How Biblical and Ancient is the Papacy?

Alpha and Omega Ministries presents The Great Debate 3. How Biblical and Ancient is the Papacy? When Roman Catholics and Protestants debate, the issue always ends up coming to the matter of authority.

Both sides hold to an ultimate authority. The Protestant believes in sola scriptura, the biblical truth that the Bible is the sole infallible rule of faith for the Church. The Roman Catholic, however, rejects sola scriptura.

They hold to what they call a tripartite form of authority, made up of Scripture, Tradition, and Church. Yet in reality, Rome holds to its own version of sola scriptura, that being sola ecclesia. That is, that the Church is the ultimate infallible authority for Rome.

And Roman authority is nowhere seen more clearly than in the office of the Pope, the Roman papacy. The Great Debate 3 focuses upon the question, the papacy, how biblical and how ancient? We invite you to listen carefully to the following exchange between two scholars coming from two very different positions.

You are the judge of the debate. It was presented so that you and others like you can benefit, learn, and most importantly, decide for yourself concerning the claims of the Roman Church. If you'd like to contact Alpha and Omega Ministries, you may do so by writing us at P .O. Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069.

Or you can find us on the internet at www .aomin .org, that's www .aomin .org. And now, The Great Debate 3.

The Church as the Pillar and Foundation of the Truth

Thank you all very much for your warm welcome. The basis of the Catholic faith is in Jesus Christ. What we profess every Sunday except Easter Sunday is our creed, which is belief in the one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the salvation that Jesus Christ has won for us by being God incarnate, who died on the cross and was raised in glory, ascended to the right hand, and will come again to judge the living and the dead.

The only reason that we don't profess this faith on Easter Sunday is because we renew our baptismal vows, which most of us Catholics took as babies, but each year we renew them because we want to make that commitment, not just a statement, but we want to say, I do to each part of our creed.

And that we want to affirm that as most important in the Christian faith. But along with our faith in God the Father and Jesus Christ and his saving work, and in the Holy Spirit who proceeds from them, we also profess faith in the one holy Catholic and apostolic church.

And tonight, it's not so much a debate on the work of Christ to redeem the human race, but rather some aspects of the church in particular dealing with the papacy. To understand this, we must start off with the foundation of the church itself.

In 1st Timothy chapter 3 verse 15, St. Paul tells Holy Timothy that even if he has to delay, he wants them to know how necessary, how it is necessary to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and the bulwark of the truth.

And then he continues in verse 16 with that marvelous proclamation of faith about Christ who appeared in the flesh, was justified in the spirit, was seen by the angels, was preached among the Gentiles, was believed in the world, and was taken up in glory.

And while the church is proclaimed here in Scripture as the pillar and the bulwark of the truth, it is that truth of Jesus Christ which we proclaim. But we also see that the church, as is its structure, in a variety of ways, in 1st Corinthians certainly, Jesus Christ is called the foundation of the church.

But St. Paul laid and then Apollos built upon it. But in Ephesians chapter 2 verse 19, we see that therefore you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but fellow citizens of the saints and householders of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets.

Jesus Christ is its keystone. I believe that he has in mind the western wall of the Temple Mount, which Herod the Great had built to protect the mountain and make square it off. And in the center of that big wall, we can't see it, it's kind of blocked off now by buildings, but if you go inside the tunnel you can see two large 500-ton stones, which Herod put there so that in earthquakes they would absorb the pressure.

And I often think that St. Paul had that in mind. Jesus Christ is that keystone. He takes all the pressure of the church. But just like that stone is on the foundation of other stones, Jesus, the keystone here, is presented in this new temple of God, this holy temple to the Lord, as being built on the foundation of the prophets and the apostles.

And he says that you are also being built together into a dwelling place of God in the spirit, that we are built on top of that foundation of the apostles. And we see the same thing put in more of an image in Revelation chapter 21, verses 12 -14.

