Category Archives: Pope

The Origins of the Teaching Authority of the Pope (Part 1)

11 Tuesday Jul 2017

Posted by in Faith, Pope

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( Originally posted on the Catholic Thinker:
https://whysoseriousdotcom.wordpress.com/2017/07/07/the-origins-of-the-teaching-authority-of-the-pope-part-1/  )

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The Catholic Magisterium is the power of the Catholic Church, as given it by the Son of God, Christ Jesus, to proclaim the truths of the Faith. The Magisterium exercises this teaching power in two different ways.

The Solemn Magisterium

This form of the teaching Magisterium is that which is used by popes to formally define articles of the faith infallibly. When the pope teaches this way, it is referred to as ex cathedra.

The Ordinary Magisterium

This form of the teaching Magisterium is exercised by the Church in practices connected to faith and morals, in the common sense of the faithful, historical documents, unanimous consent of Church Fathers and theologians, when the faith is taught.

The Apostles were the Church’s first teaching authority after Jesus, the first of the Magisterium. Christ granted them Peter & the Keysthe power to teach the faith to Christians and non-Christians alike. To Peter Christ said:

“And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Matthew 16:18-19)

Here Christ appoints Peter as the rock He will build His Church upon, promising that Satan’s power will not destroy it. Christ then gives Peter the keys to the kingdom of Heaven, a significant act showing Peter’s power of authority.

Some will object and say that the original Greek of the Gospel lists Peter as Petros, meaning smaller rock; a stone, while the word for the rock Christ will build His church upon is petra, meaning large rock; a boulder. If Peter’s name meant “small rock”, then he could not be the foundation that Christ was speaking of. Instead, Christ must have been referring to Himself when speaking of the foundation of His Church.

First, I am no Greek scholar myself, but have been told that in Koine Greek, the language of the New Testament, petra and petros are synonyms of each other. They simply Peter-rock.pngtranslate as “rock”. The only form of Greek that they could not be used interchangeably is Attic Greek, as it is a form of Greek in which petros and petra have different meanings.

Also, if Christ wished to express Peter’s inability to be His Church’s foundation, He could have referred to him as lithos, which means a small pebble in Greek. It was not as if Christ’s vocabulary was handicapped, or that He was trying to be deceptive or tricky. He said what He meant.

In addition to the Greek of the Gospel, the meaning of Peter as the rock is bolstered in the language of Aramaic, the language Christ spoke. In Aramaic, the words for Peter and rock would be the same; kepha. Christ would have used kepha for both the words Peter and rock in the passage. This helps make clear the reality of what Christ was conferring on Peter; He was making him His Church’s foundation.

The concept of the keys of the kingdom is interesting. In Scripture, keys were regarded as a symbol of the authority granted to a person. Christ giving the keys to Peter is not unlike an instance in the book of Isaiah. Isaiah gives His servant Eliacim the keys to the house of David, the kingdom of David that is, saying words similar to Christ’s.

“And I will lay the key of the house of David upon his shoulder: and he shall open, and none shall shut: and he shall shut, and none shall open.” (Isaiah 22:22)

The power given both to Eliacim and Peter held great authority. Being given the keys to the kingdom, they both were able to make binding decisions no one could alter. Christ even tells Peter that the decisions he makes conducting His Church shall be ratified in Heaven. Can anyone top that? God ratifying your decisions? This was no small honor for Peter. It was a great responsibility. He was the rock on which Christ chose to build His Church.

In Luke 22:31-32, Christ tells Peter:

“Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren.”

Here, Christ tells Peter of Satan’s desire to break up and destroy the Apostles, but Christ says He has prevented it through prayer. He then places Peter in charge of confirming, strengthening, the other Apostles. Peter is placed in charge of helping the other Apostles continue in the way of truth, and not allow them to be taken by the devil. This is one of several examples of the primacy and individual authority Peter possessed among the Apostles.

Another blatant example of Peter’s authority is in John 21:15-17. While Peter is on a beach, eating with Christ, they have the following dialogue:

“When therefore they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter: Simon son of John, lovest thou me more than these? He saith to him: Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. He saith to him: Feed my lambs. He saith to him again: Simon, son of John, lovest thou me? He saith to him: Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. He saith to him: Feed my lambs. He said to him the third time: Simon, son of John, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved, because he had said to him the third time: Lovest thou me? And he said to him: Lord, thou knowest all things: thou knowest that I love thee. He said to him: Feed my sheep.”

Here, Christ places Peter in charge of His own flock, the Church. Peter is to be the head of Christ’s Church on earth, teaching Christ’s flock. Christ gives Peter His entire flock to take care of, making him a shepherd of His Church. Could the Scriptures be anymore plain as to reveal that Christ commissioned Peter to take charge of the Church after He ascended to Heaven? The early Christians are even plainer.

