universal church and that staked out in 1870 by Vatican I.[x]

The seeds of Constance were planted more than a hundred years previously in the conflict between Boniface VIII and Philip IV, King of France.  And those seeds were watered and fertilized by the conflict between Boniface and the Colonna family in Italy.  The facts are too numerous to recount here but this conflict ended in favor of Philip and Boniface’s successors were much more amenable to the king’s wishes resulting in Clement V’s acquiescence to the King and the moving of the curia to Avignon (1309).

After a nearly seven decade hiatus at Avignon, the papacy returned to Rome haltingly in 1370 and then totally in 1378 with the election of Urban VI.  Shortly thereafter a group of French cardinals splintered from the Roman group, “disgusted by the pope’s insulting behaviour” and elected Clement VII who is known to history as the first “anti-pope”.  This is the action that set up the “Great Schism” of the church which saw competing claims to the papacy until Constance.

The intransigence of the two popes (Benedict XII and Gregory XII) coupled with a growing tension for the schism to be healed caused several of Benedict’s cardinals to defect to Gregory’s side where they called for a general council at Pisa in March 1409.  Both popes were invited to attend but refused and were summarily deposed by that Council.  The cardinals at Pisa facing a world now with no pope, elected Alexander V as their new pontiff.   And surprise of surprises, neither Benedict nor Gregory acquiesced in the Council’s decision.  Hence, the world now had three claimants to the See of St. Peter.

Alexander’s pontificate lasted less than a year until his death in May 1410.  The Pisan cardinals took less than a week to elect his successor, John XXIII, another “anti-pope”.  It was John who, under secular political pressure called the Council of Constance.

The great legacy of Constance is its decree Haec sancta, which declared that a general council of the church is the highest authority to which everyone, including the pope, is subject.  The Council thereby exercised that authority by deposing Popes John XXIII and Benedict XIII, negotiating and accepting the resignation of Gregory XII and appointing as replacement Martin V.

 

An Analysis

 Constance (along with Pisa and Basel) cause severe problems for Catholic historians.  Chief among these is the question of utlimate authority in the Church of Rome.  Is the council supreme ala Constance or is the pope as per Vatican I?  If the former is true then can it be said that Vatican I erred in its decrees?  And if Constance is not legitimate, then what to do with its annointing of Martin V as pope, a man who is the direct ancestor for every consecrated priest today?

Oakley traces the ultramontane reaction to Constance:

“…the Council of Constance, not having been convoked by a legitimate pope, cannot be regarded as a legitimate general council prior to its convocation by Gregory XII, just before his resignation on July 4, 1415.”[xi]

The difficulty here is that the council fathers did accord John XXIII the status of pope.  They did, after all, assemble in council at his decree.  And they forcibly brought him back to the council after his escape to prevent just that claim of illegitimacy from being made against them.

The discomfort that Rome feels about the history of Constance can also be seen in how they have selectively edited documents since then.

Thus, early in the (twentieth) century, even so learned a work as the Dictionnaire de thee’logie catholique took the extraordinary step of simply excising the Councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basel from tis list of general councils.  That list, therefore, simply jumped from the Council of Vienne in 1311–1312 to the Council of Florence in 1439–1445. A remarkably bold exercise in the politics of oblivion![xii]

Oakley continues,

In a similar but Anglophone exercise conducted around the same time, the editors of the Catholic Encyclopedia, a pretty scholarly piece of work, by simply opting to include no article on the subject, made it clear that conciliar theory was to be viewed as a dead issue, an ecclesiological fossil, something lodged deep, in the lower Carboniferous of the dogmatic theology.[xiii]

The author then goes on to note that the tradition of Rome’s historians was to label the Avignonese popes, “anti-popes” while Alexander V and John XXIII– the “Pisan” popes – were “handled in a more gingerly fashion and left in limbo.”  But Oakley notes how that mysteriously changed in 1947 when the prefect of the Vatican archives published a new list of popes wherein the “Pisan” line were now listed as anti-popes.  The reason for the change was not given but is another clear example of how the “politics of oblivion” works in Catholic history.