That marvelous description of that new and heavenly Jerusalem for which every single one of us Christians longs. So that the 12 foundation courses of stone have the names of the 12 apostles on them, another image of the same thing that St. Paul says in Ephesians 2.

And we also proclaim as Catholics, along with blessed Paul, in Ephesians chapter 4, when he says that we must be eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, and you are called in one hope of your call.

You have one faith, one God, one baptism, one God and father of all. That unity, all that faith, that one body of Christ, which is the church, that is all built on the foundation of the holy apostles.

And yet, while it is that our Lord has founded the church as he came to do, according to the scriptures, and that he's made the church the bulwark and pillar of truth, built on these 12 apostles, not on 12 ideas, on these 12 men.

One of whom, of course, fell away but was replaced by Matthias. And as a result, this is the basis of Christian belief. The Christian church has to be based on what these men gave us. We know nothing else of Christ except from them.

Now, this does not exclude knowing, believing, and teaching the fundamental truth about Jesus Christ. He is the truth. And all truth has its reality in him. And we must proclaim those truths of the gospel.

We must call all people to have salvation in him because there is no other name by which men can be saved. No one can come to the Father except through Jesus, as he himself says in John 14. And that we believe these apostles and we accept them as the foundations of the church because they are witnesses to all that Jesus did, from the baptism by John to the resurrection and the ascension, as Blessed Peter says in Acts chapter 1, verses 21 to 22.

And not only is their testimony confirmed in their words, but in their actions and in their blood. They preferred death rather than change their commitment and their love of Jesus Christ, not dead and in a tomb, but raised up in glory and ascended to the right hand of the Father.

No matter where they went, they preached the same gospel, they taught the same truth, the same Jesus Christ, and they died for his sake. And they left this testimony, as we see in 2 Thessalonians 2, verse 15, in word and letter.

Not only St. Paul left it in word and in letter, but so did they. St. John himself mentions in the gospel, as he concludes it, that there are many other things that Jesus said that could not be written in the book.

And yet we know of many of these, we know everything that we needed to know because of what Jesus gave to them, and because scripture says it, we accept the tradition, whether it be written, whether it be oral.

So that the scriptures that they have left us are in the inerrant, spirit-inspired word of God, but also so is the oral tradition by which we know those scriptures and everything else which they taught us.

Peter, the Rock, and the Keys of the Kingdom

Now, it is Jesus Christ himself who has chosen St. Peter to be the chief of those apostles upon whom he built his church as its foundation, with himself as the cornerstone. And he especially designates blessed Peter as the rock, as his name itself means rock, on whom he would build the church.

In John chapter 1, verse 42, after Holy Andrew led his brother Simon Peter to Jesus, Jesus said, you, Simon, son of John, you will be called Kephas, which is translated as Petros. Jesus made a promise.

Jesus does not lie about his promises. And he keeps that promise, that he will be called Kephas. We see that fulfilled, not mentioned again in the Gospel of John, but because we believe that every word of God is inspired by the Holy Spirit and is therefore the inerrant truth.

In Matthew 16, verses 13 to 19, we see how it is that our Lord fulfills the promise mentioned in John 1, 42. And I love to notice this with a former New Yorker, not a resident of New York, not a native, of course.

He's a native of my own home, Illinois. But Archbishop Sheen used to love this text in Matthew 16, verse 13. Jesus came to the district of Caesarea Philippi. He asked his disciples, saying, who do men say the Son of Man is?

Archbishop Sheen used to say that was the democratic approach to theology. And all their answers are wrong. Some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, some say Jeremiah, one of the prophets. They're always wrong.

You can't do democracy to come to the truth in theology any more than you can vote on mathematics. It's true or not. Then he said to them, sort of a committee approach, who do you say I am? But it's Simon Peter who answers, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Now we have to stop there as this being crucial. Because this is the faith that all Christians must proclaim, that Jesus Christ is just that. Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the Christ, he's the Son of the living God.