 

{To be continued in The Origins of the Teaching Authority of the Pope (Part 2) }

Catholicism and intellectual freedom

11 Tuesday Jul 2017

Posted by in Faith, Newman, Politics, Pope

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The charge has often been, and sometimes still is made that Catholics cannot be fully loyal citizens of any nation or Empire – or even a secular organization, because their primary loyalty lies elsewhere. In modern times we saw it with John F Kennedy when he stood for the Presidency of the USA in 1960, but perhaps the classic statement of it came in 1874. Writing three years after the Vatican Council which had declared the Pope infallible, the British former Prime Minister, Gladstone, wrote (1):

That no one can now become her [the Catholic Church] convert without renouncing his moral and mental freedom, and placing his civil loyalty and duty at the mercy of another.

In expressing this view, he was saying out loud, so to say, what many British people thought. Embedded deep into the national psyche, not least by two hundred years worth of anti-Catholic black propaganda, was the idea that to be a Roman Catholic was profoundly un-English. Edward Norman has eloquently described the potent, and toxic, mix of patriotism, prurience and Protestantism which made up the mental image of the Catholic for the average Englishman. All of this Gladstone now evoked. At the very least, he demanded, Catholics should give some kind of oath of fealty that they would not vote as their priests told them to.

Gladstone was appealing to feelings which, as recently as 1851, had resulted in a wave of pubic hostility against the restoration by Rome of a diocesan structure in England and Wales, described by the then Prime Minister, Lord John Russell as ‘Papal Aggression’. When Newman converted in 1845, he knew that he would be considered as though he were dead by many of his old friends; indeed, for some of them, death would have been preferable to crossing the Tiber and surrendering his mental faculties to a celibate old Italian bigot.

Newman’s response to Gladstone, which took the form of a letter to the leading English Catholic layman, the Duke of Norfolk still deserves reading as the best, and most reasoned example to a line of argumentation (it would be doing it too much honour to call it an argument) which is not unfamiliar to readers of this site.

Newman first reminded Gladstone that States had ever sought to bring Christianity under their control and, from Britain through to the lands of the East had largely succeeded in either subduing or massacring Christians:

Such is the actual fact that, whereas it is the very mission of Christianity to bear witness to the Creed and Ten Commandments in a world which is averse to them, Rome is now the one faithful representative, and thereby is heir and successor, of that free-spoken dauntless Church of old, whose political and social traditions Mr. Gladstone says the said Rome has repudiated.

Rome, and it alone, stood out against the ‘spirit of the age’, as it always had and must, as Christ’s Church, always do. Where Anglicans:

do not believe that Christ set up a visible society, or rather kingdom, for the propagation and maintenance of His religion, for a necessary home and a refuge for His people

Catholics did; it was their Church, which alone resembled that of Rome of old. But did that, as Gladstone alleged, mean that Catholics could not vote according to their own consciences? Were they, as British politicians had urged since the days of Elizabeth, spies and agents of a foreign power which was hostile to the freedom which was the heir of every Englishman?

The main point of Gladstone’s Pamphlet was that, since the Pope claims infallibility in faith and morals, and since there were no “departments and functions of human life which do not and cannot fall within the domain of morals,”(2) and since “the domain of all that concerns the government and discipline of the Church,” were his, and he “claims the power of determining the limits of those domains,” and “does not sever them, by any acknowledged or intelligible line from the domains of civil duty and allegiance,” therefore Catholics are moral and mental slaves, and “every convert and member of the Pope’s Church places his loyalty and civil duty at the mercy of another.

These things, Newman declared, were based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Church and of its relationship to society. He saw clearly what many still fail to see, that the secular had their own agenda and were either blind to that, or motivated by hostility to religion. We shall turn, tomorrow, the Newman’s anser.

The Courage of Pius XII: A Rebellion Against Nazism

15 Thursday Jun 2017

Posted by in Politics, Pope

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Venerable Pope Pius XII

It has been said that Pope Pius XII, during World War II, did not do much to help the Jewish people, who were victims of Hitler’s Nazi terrorism. Pius is portrayed to have seemingly turned a blind eye while the Jews suffered terrible persecutions under Adolf Hitler. This charge, like many other allegations against the Church, is simply not true.

Pope Pius, in reality did quite a lot to protest the Nazi cause, and also made extreme efforts to save the lives of the Jews. Fr. Leo Chamberlain, in his article, The end of the ‘Hitler’s Pope’ myth, writes:

“This is a good moment to mark the Church’s witness against Nazism. Eighty years ago, on March 14, 1937, Pope Pius XI issued Mit Brennender Sorge (“With Burning Anxiety”), an encyclical, pointedly written in German, condemning Nazism. “Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the state, and divinises them to an idolatrous level, perverts an order of the world created by God,” the pope wrote.