As you might have anticipated the situation was further aggravated when Angelo Rancalli chose the name “John” for his episcopacy in 1958.  Interestingly Rancalli refused to endorse the 1947 position when he noted that he was claiming his name “extra legitimitatis discussiones”.  Oakley explains that Rancalli thereby signaled that he was setting himself apart from “disputes about legitimacy” regarding the prior use of his chosen name.  And in another exceptional example of the “politics of oblivion” that phrase was removed from any “official version” of the papl record and the pope’s handlers took the matter so far as to say what he really meant was “to deny the legitimacy of the Pisan line.”  Oakley draws a circle around the issue thusly:

Thus, in some cases, the Council of Pisa is either passed over in silence or rejected outright; in others, the question of its ecumenicity is portrayed as having yet to be decided.  In most cases, the Avignonese claimants are treated consistently as antipopes, but in some, the matter of their legitimacy is left in limbo.   Similarly, the Pisan pontiffs are listed as legitimate popes or dismissed as antipopes sometimes even in articles appearing in the same encyclopedia. The most striking instance of disarray is in the New Catholic Encyclopedia (first ed., 1967), where Mollat insists that “the question of the legitimacy of [John XXIII’s]… claim to the Papal See is still unanswered” but does so, ironically, in an article titled (editorially?) “John XXIII, Antipope.”[xiv]

 

Three Issues

 Professor Oakley then gives us a brief overview of the extensive literature that has developed since Vatican I.  And in the interest of brevity focuses our attention on the three issues he deems most serious.

  1. The Great Schism itself.  Current scholarship tends to side with the French cardinals who instigated the schism in 1378 by electing Clement VII.  Ultramontane sentiments had heretofore been likely to favor the prior electon of Urban VI of the Roman line but new evidence shows that Urban was not of stable mind or temperament and was inclined to “torture dissident cardinals, despite their dignity and advanced years.”  Therefore, the cardinals acted justly in preserving the structure of the church as well as themselves.

The historical evidence, certainly, does not permit one simply to insist on the exclusive legitimacy of Urban’s title to the papacy (and, therefore, the legitimacy of his successors in the Roman line). If that claim is now enshrined in the current official listing of popes, it should be recognized that it has been advanced quite explicitly on theological or canonistic rather than historical grounds.[xv]

 

  1. The papalist claim that the Council of Constance “became a legitimately assembled council only after the Roman claimant, Gregory XII, as part of the deal involved in his resignation in July 1415, was permitted by the council to convoke it also falls by the wayside.”   Professor Oakley notes two things here: first, the council’s overriding concern was unity and not succession and secondly, during the previous year the Council had received ambassadors from both Gregory XII and Benedict XIII as “papal delegates” conferring a status on them reflective of the council’s estimation of who they were representing.  The final point in regard to the papalist claim here described is that all of the Fathers at Constance had accepted the decision of the Council of Pisa which deposed both the Roman and French popes.
  2. The third issue is “conciiliar theory itself”.  The papalist claims have been that conciliarism was an accident in history that sprung up quickly and receded in a similar manner.  I find it interesting that no less an historically vibrant character as Torquemada advanced just such a theory!  (Anyone want to side with the Inquisition?)  But Dr. Oakley cites the work of Brian Tierney as having documented the bona fides of conciliarism back to the early church.  It turns out that conciliarism has “deep (and impeccably orthodox) roots in history.”

Professor Oakley’s conclusion is that after centuries of censorship and avoidance the time has come for the Roman Church to own it’s history:

…what is not in doubt is the urgent need for contemporary Catholic theologians to accept the fact that doctrinal rupture or radically discontinuous change has in the past been an unquestionable reality in the life of the church and that condeded, to undertake the bracing challenge of coming to terms with that intractable fact.[xvi]

I will end here with a quote used by Dr. Oakley near the beginning of his wonderful essay.  It succinctly captures the dilemna posed by the councils of Pisa, Constance, Basel and Vatican I.

The past isn’t what it used to be.  – Yogi Berra

 

[i] Dr. Garry Wills prefers the term “Stuctures of Deceit” which may be nearer the truth.  See Wills, Garry: Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit.  New York, Doubleday Books, 2000.

[ii] See Calvin’s “Prefatory Address to His Most Christian Majesty, the Most Might and Illustrious Monarch, Francis, King of the French, His Sovereign” which were included as introductory to the Institututes of the Christian Religion. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes.ii.viii.html

[iii] First Dogmatic Constitution of the Church(Decrees of Vatican I).  Session IV, Chapter 2.  July 18, 1870.  http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Councils/ecum20.htm#Chapter 1 On the institution of the apostolic primacy in blessed Peter

[iv] Lacey, Michael J. and Francis Oakley.  The Crisis of Authority in Catholic Modernity. New York, Oxford University Press; 2011

[v] Oakley Francis. “History and the Return of the Repressed in Catholic Modernity: The Dilemma Posed by Constance” in Lacey and Oakley op. cit., pages 29-58.

[vi] De fide or “of the faith” represents a level of commitment that Roman Catholics must make to teachings so described.  To question or modify a “de fide” doctrine is to place oneself outside of the Catholic faith.