He's not just a man, he is God made man. And I don't know, as a matter of fact, I suspect that Simon Peter hardly understood what he said. But he said it and it was true. And this is still the gospel we must proclaim about Jesus Christ and nothing less.

And it is precisely this content of who Jesus is that is determinative for the church. This is where the church has its meaning because the church is the bride of Christ. And without her groom, she's a widow or worse.

We have to have Christ as the center, the Son of God. But secondly, we notice from what Jesus says here, a most basic truth. Where Jesus responds, blessed are you Simon, son of John. Because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in the heavens.

We have to have the grace of faith to believe this. As blessed Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12, verse 3,. No one can say Jesus is Lord unless the Holy Spirit gives it to him. We need the grace of God. We need God inspiring us to understand and to say these with faith.

So also did Peter. And this too is the basis of our Catholic faith and of the faith of other Christians. We need God to make it possible to give us the grace to be able to have faith. Along with that we see that next, that it's precisely Jesus Christ's recognition of the divine origin of Peter's statement of faith that he says this most important word for us in the point tonight.

And as for me, I say to you, and this is an emphatic I say to you, you singular. That you are Petros, you are Peter. And on this rock, this Petra, I will build my church. That this becomes the key of our Lord's teaching about Saint Peter.

This is why we Catholics look to him and his successors as having this importance. Not only as Peter's prominence among the apostles who are the very foundation of the church, but even to this day. Peter and his successors, the bishops of Rome, have this tremendous authority.

Peter is called Petros. Again, as Saint John explained, that's the translation of Kepha, rock. Aramaic word. There's only one other person known from about 400 BC who has had this name. A man who lived in Elephantine in Egypt.

It's mentioned on a marriage contract. Other than that, we don't know anybody else had this name. And this, 400 years later, is something quite distinctive to be called Kepha, rock. And, of course, we know the arguments.

We may hear more about it tonight. That it says, you are Petros, and on this Petra, I'll build my church. It's, you know, calling Peter a Petra would have been something of a faux pas. It would be like calling somebody Rockette instead of Rocky.

New Yorkers would understand that difference. But in Aramaic, though the gospel, of course, is written in Greek. Scholars, Catholic and Protestant alike, recognize that behind it is an Aramaic forelog, an Aramaic saying of our Lord, the language of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And that it works out much better in the pun there. So that you are Kepha, and on this Kepha, I'll build my church. So this is a start. But it's not all that our Lord says. He says that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

I go frequently to Caesarea Philippi in the Holy Land. And in the cliff behind, about 500 feet long, a couple hundred feet high, you see the city is built right against this cliff. But our Lord has this visual image of this huge cliff of rock, solid rock.

And there aren't many others around it. The rest of the hills from Mount Hermon slope down. But there at Caesarea is this cliff. And at the base of the cliff is a spring, one of the three springs of the Jordan.

And in ancient times it was called the Sha 'arei Sha 'ol, the gates of Hades, the gates of hell. And just as the gates of hell, the name of that spring, could not prevail against that cliff, just as hell cannot prevail against the church.

Not because we're great. As a matter of fact, we can certainly go through the history of Catholicism, and the history of the papacy, the history of St. Peter himself, and see that there is anything but immaculately conceived people who hold those offices.

Sinners hold them. It's the only kind God can find anymore. They don't make the other kind. So there are sinners, and there are lots of them. Despite that, the gates of hell will not prevail against his church, as it continues to grow through all ages.

And, again, never ever is it because we're great, it's because of Christ's promise. That's the basis. And he also goes on to say, as is known to anybody who tells any jokes about heaven, I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

St. Peter usually is the one in the joke. And the sense of being able to have keys is a sign of authority doubling. If you have keys, it means you can open or you can shut. But also, in light of Isaiah chapter 22, that giving keys was a sign of being prime minister in the ancient kingdom of Judah.