“Pius XI’s secretary of state was Cardinal Pacelli, the future Pius XII. He distributed the text, which he had helped to draft, secretly within Germany. Four years earlier, in 1933, he had negotiated a concordat between the Holy See and Germany, not to appease Nazism but to have some means of holding the Nazis to account through an international treaty. The regime referred to him as “Jew loving”: he had made more than 50 protests against Nazi policy, the earliest coming just days after the passing of the Enabling Act, which granted Hitler the power to enact laws without Reichstag approval. Pacelli was regarded as so anti-Nazi that the Third Reich attempted to prevent his election as pope in 1939.” (1)

In his encyclical Summi Pontificatus, Pope Pius XII asked that all Catholics “will be mindful in imitation of the Divine Samaritan, of all these who, as victims of the war, have a right to compassion and help.” (2)

Pius is writing of all the victims of the war, especially the Jews, that they may receive aid.

Mgr. Jean Bernard, a former inmate of Dachau, accounts of the reaction to any Vatican protests against Nazism:

“The detained priests trembled every time news reached us of some protest by a religious authority, but particularly by the Vatican. We all had the impression that ouris warders made us atone heavily for the fury these protests evoked … whenever the way we were treated became more brutal, the Protestant pastors among the prisoners used to vent their indignation on the Catholic priests: ‘Again your big naive Pope and those simpletons, your bishops, are shooting their mouths off .. why don’t they get the idea once and for all, and shut up. They play the heroes and we have to pay the bill.'” (3)

From reading this far, one gets the idea that Pope Pius XII adequately spoke out against the Nazis and their treatment of the Jews. But the pope did much more than merely condemn Nazi behavior.

Robert A. Graham S.J., writes:

“In 1943 the German ambassador to the Holy See, Von Weizsaecker, sent a telegram to Berlin. The telegram has been cited as damning ‘evidence’ against Pius XII.

” ‘Although under pressure from all sides, the Pope has not let himself be drawn into any demonstrative censure of the deportation of Jews from Rome … As there is probably no reason to expect other German actions against the Jews of Rome we can consider that a question so disturbing to German-Vatican relations has been liquidated.’

“Von Weizsaecker’s telegram was in fact a warning not to proceed with the proposed Nazi popedeportation of the Roman Jews: ‘there is probably no reason to expect other German actions against the Jews of Rome’. Von Weizsaecker’s action was backed by a warning to Hitler from Pius XII: if the pursuit and arrest of Roman Jews was not halted, the Holy Father would have to make a public protest. together the joint action of Von Weizsaecker and Pius XII ended the Nazi manhunt against the Jews of Rome. 7,000 lives were saved.” (4)

In addition to this accomplishment, a near 80,000 baptismal certificates were issued by Church authorities, under the pope’s direction, to Hungarian Jews. The baptismal certificates made it appear that the Jews were actually Catholics, thus saving them from the Nazis. (5)

Venerable Pope Pius XII did quite a lot of good for the Jews, protecting many of them from the Nazis, despite what many may want one to believe today. There should be no question about his character and courage, especially when confronted by the power of Nazi Germany.

Albert Einstein, who had escaped Nazi Germany, said in 1940:

“Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth … I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.” (6)

Pius should be viewed not as Pontus Pilate, who allowed Christ to be crucified, but as a hero, who took extreme efforts to save the Jews.

— Patrick E. Devens

 

 

O Venerable Pope Pius XII, who had on earth great courage to preach the word of God, vigor to repel the enemies of the Church, and zeal for the Holy Name, pray for us poor sinners. May we, O Pius, have a double portion of thy righteous qualities in defense of our holy Church. May we never abandon our duty to defend the faith, with fortitude, wherever we are and in whatever state God hath put us. Venerable Pius, may we, like thee, show the radiant glory of our Holy Lord in everything we do and say. And this, through the graciousness of the Divine Majesty, to Whom we humbly ask thee to pray for our benefit and protection.
Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

 

(1) https://catholicismpure.wordpress.com/2017/03/12/the-end-of-the-hitlers-pope-myth/

(2) Article 109 https://web.archive.org/web/20130703015921/http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_20101939_summi-pontificatus_en.html

(3) http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/860-000-lives-saved-the-truth-about-pius-xii-and-the-jews

(4) Ibid.

(5) Ibid.

(6) http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/issues/march-10th-2017/the-end-of-the-hitlers-pope-myth/

 

The Church and boundaries

09 Friday Jun 2017

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Early Church, Faith, Pope

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It is sometimes alleged that Catholics claim that their church is the only real church, but this is not quite accurate. We certainly believe it is the Church Christ founded, but we believe that the Orthodox Church, although not in communion with us, is also a valid church; we believe that other Christian communities also have in them, to a greater or lesser extent, something of the true faith. The question of orthodoxy is one which has occupied the Church from the beginning. It is precisely what Apostles such as John, Paul and Jude, as well as St. Peter himself, concerned themselves with. Those who ‘preached another Gospel’ are not to be received. Even in Apostolic times, as we can see from St. John’s Epistles, it was not easy to assert authority or orthodoxy. One of the main themes of the history of the early Church is, as we have seen recently, the working out of this problem. This is why, to many of us, there is something of human arrogance and pride in the oft-heard view that each individual can use Scripture to interpret itself; if history teaches us anything, it is that this is not the case.