[vii]  Oakley, op. cit., kindle location 621

[viii] Noonan, John T. A Church That Can and Cannot Change: The Development of Catholic Moral Teaching. (Notre Dame; University of Notre Dame Press, 2005; as quoted in Lacey and Oakley op. cit.  Noonan is undoubtedly referring to the matter of “natural” family planning which is now acceptable but historically had been prohibited in the Roman communion.

[ix] Oakley, op. cit. kindle location 677.

[x] Oakley, op. cit. kindle location 689.

[xi] Oakley, op. cit. kindle location 765.

[xii] Oakley, kindle location 788.

[xiii] Oakley, kindle location 789.

[xiv] Oakley, kindle location 819

[xv] Oakley, kindle location 855

[xvi] Oakley, kindle location 1041

Therefore, Go Ye Into All the World and Tell Them About Yourselves….

06 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by in C2C IP, Hermeneutics, Papacy, Reformation, Roman Catholicism

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One of the complaints I have about the Roman Catholic Church in which I grew up is how “man-centered” its teachings are.  After all, the sacerdotal system is all about “you” going to Mass; “you” going to confession; “you” blindly following the Magisterium.   So it was with some little surprise that I saw this tweet today from Pope Francis:

 PontifexMe

 Yep.  Evangelization to Roman Catholics is apparently all about “you”, too.

Don’t be fooled, friends.  Evangelization is about giving witness to Jesus Christ.

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. (Emphasis added; Matthew 28:18-20)

Soli Deo Gloria.

Can Roman Catholics Change Their Name?

25 Friday Oct 2013

Posted by in Papacy, Roman Catholicism

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Recently a Roman Catholic ecquaintance of mine wrote here about his dissatisfaction with the first part of his denomination’s name, i.e. “Roman”.    It seems that the geographic label is used against him in his apologetic interactions with Protestants.  And my friend is rather tired of being “beat ‘round the ears” with the label and so is justifying his cessation of its use.

I understand the nature of his objection to be:

  1. “Roman” is just part of what he calls “modern nomenclature” and is therefore not important.
  2. If he can describe himself as a “Christian” he may be absolved from using “Roman” in his self-description.
  3. Membership in a local parish or diocese is all that is necessary to be Catholic.
  4. There is only one diocese in the world that can accurately be described as “Roman Catholic”.

To begin, we must assert the official dogmatic position of the Roman Church with regard to its nature.  According to Roman dogma,

The Church is a society instituted by Christ God…; a people one in faith, end, and things conducing to that end; subject to one and the same power, a society divine in origin…  It is a society perfect and independent…; an immutable organization…with the right to possess even temporal things…and with temporal power…it is one (in faith, rule, and communion…) and unique…, holy… catholic… apostolic… which is Roman….” etc.[i]

So we see here, at the outset, that the descriptor “Roman” is as important to Catholic self-description as being “instituted by Christ God”.  And likewise, it is not something capriciously to be discarded.

In fact, it is an intricate part of “Tradition” so that Denzinger traces the formality of the use of “Roman Catholic” through the last 800 years of Church History.

One example from the Council of Lyon (1274) may be cited:

Also this same holy Roman Church holds the highest and complete primacy and spiritual power over the universal Catholic Church which she truly and humbly recognizes herself to have received with fullness of power form the Lord Himself in Blessed Peter, the chief or head of the Apostles whose successor is the Roman Pontiff.[ii]

And this idea of “complete primacy” was extended later to the Bishop of Rome.  Here is Vatican I:

Wherefore we teach and declare that, by divine ordinance,the Roman church possesses a pre-eminence of ordinary power over every other church, and that this jurisdictional power of the Roman pontiff is both episcopal and immediate.

Both clergy and faithful, of whatever rite and dignity, both singly and collectively, are bound to submit to this power by the duty of hierarchical subordination and true obedience, and this not only in matters concerning faith and morals, but also in those which regard the discipline and government of the church throughout the world.[iii]

In sum, being a “Roman” Catholic is not just nomenclature – it is dogma.  And being Roman Catholic means that one is primarily a member of the “Roman” church and secondarily a member of a local diocese and parish.  Further, being a Roman Catholic means acknowledging that the Pope of Rome has a “primacy of jurisdiction” over you and that that primacy is both “ordinary” and “episcopal”.  In other words, a Roman Catholic owes his first allegiance to the Bishop of Rome and secondarily to his local “ordinary”.  Those are the rules set out by Rome and it therefore is of no consequence how one local parishioner thinks he can change his name.