And, as a result, a similar symbol is here where St. Peter is not the king. He is not the invisible head of the church and the authority of the church at its root. That's Jesus Christ. He's the king. But as prime minister, he stands in his place.

And, furthermore, besides having the keys of the kingdom of heaven, he says, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in the heavens and whatever you loose on the earth will be loosed in the heavens. So that our Lord promises to back up his decision.

And we'll get to that with some points on that in a bit. But it's important for us to understand this at the outset, biblically. We Catholics may not have chosen St. Peter. There's even another joke that goes around that analyzes each one of the disciples.

Thomas is not to be trusted. He doubts a lot. Peter denies and all these other things. The most promising disciple by the standards of business management would probably have been Judas Iscariot. I'm glad that we weren't in charge.

We have enough problems. And it is this man that Jesus makes the rock upon which he builds his church. When I hear that, I cannot help but think back on Matthew chapter 7, where our Lord says that if anyone who listens to his words and does them is like the wise man who built his house on the rock.

And that when the rain and the storm came, it would not fall. How much more Jesus Christ would build on a rock to make sure that his house, the church, would not fall. Is he less clever than we? I don't think so.

And if for us to obey his word gives us a solid rock, which by the way is the word Petra, then how much more will he build on solid rock? Luke chapter 22 verses 31 to 32 shows us that our Lord Jesus Christ prays.

He is the mediator between us and God and he prays for us. And his task to this day is to pray perpetually, forever, as he stands at the right hand of the Father interceding for us. But we see it here at the Last Supper.

Not only in Luke's gospel, but in John 17, a long prayer of our Savior. And in many other times our Lord has prayed. But here he prays, not for the unity of the church as he does later in the Last Supper in John 17, but here Jesus prays that Peter's faith might not fail.

And then when he turns back, he tells Peter, strengthen your brethren. Here we see that our Lord knows that Peter's faith might fail. As a matter of fact, he's well aware that he'll have to repent. But he knows that when he does repent, when he does turn around, that he can command him, and it's used singular, to take care and to strengthen his brothers.

And I find it interesting, as a matter of fact, most salutary, that when he prays, it is right after our Lord has told him that the apostles, along with blessed Peter, will sit on thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel.

The tremendous authority he's giving to them. But he also knows that they need one to serve them as a leader, to strengthen them in their faith. Finally, John chapter 21, verses 15 to 19. Here we see that Jesus Christ, our Lord, has called his disciples to haul in the net that was filled with 153 fish.

Not necessarily because it's a symbol of anything, but any good fisherman remembers a catch like that. I know my biggest fish. And he has already bread and fish cooking on the fire. And at that charcoal fire, three times he reconciles Peter, who had denied him at the charcoal fire in the house of Caiaphas.

And he reconciles the one who said, I don't know the man. I don't know the man. I tell you I don't know the man. He reconciles that same St. Peter. St. Peter, do you love me? Feed my lambs. Peter, do you love me?

Shepherd my sheep. Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep. And singles him out for this ministry of leading. And again, just as our Lord who told us to build on solid rock our faith by listening and doing his words in Matthew 7, here we see Jesus Christ, who is the good shepherd, who knows his sheep and his sheep know him, saying to Peter, feed my lambs, my sheep, and shepherd them.

The good shepherd would not leave us in the hands of a hireling, but put us in the hands of another good shepherd. Now, there are some things I want to make clear about what I am not about to defend. I will not stand here to explain or to approve of.

A, I will not support the idea that the popes are impeccable. That is, that they are without sin. One of the great joys for me is doing a lot of reading to prepare for this debate over the last few months.

And I spend a lot of time reading church history. And there are a lot of scoundrels and sinners. All of them. All of them. It's the only kind our Lord can find. So, we know that popes sin, beginning with St. Peter.