The notion that the early Church was somehow corrupted and lost its way not only contradicts Christ’s assurance that even the gates of hell would not prevail against it, it flies in the face of history. One of the earliest and most influential heretics was Marcion, whose money and intellect won him great influence in Rome in the second century. That notwithstanding these things, he was excommunicated, shows that there was a mechanism for determining authority; that there were still Marcionists a couple of centuries later, shows how difficult it was to maintain unity. It also bore witness to another theme of our history – the extreme difficulty of securing reunion once communion is broken. It is 1600 years since Chalcedon, and the distance between the Oriental Orthodox and the Catholic Church is not wide in theological terms; historically it is a chasm which is proving next to impossible to bridge. The two sets of Orthodox cannot agree, either. For all the efforts of the ecumenists, it is hard to point to a schism which has been healed.

It was to deal with such matters that the Ecumenical movement was formed. But it has tended to proceed on the assumption that the tent must be big enough and the compromises wide enough to comprehend just about everyone. In turn, that has led conservatives in all churches to regard ecumenism as a dirty word, synonymous with syncretism. The urge to find a common ground of agreement has too often led to a search for the lowest common denominator – and few will follow there.

Pope Benedict was a true ecumenist, he offered the olive branch to the SSPX, he made overtures to the Orthodox, and he established the Ordinariate. All of this was real ecumenism – offering those interested in the Church the chance to get to know it better, and, if possible to be fully part of it. The Pope is the one Bishop who, historically, has been recognised as the first among equals. Only Rome can offer a real ecumenism, and it behoves her to behave, as she did under the last Pope, in a manner which shows that the father always welcomes the prodigal home – and no fatted calf is safe when then happens.

One of the most common misunderstandings by those outside the Church concerns the degree to which the faithful can believe what the Church has not explicitly approved. Because of the ‘black legend’ and the nonsense propagated by those who do not even know they are influenced by it, there is a view which holds that unless the Church has explicitly approved a devotion or belief, Catholics cannot practice it. Exactly the opposite applies. Until and unless the Church explicitly disapproves a devotion or belief, the faithful are free to hold it. Those who see in ecumenism a deliberate attempt at syncretism are free to hold that belief, but it is not the teaching of the Church. The Church holds the fulness of the truth, but it does not own it, it is happy to share it with all who want to receive it; it is, after all, a Church and not a museum.

The Catholic Church and the Pope

06 Tuesday Jun 2017

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Faith, Pope

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Few, familiar with the wider Catholic blogosphere, can be unaware of the presence there of those who not only criticise the current Pope (a thing I may have done a time or two myself) , but who deny that he – and for that matter his immediate predecessors – is Pope at all. They cite various things in order to ‘prove’ their case, one being that they have all taken part in ecumenical gatherings which, they claim, no Catholic Pope would do; the question ‘according to whom?’ naturally arises. One theme of recent posts has been the place of Tradition within the Church. St Paul wrote about the traditions, oral and written which he had received and was passing on. These include the Scriptures themselves. Jesus wrote no book. He could have done so, and as Christians, we believe that Scripture is divinely inspired, but it needs interpreting, and that is why Jesus founded a Church with a teaching authority.

The last Pope, Benedict XVI, was one of the most intelligent men ever to sit on the throne of St Peter, and he may well have been the best theologian ever to be Pope. But according to the wilder fringes of the Catholic blogosphere, we are asked to believe that this life-long, loyal and intelligent Catholic, knew so little about the history and theology of the Church in which he spent his entire adult life that he failed to spot what some new converts can see – that the Catholic Church has fallen away, and exists only in small pockets of the faithful, identifiable only to those who are ‘true’ Catholics. This is a Catholic (if it is Catholic at all) version of our friend Bosco with his talk about ‘the saved’ being able to identify those others who are ‘saved’. It is a version of what Protestants hold when they talk about the Church falling away in the time of Constantine; it is what non-Trinitarians say about the Trinity; it is what the Quartodecimans held about the decision to change the date at which the Passover started; it is what the Orthodox say about the filioque. The moment you decide that you know better than the teaching authority of the Church, then you must, perforce, fall back on one of two things: either your own unaided conscience; or the claim that your conscience is better informed by the Spirit than the Church founded by Christ. There is a third option – to insist that a particular point in time was the golden age, and that whatever it was the Church taught then it must profess in that form for ever. This was the claim of those who opposed Nicaea; it was the claim of those who opposed the teaching of the “Theotokos” and it was the claim of those who opposed Chalcedon.