I firmly believe that if good, well-meaning Catholics like my equaintance want to become Roman Catholics, then we have a duty to help them understand the magnitude of their decision.

They are not free to change their name, no matter how much that puts them out.

Soli Deo Gloria.

[i] Denzinger, Henry.  The Sources of Catholic Dogma.  Trans. Roy J. Deferrari from the Thirtieth Edition of Henry Denzinger’s Enchiridion Symbolorum.  New York. Preserving Christian Publications, 2009.  Systematic Index Iia.  Nihil Obstat: Dominic Hughes, O.P.  Imprimatur:  Patrick A. O’Boyle, Archsbishop of Washington.

[ii] Denzinger, op. cit.  460, 466.

[iii] Decrees of the First Vatican Council, Session 4, Chapter 3: On the power and character of the primacy of the Roman pontff.  http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Councils/ecum20.htm#Chapter 3. On the power and character of the primacy of the Roman pontiff

Comments for my friend, Joseph Richardson

01 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by in Hermeneutics, Matthew 16, Papacy, Roman Catholicism, Trent

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Joseph Richardson who owns The Lonely Pilgrim stopped by last Sunday and asked for some comments on his post, “A Biblical Argument for the Authority of the Papacy”.  Judging from this post and a few others I read Joseph is a devout Roman Catholic who is taken with the defense of his denomination.  And his title indicates that he believes the Bible gives the Pope his authority.

Joseph begins with the Catechism of the Catholic Church and a discussion about Christ as head of the church and quickly proceeds to the Scriptures by stating,

I think an honest reading of Scripture requires one to acknowledge that Jesus did delegate His authority, first to the Twelve Apostles as a group and then to Peter in particular.

Thereafter Joseph relies on the usual Scriptural suspects – Matthew 16:16-18, John 20:21-23, etc. – all the while offering his take on them.  And that gives rise to my first comment.

Roman Catholics are not allowed to offer their own interpretations of Scripture.

One of the cardinal points of difference between Rome and Protestants at the time of the Reformation was how one was to interpret the Scriptures.  The Protestants held that God worked in both the faithful preaching of the Word and in its faithful reception (i.e. 1 Corinthians 15:1).  Rome objected.  She felt that this led to “unbridled spirits” interpreting Scriptures in a multitude of possibly conflicting and incorrect ways.  So Rome placed this dogma on all faithful Roman Catholics:

Furthermore, in order to check unbridled spirits, it decrees, that no one, relying on his own judgment, shall, in matters of faith, and of morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine, distorting the Holy Scriptures in accordance with his own conceptions, presume to interpret them contrary to that sense which holy mother Church, to whom it belongs to judge of their true sense and interpretation, has held and holds,  or even contrary to the unanimous teaching of the Fathers, even though such interpretations should never at any time be published. Those who act contrary to this shall be made known by the ordinaries and punished in accordance with the penalties prescribed by the law.[i]

So any interpretation of Scripture used by a Roman Catholic must conform to that “sense which holy mother Church…has held and holds” and they must not be contradictory to the “unanimous teaching of the Fathers.”

But it cannot be shown that what Rome holds today she has always held with regard to any of the Scriptures Joseph cited.  And, in fact, it can be shown that the Roman Church has varied its interpretation of Matthew 16:18 so widely that it is impossible to tell what she “has held and holds” with regard to that key verse.   So where that leaves us is that Joseph is acting like a Protestant in interpreting the Scriptures to support Roman doctrines.  I don’t think that was his intent.

Joseph ends his post with a claim that a “literal interpretation” of Scriptures is friendly to Rome:

“Evidently, we Catholics interpret Scripture more literally and realistically than you, and accept it more readily for what it actually says in its plainest sense.”  And that leads to my second and final observation:

A Literal Reading of Scripture is not friendly to Rome.

A few weeks ago, I was made aware of a Presbyterian minister who had converted to Rome.  Although I did not listen to the entirety of his interview on EWTN, I do recall that one of his motivations was the “literal meaning” of the Bible and in his case the 6th chapter of John and his understanding of that chapter’s relevance to the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist.  (It seems very odd to me that someone would use the most allegorical of the Gospels as the basis for a literal interpretation but that is another matter.)  My point is that Catholics take a “pick-and-choose” approach to their literal interpretations.

Consider Matthew 16.  Verse 18 is the seminal verse most commonly used in support of Rome’s authority.  But verse 23 – just 5 short verses later – has Christ Himself calling Peter “Satan”.  Is Rome prepared to interpret that verse literally?