And, as a matter of fact, as I once said to my deceased, but very good friend, much beloved friend, Dr. Walter Martin, even Dante put some popes in his inferno. He had them in heaven, too. Secondly, I will not defend the idea that every papal statement is infallible.

It's not. As a matter of fact, Wilfred Ward and Louis Vuillot both wanted to have this defined. That was what they were searching for. That's one of the reasons that the Vatican Council defined papal infallibility.

There were some people, the neo-Ultramontanists, this new Ultramontane attitude that wanted to have everything the popes said be infallible. That's not what we believe. That's not what we teach. And this was rejected by Vatican I.

Thirdly, I will not defend the idea that the popes are oracular. That they are inspired to give new doctrines. The Vatican Council I explicitly said that that is not what they do. They don't have new inspirations for new revelations.

Infallibility does not mean that they can define new revelations, but rather that they are there to defend what Christ has left the apostles, who are the foundation of the church. Fourthly, that since the popes are infallible, that they don't need to convene councils or synods.

I'm not going to defend that. Of course they need to convene councils and synods. Every husband is the head of his family. But every husband who refuses to listen to his wife is a fool. Is that not right, ladies?

Of course you can be the leader, but you need to consult and learn what the problem is and what the issues are. And this is related to another point that I will not defend, that the popes know everything.

Archbishop Sheen used to tell the story of the Jewish boy and the Catholic boy who argued, my rabbi is smarter than your priest. No, my priest is smarter than your rabbi. And they went back and forth.

Finally the Jewish kid said, okay, maybe your priest is smarter, but it's because you tell him everything. They made a confession. Whereas we don't say that the pope knows it all. And some of the problems that we'll come up with, I'm sure, Tom McPeak in the papacy, because they don't know it all, they are not omniscient.

God is omniscient, not the pope. That is not what we teach. That is not what we believe. I will not defend the idea that the pope knows everything. That's why he needs to have councils and synods. And that when he does teach officially, that he likes to do it.

The history shows that the popes prefer to teach with the councils. Popes, as a matter of fact, on this point of not being omniscient, popes like all of us are born ignorant. Popes have to study and learn, which they do more or less.

And popes can be and have been deceived and lied to. Seventh, I will not defend the idea that papal infallity precludes freedom of speech at ecumenical councils. That's not true. Even when popes like Pope Leo the Great, Pope Leo I, sent his tome to the Council of Chalcedon, or Pope Agathos sent his letter to the Third Council of Constantinople.

Those letters don't mean that all discussion has to stop. Pope speak is here. That is not it at all. That conversation and discussion can take place and need to take place. Because the bishops themselves are also successors of the apostles.

The same apostles whom our Lord said in Matthew chapter 18, that they have the authority to bind and to loose. And that they who are the successors of those apostles who are the foundation stones of the church, those bishops also have much to say and wisdom to give.

My heartbreak over the separation of the Eastern Orthodox from the Catholics is that we miss them. The way someone who's had surgery would miss a left lung. I hate to see that they're not with us. Because we have so much wisdom to learn with them and of course share with them.

Finally, I will not defend the idea that the pope's infallibility is personal in the sense that it refers to his personal private opinions. That's not what infallibility means. It has nothing to do with the pope's private thoughts or ideas.

It is not anything to do about his knowledge on topics or subjects not related to faith and morals. And it's not something that he might write to a friend or say to an individual in conversation. Those are not part of infallibility.

So those are things I will not defend because that's not what Catholics believe. What I will defend is two things. First of all, the primacy of the papacy. This I will defend, happily. That this means that the Roman pontiff is a successor of St. Peter who ministered and was martyred in Rome and that his sea has its successors.

We don't see the New Testament tell us about who succeeded St. Peter. As a matter of fact, you don't see any event in the New Testament as far as I know past the mid -60s. The last thing to be written I know would be St. John but he only talks up to the resurrection of our Lord.