Yet for all such lucubrations, the Church has a teaching authority, and that authority teaches, and what it teaches is not a dead set of rules set out in ancient books, it is the teaching of Jesus Christ Himself – it is, as Pope Francis has recently reminded us, the ‘Joy of the Gospel’. I see little sign of that joy in those who spend their time criticising the Pope because he does not fit in with their idea of what the Church ought to be. Benedict did not abdicate to make way for the College to elect individual bloggers as arbiters of the teaching of the Church, the College elected Francis. He reminded us all, two years ago, of something important, indeed something vital which we forget at our peril:

 What does “People of God” mean? First of all it means that God does not belong in a special way to any one people; for it is He who calls us, convokes us, invites us to be part of his people, and this invitation is addressed to all, without distinction, for the mercy of God “desires all men to be saved” (1 Tim 2:4). Jesus does not tell the Apostles or us to form an exclusive group, a group of the elite. Jesus says: go out and make disciples of all people (cf. Mt 28:19). St Paul says that in the People of God, in the Church, “there is neither Jew nor Greek… for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28). I would also like to say to anyone who feels far away from God and the Church, to anyone who is timid or indifferent, to those who think they can no longer change: the Lord calls you too to become part in his people and he does this with great respect and love! He invites us to be part of this people, the People of God!

Now, whilst, as with any Pope, this one is subject to criticism, here he enunciates something which a Church facing a secularised and/or hostile world, would do well to remember. That some orthodox Catholics might remind this Pope that what he said applies to them, despite some of his recent language, would be a better response to his scolding than claiming he is not the Pope.

The Fathers on the Papacy: Irenaeus, St Jerome

05 Monday Jun 2017

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Tertullian is not the only early Church Father who offers us an insight into the place the Bishop of Rome at the turn of the second century. St Irenaeus (d. c.202) mentions Rome in a famous passage which again, until men needed to question what it meant, was taken to mean what it appears to mean:

2. Since, however, it would be very tedious, in such a volume as this, to reckon up the successions of all the Churches, we do put to confusion all those who, in whatever manner, whether by an evil self-pleasing, by vainglory, or by blindness and perverse opinion, assemble in unauthorized meetings; [we do this, I say,] by indicating that tradition derived from the apostles, of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul; as also [by pointing out] the faith preached to men, which comes down to our time by means of the successions of the bishops. For it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church, on account of its pre-eminent authority,  [The Latin text of this difficult but important clause is, “Ad hanc enim ecclesiam propter potiorem principalitatem necesse est omnem convenire ecclesiam.”].

Pope Damasus (366-84 as Pope), published the following decree, in 382 at the Council of Rome, which set out, more fully, the claims Tertullian had denied:

1. After all these [writings of] the prophets and the evangelical and apostolic scriptures which we discussed above, on which the catholic church is founded by the grace of God, we also have thought necessary to say what, although the universal catholic church diffused throughout the world is the single bride of Christ, however the holy Roman church is given first place by the rest of the churches without [the need for] a synodical decision, but from the voice of the Lord our saviour in the gospel obtained primacy: ‘You are Peter,’ he said, ‘and upon this rock I shall build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it; and to you I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you shall bind upon Earth shall be bound also in heaven and whatever you release upon Earth shall also be released in heaven’.

2. In addition there is also the presence of the blessed apostle Paul, ‘the chosen vessel’, who not in opposition, as the heresies jabber, but on the same date and the same day was crowned in glorious death with Peter in the city of Rome suffering under Nero Caesar; and equally they made the above-mentioned holy Roman church special in Christ the Lord and gave preference in their presence and veneration-worthy triumph before all other cities in the whole world.

3. Therefore first is the seat at the Roman church of the apostle Peter ‘having no spot or wrinkle or any other [defect]’.

St Jerome agreed:

I think it is my duty to consult the chair of Peter, and to turn to a church whose faith has been praised by Paul. I appeal for spiritual food to the church whence I have received the garb of Christ … Away with all that is overweening; let the state of Roman majesty withdraw. My words are spoken to the successor of the fisherman, to the disciple of the cross. As I follow no leader save Christ, so I communicate with none but your blessedness, that is with the chair of Peter. For this, I know, is the rock on which the church is built!

The notion that the claims of the Papacy are anything new, or anything to do with some supposed ‘Roman State Run religion’ (@Bosco) is easily disproved by a reading of the Church Fathers. That is not to say that the office has not developed, as, indeed, our understanding of it has done, but it is to say that it has been a part of Christian history from the point at which there is any such thing.

The Fathers on the Papacy: Tertullian

04 Sunday Jun 2017

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An examination of the name lists in the NT will reveal that Peter is most often at the head of them; another sign that he was considered the leader. But we should take care here; leader does not mean supreme autocrat. Language which sees him as the ‘prince’ of the Apostles can seriously mislead. We see from Acts that St James presided over the Council of Jerusalem, and we can see from Paul that whilst Peter was ‘one of the pillars’ he was not the sole one. The other Apostles had also been given the power to bind and loose, and whilst it seems that Peter’s pre-eminence was acknowledged, it would be a mistake to see him as in any sense of the word ‘a prince’.