And following on to Matthew 16, the Old Testament has dozens of passages that refer to the “Rock” and it is always God, not a man.  One example is 2 Samuel 22:32, “For who is God besides the Lord? And who is the Rock except our God?”  And given that Jesus affirms everything in the Old Testament in this same Gospel (see Matthew 5:17-21) it is highly problematic that a “literal” reading of Scripture means Peter is the Rock of 16:18.

And just a few chapters later, as Christ is preparing His disciples for their mission after His departure He specifically states, “Let no man call you Father.” (Matthew 23:9).  And yet, Rome has more than 400,000 “Fathers” who claim to follow Christ.  And still more to the point, the Scriptures are very clear that no one is “holy” (Romans 3:10, Psalm 14:1-3, 53:1-3; Ecclesiastes 7:20).  And yet Rome calls the pope, “Holy Father.”

So a literal interpretation of the Scriptures is not friendly to Rome’s doctrines.

I am very grateful for the chance to interact with Joseph’s material and thank him for the invitation.  I am even more grateful for his interest in the Scriptures, for “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” (Romans 10:17).

Soli Deo Gloria.

[i] Fourth Session of the Council of Trent, Decree Concerning the Edition and Use of the Sacred Books, April 8, 1546.  See Schroeder,  H.J., O.P. Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent; English Translation.  Charlotte, N.C.  Tan Books, 1978.  p. 19.   Nihil Obstat (1978 edition): Fr. Humbertus Kane, O.P. Fr. Alexius Driscoll, O.P.  Imprimi Potest (1978 edition): Fr. Petrus O’Brien, O.P. Prior Provincialis.  Nihil Obstat (1941): A. A. Esswein, Censor Deputatus.  Imprimatur (1941): Archbishop John J. Glennon.

What if Matthew 16 had not a thing to do with Rome?

14 Thursday Mar 2013

Posted by in Matthew 16, Papacy, Raymond Brown, Roman Catholicism

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These past two weeks have witnessed the resignation of one pope and the election of another.  The former event is notable because of its rarity and the second because it is a first – the first pope to be elected from the Americas.

And one cannot surf the web or watch the news without hearing someone say of Rome that it is “Christ’s church built upon Peter”, or some such thing.  And as predictably as the sun rises in the east, Roman Catholics will point to the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 16 verse 18, for justification of their papal claims:  “For you are Peter, and upon this Rock I will build my church.”  (Matthew 16:18 is surely the most badly abused of all biblical proof texts!)

Leaving aside the fact that this interpretation creates disharmony in the Godhead by ignoring the Old Testament and that it is precluded to Catholics by the Council of Trent and the Creed of Pope St. Pius IV, the more interesting question at the moment is, “What if Matthew was not writing about Rome at all?”  That is the question that seems to undergird an examination by the late Roman Catholic scholar, Fr. Raymond Brown.

Matthew 16:18-19 has given rise to an endless flood of literature because of its use in later church doctrine and polemics.  At the same time, biblical scholars have often focused on the question of pre-Matthean tradition.  All too often the problematic of the evangelist in his own time and place…is overlooked.  Matthew, writing to meet the problems of a church in Syrian Antioch around A.D. 85, is certainly not concerned with the problem of whether a single-bishop in Rome is the successor of Simon Peter especially since both Rome and Antioch around 85 do not seem to have known the single-bishop structure.[i](Emphasis added.)

Matthew was writing with the church at Antioch in mind; not the church at Rome.  And neither apostolic church had a single bishop!  If Peter wasn’t the bishop, what was he?  Brown continues:

Matthew is presenting Peter as the chief of Rabbi of the universal church, with power to make “halakic” decisions (i.e. decisions on conduct) in the light of the teaching of Jesus.  As Bornkamm points out…the main thrust of 16:18-19 is Peter’s teaching authority, his power to declare acts licit or illicit according to Jesus’ teaching.  Furthermore, this power extends to the whole of “my church,” the whole church Jesus will build on Peter, not just some local assembly.[ii] (Emphasis added.)

So with all of the “pope talk” that will be with us for the foreseeable future, when you hear someone cite Matthew’s Gospel in support of the new man in the Vatican, you might ask him why St. Matthew had no idea why he should be head of Christ’s church?  Or what a Gospel, written under the superintendence of the Holy Spirit to the church at Antioch has to do at all with Rome?  Or why the successor of Peter, who may have been given the rabbinical duties of teaching, claims to have a “primacy of jurisdiction” over the church?

Soli Deo Gloria.

[i] Brown, Raymond E., and John P. Meier. Antioch and Rome: New Testament Cradles of Catholic Christianity.  New York, NY.  Paulist Press,  2004.  P. 66

[ii] Ibid. p. 67.