And we don't see Acts of the Apostles going past 62. St. Peter didn't die until maybe 65 or 67 even. So it just doesn't record it. But we do see that St. Paul establishes people like Timothy to continue the ministry of bishop and that other seas are given bishops by St. Paul in Acts of the Apostles and he gives instructions on establishing bishops and priests and deacons.

And presbyter is, of course, the Greek word that is the basis of our English word priest through the German word priester. And so that these ministries are continued and there's no reason to expect that the ministry and the primacy of St. Peter would stop with him because the gates of hell have not stopped trying to attack the church of Christ.

And as long as the gates of hell oppose his church and oppose his truth Christ will not let them prevail and that that ministry of Peter will continue and will do so in his successors, the bishops of Rome.

So, of course, the New Testament doesn't describe it. They stopped writing before he passed on and then Linus became the next bishop. But we do see that in the histories of the church like Eusebius or in Irenaeus of Lyon that the succession of the Seal of Peter is described as part of the tradition of the church and that his power of jurisdiction is truly episcopal.

It is immediate. It's over all of the other rites, R-I-T-E-S. In the Catholic Church, we're not all Roman Catholic. In the sense of being Latin Catholic. We also have Greek Catholics, Byzantine Catholics, and Chaldean Catholics and Melkite Rite and Maronite Rite.

I'm privileged to be able to celebrate Holy Mass with the Maronites because I know some Arabic. And so, you know, there are many other rites but he has authority over all the rites of the Eastern churches and West and he has immediate power over all the pastors, the faithful, both individually and collectively.

And so this is a key part of his ministry. But I also will defend his infallibility. A, because Jesus Christ has promised to the church, the Holy Spirit, the Paraplete, the Spirit of Truth that he will be beside and inside the members of the church according to John 14, verses 16 and 17.

The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth whom the Father will give in the name of Jesus will teach you all things, remind you of all things that Jesus said in John 14, 25 and 26. And that the Paraplete whom Jesus will send from the Father, the Spirit of Truth is given to the disciples to be able to be witnesses.

And he gives that same Holy Spirit in a special way because of the special promise to Peter so that he can strengthen his brethren, so he can have the keys of the kingdom of heaven so that he can bind and he can loose.

And by infallibility, we have to keep in mind specifically what we Catholics mean. First, on the basis not of his great personal characteristics or because the choice of the church but because Jesus Christ singled him out in recognizing that the Father gave the revelation to Peter.

Jesus chose Peter for these gifts to have the keys to binding and loosing and to be the rock. Secondly, that this gift of infallibility is only in operation when he speaks ex cathedra which means when he speaks in the discharge of his office of pastor and doctor of all Christians by virtue of his apostolic authority.

Then he must teach it to the whole church, not to an individual, not to a part of the church but it's only infallible when he teaches it to the whole church. Then he has to be defining a doctrine of faith and morals and nothing else to be held by the universal church.

And that it is God's divine assistance by the Holy Spirit that makes this gift possible and effective in our church. For this I give great thanks to God.

Please turn your tape to side two.

The Papacy as a Claim of Biblical and Ancient Authority

It is truly a pleasure to be with you this evening. I must admit it seems somewhat unfair, however, I must apologize to Father Pacwa. I was looking out the window there and someone, I don't know who would have done this, Father Pacwa, planted thousands of tulips right outside the window.

And it really seems very unfair. And the non-reformed amongst you are going, what is he talking about? I am very honored to have the opportunity of engaging in this debate this evening. Father Pacwa and I debated twice in January of 1991 on the mass and on justification in San Diego.

I've done many debates since then, but in all of those times I must admit that of all those debates, the ones I enjoyed the most, the ones I feel where the audience was most blessed because of the clarity of the presentations were the two that I did with Mitch Pacwa.

We are not up here this evening for a fashion show or a talent show, though I bet you he actually likes my tie and wishes he could wear one. We're not here to impress you with our oratory skills. In fact, I have mentioned as I've been speaking around Long Island for the past week, I truly hope that it is not Mitch Pacwa and James White that you hear this evening, but that you hear the issues.