Was Peter ever in Rome? Well, the tradition is that he was crucified there in Nero’s time, and it would have been difficult for that to have happened had he not set foot in the place. Let us turn to see what the Fathers say. I will add here that I am no fan of florilegia which simply cherry-pick quotations, and I shall, even at the risk of a couple of more posts, try not to do that.

Tertullian (150-220), writing in his Prescription Against Heretics: “Was anything withheld from the knowledge of Peter, who is called ‘the rock on which the church should be built’ … ?” Tertullian wrote the Prescription c. A.D. 199, during the orthodox period of his life. Here, he equates the “rock” in question to the Apostle Peter. Like other Fathers he believes in Apostolic succession and in the authority of Rome. But one might easily say that what concerns Tertullian is the preservation of the truth of the gospel, not the establishment of a permanent Roman see with all the authority of an apostolic office. For example, according to Tertullian, Peter ordained Clement to succeed him as bishop of Rome and the teachings of Clement may be trusted because he received his teaching from the Apostle Peter himself. But does that mean that Clement inherited Peter’s apostolic office, or his position as “rock”? If it doesn’t, then it is hard to see why Tertullian attaches such importance to Clement receiving his teaching from Peter; if he did not succeed Peter, why bother to mention it?

In his On Modesty, which was written when he had become a Montanist, Tertullian rejects the claims of the Pope, Callistus in terms which show us what those claims were as early as the second century:

‘But,’ you say ‘the Church has the power of forgiving sins.’ This I acknowledge and adjure more (than you; I) who have the Paraclete Himself in the persons of the new prophets… . I now inquire into your opinion, (to see) from what source you usurp this right to ‘the Church.’ If, because the Lord has said to Peter, ‘Upon this rock will I build My Church,’ ‘to thee have I given the keys of the heavenly kingdom;’ or, ‘Whatsoever thou shall have bound or loosed in earth, shall be bound or loosed in the heavens,’ you therefore presume that the power of binding and loosing has derived to you, that is, to every Church akin to Peter, what sort of man are you, subverting and wholly changing the manifest intention of the Lord, conferring (as that intention did) this (gift) personally upon Peter? ‘On thee,’ He says, ‘will I build My Church; ‘and I will give to thee the keys,’ not to the Church; and, ‘Whatsoever thou shall have loosed or bound,’ not what they shall have loosed or bound. For so withal the result teaches. In (Peter) himself the Church was reared; that is, through (Peter) himself; (Peter) himself essayed the key… . For in accordance with the person of Peter, it is to spiritual men that this power will certainly appertain, either to an apostle or else to a prophet… . and thus from that time forward, every number (of persons) who may have combined together into this faith is accounted ‘a Church’ from the Author and Consecrator (of the Church). And accordingly ‘the Church,’ it is true, will forgive sins: but (it will be) the Church of the Spirit, by means of a spiritual man; not the Church which consists of a number of bishops.

So, we see that when he was orthodox, Tertullian supported the claims of the Pope; when he was not, he quibbled. It was an early example of a pattern with a long history. But it ought to put an end to the idea that the Petrine claims in any way arose with Leo the Great.

The Papal claims: an historical perspective

02 Friday Jun 2017

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Church/State, Early Church, Faith, Islam, Pope

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One of the many tragedies of Christian history is that the Papacy, which ought to be a source of unity, has so often been a point of division; indeed, what often began as internal quarrels have, too often, turned into a source of schism.

I was asked recently why, if he was such an important figure, St Peter failed to inform us of his unique position? Good question, to which the answer is clear – it was all there in Matthew’s Gospel. In his own letters, Peter is content to appeal to Apostolic authority and eye-witness testimony. But it is important to understand that just like the doctrines and dogma we have been examining lately, the position of the Pope developed.  We have been examining how the early Christians developed their understanding of the nature of Christ, and of the Trinity, so it should come as no surprise that the same was true when it came to the office of the Pope.

So, just as with the Trinity, the natures of Christ, and the Theotokos, so too with the purpose of the promise given to Peter; these things the Church worked out as it came to have need of them. We cannot know why Jesus did not just write everything down in a book, but he did not; he founded a Church. Justr as it was left to that Church to tell us what the Canon of Scripture was, so it was left to it to work out the implications of the Petrine promise in Matthew’s Gospel.

It has been, then, only as problems arose in certain areas that the Church has come to need to define things. That is as true of the Papacy as anything else. A ‘primacy of honour’ was always acknowledged, but working out what it meant in practice was not easy, as successive posts here tried to show.

It is clear that of the five ancient Patriarchal Sees, the three most important were Rome, Alexandria and Constantinople. It is interesting that the two cities where we know from Scripture that Peter lived, Jerusalem and Antioch, never mounted the sort of claims made by Rome, where tradition has it that Peter was martyred, and where his tomb can be seen. Alexandria, as befitted the See of St Mark (the interpreter of Peter) never questioned Rome’s primacy; that was reserved for Constantinople, whose claims were to be second to Rome, and were based entirely on its position as the imperial capital.

We have seen that Leo was basing his claims for the powers of his office on Peter’s position as the leader of the Apostles, and that that had nothing to do with Rome being an imperial city; the oft-touted notion that Roman Catholicism was ‘Roman State run religion’ (to quote Bosco) could not be wider of the mark; it had nothing to do with the Roman empire, and everything to do with trying to establish a position for the Church which made it as independent of State control as possible. For 1000 years after the death of St Leo the Great, Popes struggled to assert their independence from State control.

The greatest boost to the understanding of the development of the position of the Papacy came with the expansion of Islam: with Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria all under Muslim control by the end of the sixth century, only Rome and Constantinople were left; after 1453 there was only Rome. The need for some central authority to pronounce with authority on vexing matters of doctrine and dogma did not end with the fall of the other Patriarchal Sees, and Rome found itself in a situation where it was the last one standing. The question of whether Rome has always used its position wisely is an open one, and it would be hard to say the answer was yes. But that is quite separate from the developing understanding of the office, which held that in matters of faith and doctrine the Pope was protected from error.

The authority of the Bishop of Rome

19 Friday May 2017

Posted by in Early Church, Faith, Pope

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Before Leo had rejected the canon, both the Emperor Marcion, and the Patriarch of Constantinople, Anatolius, had written to him in conciliatory tones. Marcion hoped (Leo, Epistles CII) that now Rome’s doctrinal position had triumphed, Chalcedon could be ratified. Anatolius went along the same line in another December letter (Price III pp. 138-142) in which he tried to convince Leo that his delegates had reported things incorrectly and stated clearly they had not simply sent him the canon as a conciliatory measure but for his approval:

This decree has been transmitted to your sacredness by the holy council and by us in order to receive from you approval and confirmation.
He went on the ‘beg’ him to do so so that ‘everything that was transacted in writing at this holy and ecumenical council’ could then be enacted. This was not the language even of primus inter pares – it was language used to a primus. But as we have seen, Leo was not mollified and would not give his approval. He told the Empress Pulcheria that delighted though he was that the Council had proclaimed orthodoxy, he was saddened that an attempt had been made to add to the canons of Nicaea for no aim higher than political advantage.

Leo’s claims were based on Tradition and Apostolicity, he could not, and did not yield them.  On 21 March 453, with parts of Palestine claiming Chalcedon was not legitimate because Leo had not ratified it, Leo confirmed (Ep. 114.2) that he agreed to everything at Chalcedon which did not contravene Nicaea. Letter 116 to the empress makes the same point, adding:

Let vicious ambition covet nothing belonging to another, nor let anyone seek his own increase through injuring another, for however much vainglorious pride builds on extorted assent and thinks that its depredations can be strengthened through talking of councils, whatever differs from the canons of the aforesaid fathers [Nicaea] will be null and void.

Leo’s ratification of the Council was thought necessary by all concerned, and given the nature of the crisis in Egypt and Palestine, no one mentioned Canon 28, although clearly Leo was not ratifying it; Rome did not do so until the thirteenth century.

Leo’s claims were well-known and public; they were not contested by Constantinople. All men knew what it meant for Peter to speak through Leo. He spoke through no other Bishop. No other Bishop stood at the head of the others. No other Bishop’s ratification was sought in the way Leo’s was. Once can debate until well after the cows have come home what later men later claimed these things meant; contemporaries seem to have been clear enough. Lack of clarity came only when men desired it – as is so often the case.

Loose talk about Caesaro-Papism conceals a harsh reality. In Constantinople the Patriarch owed the claims he made in 451 to the fact he was the Imperial Patriarch; Church and State were one. The Roman Empire was effectively a theocracy – at Constantinople. Rome, deserted by the imperial bureaucracy, threatened by Huns, and already much reduced in population, owed its claims solely to Apostolicity. The odd thing about the anti-Catholic charge that Catholicism is a ‘Roman State religion’ is its historical ignorance. Imperial authority lay at Constantinople from the mid fourth century to the fifteenth century, and Rome, otherwise a political backwater, owed its authority not to the State, but to its Apostolic foundation on St Peter. Far from being s ‘State run’ religion, Roman Catholicism resisted all attempts by the Empire, and later by kingdoms in the West, to assert State power over the Church. A little historical knowledge would not come amiss in those who level the charge that the Catholic Church is a ‘Roman state run religion’; nothing could be further from the truth.