And when you leave this room, you'll have the most information upon which to understand this extremely important topic. Now I'm going to try to focus our attention this evening. There's a great danger of information overload on this topic.

There is a great danger of confusion. There are two areas in our debate. Is the papacy biblical? That is, does the Bible lead us to believe that the Lord Jesus established a papacy by making Peter the head of the apostles, giving to him alone the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and establishing in him an office replete with successors in the bishops of Rome?

And the second area is, is it ancient? That is, when we examine the history of the ancient church, do we find that what modern Rome claims has always been the case? That the Pope in Rome is the vicar of Christ, the head of the universal church.

Now, Father Pacwa has mentioned the issue of infallibility. That was never mentioned to me. I consider that a separate issue. I'd be glad to debate that sometime. But I think you first have to debate whether the papacy actually exists before we can debate whether it's infallible or not.

And so I'm not going to be focusing on issues of infallibility, or Honorius, or Liberius, or any of that stuff. I'm going to be focusing upon these two areas. Is the papacy biblical, and is it ancient?

Now, first we need to focus upon Rome's claims for herself. Rome's claims for herself. Listen to the words of the great Vatican council from 1870. We, therefore, for the preservation, safekeeping, and increase of the Catholic flock with the approval of the sacred council, do judge it to be necessary to propose to the belief and acceptance of all the faithful in accordance with the ancient and constant faith of the universal church, the doctrine touching the institution, perpetuity, and nature of the sacred apostolic primacy.

Please note that the council claims that the teaching that it presents is in full accord with the ancient and constant faith of the universal church. I continue, quote,. We, therefore, teach and declare that, according to the testimony of the gospel, the primacy of jurisdiction over the universal church of God was immediately and directly promised and given to the blessed Peter the apostle by Christ the Lord.

For it was to Simon alone, to whom he had already said, Thou shalt be called Cephas, that the Lord, after the confession made by him, saying, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, address these solemn words.

Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood have not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven. 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.

And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever thou shalt bind on earth, it shall be bound also in heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.

It was upon Simon alone that Jesus, after his resurrection, bestowed the jurisdiction of chief pastor and ruler over all his fold in these words, Feed my lambs, feed my sheep. At open variance, please listen to this, at open variance with this clear doctrine of Holy Scripture as it has been ever understood by the Catholic Church, are the perverse opinions of those who while they distort the form of government established by Christ the Lord in his church, deny that Peter in his single person, preferably to all the other apostles, whether taken separately or together, was endowed by Christ with a true and proper primacy of jurisdiction, or of those who assert that the same primacy was not bestowed immediately and directly upon blessed Peter himself, but upon the church and through the church on Peter as her minister.

If anyone, therefore, shall say that blessed Peter the apostle was not appointed the prince of all the apostles and the visible head of the whole church militant, or that the same directly and immediately received from the same our Lord Jesus Christ a primacy of honor only and not of true and proper jurisdiction, let him be anathema, accursed.

Now this position remains valid to this day. The Second Vatican Council borrowed directly from the language of the first in saying, in order that the episcopate itself might be one and undivided, he placed blessed Peter over the other apostles and instituted in him a permanent and visible source and foundation of unity of faith and fellowship.

And all this teaching about the institution, the perpetuity, the force and reason for the sacred primacy of the Roman pontiff and his infallible teaching authority, this sacred synod again proposes to be firmly believed by all the faithful.

What does all this mean? Let me try to summarize it. The Roman Catholic Church claims that Peter is placed in a position of primacy by the Lord Jesus himself. This primacy is one of honor, jurisdiction, and rulership.

This primacy given to Peter is presented according to dogmatic teachings of the Church of Rome in Matthew 16, verses 18 -19, and John 21, verses 15 -17. According to Roman teaching, Peter is the rock of Matthew 16.