The practicalities of resisting State power were never less than problematic. It might have been Stalin who famously asked ‘how many divisions has the Pope?’, but he was hardly the first. From Justinian through to Hitler, powerful men would threaten the Pope, even hold him hostage. The Popes would create their own State for safety and invent Western diplomacy to protect it. Whatever the modalities, the reasoning was consistent – Peter spoke through the Pope and against that Rock not even the Gates of Hell would prevail. Nor have they, and nor will they. Empires rise and fall, Great Powers wax and wane, powerful men strut and fret their hour upon the stage, and Schisms come and multiply; but in the Eternal City, on the Rock of Peter, his successor remains; history affords no other example of such longevity. The works of human hand do not endure in this fashion; the work of God does.

Rome vs Constantinople

18 Thursday May 2017

Posted by in Faith, Pope

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The Chalcedonian Fathers explained Canon 28 to Leo as follows:

And we further inform you that we have decided on other things also for the good management and stability of church matters, being persuaded that your holiness will accept and ratify them, when you are told. The long prevailing custom, which the holy Church of God at Constantinople had of ordaining metropolitans for the provinces of Asia, Pontus and Thrace, we have now ratified by the votes of the Synod, not so much by way of conferring a privilege on the See of Constantinople as to provide for the good government of those cities, because of the frequent disorders that arise on the death of their bishops, both clergy and laity being then without a leader and disturbing church order. …

We have ratified also the canon of the 150 holy Fathers who met at Constantinople in the time of the great Theodosius of holy memory, which ordains that after your most holy and Apostolic See, the See of Constantinople shall take precedence, being placed second: for we are persuaded that with your usual care for others you have often extended that Apostolic prestige which belongs to you, to the church in Constantinople also, by virtue of your great disinterestedness in sharing all your own good things with your spiritual kinsfolk. Accordingly vouchsafe most holy and blessed father to accept as your own wish, and as conducing to good government the things which we have resolved on for the removal of all confusion and the confirmation of church order

If this sounds as though the assembled Fathers were nervous about Leo’s reaction, it was because they were. His delegates at Chalcedon had opposed the canon, saying that only the Pope could confer such precedence. The Fathers were, they told Leo, confident that they were acting as he would have wanted. They could not have been more mistaken. Leo’s reaction, a letter to the Emperor Marcian, written on 22 May 452 may be seen in full here. The parts most relevant to our argument are as follows:

Let the city of Constantinople have, as we desire, its high rank, and under the protection of God’s right hand, long enjoy your clemency’s rule. Yet things secular stand on a different basis from things divine: and there can be no sure building save on that rock which the Lord has laid for a foundation.  …….

For the privileges of the churches determined by the canons of the holy Fathers, and fixed by the decrees of the Nicene Synod, cannot be overthrown by any unscrupulous act, nor disturbed by any innovation. And in the faithful execution of this task by the aid of Christ I am bound to display an unflinching devotion; for it is a charge entrusted to me, and it tends to my condemnation if the rules sanctioned by the Fathers and drawn up under the guidance of God’s Spirit at the Synod of Nicæa for the government of the whole Church are violated with my connivance (which God forbid), and if the wishes of a single brother have more weight with me than the common good of the Lord’s whole house.

St. Peter had founded Rome and Antioch, St. Mark, Alexandria; Constantinople owed its foundation to the Emperor, no Apostle had founded it, and any priority it claimed could not be justified on the grounds the other Sees used. Leo’s own representatives, who had not been present when the canon was passed, had protested:

The apostolic see ought not to be humiliated in our presence, and therefore we ask your sublimity to order that whatever was transacted yesterday in our absence in prejudice of the canons or rules be nullified. But if otherwise, let our formal objection be recorded in the minutes, so that we may know what we ought to report to the apostolic man the pope of the universal church, so that he may pass sentence on either the insult to his see or the overturning of the canon. (Price and Gaddis, Acts of Chalcedon, III, p. 91]

Neither tradition, nor apostolic authority sanctioned the novelty that was Canon 28. Its sole basis in ‘tradition’ was canon 8 of Constantinople 381. But this canon was controversial at Rome, and in the form it was recorded at Chalcedon in canon 28 it was also inaccurate, as the Pope’s delegate, Paschasinus pointed out in the sixteenth session. There is a difference between the Greek and Latin versions of the Acta, and since the original is no longer extant, we cannot tell which version is more accurate.

The Latin version asserts Roman primacy, the Greek version omits this. In contemporary terms this did not matter since what was actually at issue was not the relative standing of the two sees but Constantinople’s jurisdiction in the east. It was only later that this difference was elevated to one of importance

But, as we have seen, it did not matter which version was advanced, the one in the canon itself or the conciliatory one put to Leo, he was having none of it because it infringed his unique apostolic privilege. There is no hyperbole, no poetic language – and no chance of misunderstanding. Leo was not having the ancient tradition of the Church usurped by the ambitions of the Imperial city. There was no sure foundation except the rock upon which Christ had built his Church. If ‘Peter speaks through Leo’ meant anything, it meant that Leo spoke with the authority of St Peter himself; not jumped-up Patriarch at Constantinople was going to change that at the best of an Emperor. Christ had spoken, Leo was defending what he had inherited; his successors would do the same.