Back from San Diego – what a town – had a great time!
During the long flight there and back, I had the opportunity to review some material about the Pope’s “Petrine Doctrine” or “Apostolic Succession” claims that I touched upon in my last blog.
I read Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s (Pope Benedict) missive “Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today” and the chapter titled “The Primacy of Peter and Unity of the Church” or “Peter and Succession” that he wrote before becoming the Pope.
He starts out saying that the primacy (portrayed as the leader) of Peter in the New Testament is incontestable but nothing in the New Testament addresses the Petrine succession issue directly.
He weaves through a variety of arguments to prove his point including pointing out that the Popes were in place governing the Church before Scripture was Scripture. He means that the New Testament did not come into being as a recognized “holy” scripture (canon) till around the fourth or fifth century when Popes were already seated for some time.
The Popes and the Church had direct influence on which books made it into the New Testament so they ostensibly “created” the scripture being the “preeminent original authority of the Roman see and as a constitutive element” in the process of creating the New Testament.
I will confess that Benedict is not easy to understand especially when he writes in German and someone has to translate it into English.
He places emphasis on the fact that Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome as if that makes Rome somehow special and he ends with the notion that God must have meant the Catholic Church to be his Church because he has protected it and made it thrive throughout all these years; this in the face of bad Popes and bad Papal behavior, wars, schisms and on and on.
If you know anything about the history of the Papacy you will have to agree that it is a “miracle” that it has existed so long and has managed to retain its strength and significance.
Benedict assumes a lot in his arguments. Since we do not have a definitive and reliable secular historic account of what happened after Jesus was put to death, we have to assemble bits and pieces from many sources and come up with some plausible conclusions.
I personally think the Catholic Church has been living a lie and it knows it and has known it for a very long time. I am talking about the smart dudes at the top whose job is to defend the faith according to tradition come hell or high water or even in the face of evidence that may potentially expose their lie.
I read a book in the early 1970s that was very influential on my thinking. The book was THE WORD by Irving Wallace. It was fiction but very authentic when it came to detail. It was about the discovery of an ancient papyrus, a Gospel by James the brother of Jesus, dealing with the time of his ministry and the time after his death. The new Gospel basically contradicted the existing accounts of his life and therefore destroying the foundation that Christianity and Western Civilization were built on.
The story includes attempts to have this new information revealed to the world and obviously the desperate measures by the religious (Roman Church) to destroy it or at least prevent it from ever becoming public.
The book was fiction but I will try to show in the next blog where the premise of the fiction may absolutely be what really happened.
During the long flight there and back, I had the opportunity to review some material about the Pope’s “Petrine Doctrine” or “Apostolic Succession” claims that I touched upon in my last blog.
I read Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s (Pope Benedict) missive “Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today” and the chapter titled “The Primacy of Peter and Unity of the Church” or “Peter and Succession” that he wrote before becoming the Pope.
He starts out saying that the primacy (portrayed as the leader) of Peter in the New Testament is incontestable but nothing in the New Testament addresses the Petrine succession issue directly.
He weaves through a variety of arguments to prove his point including pointing out that the Popes were in place governing the Church before Scripture was Scripture. He means that the New Testament did not come into being as a recognized “holy” scripture (canon) till around the fourth or fifth century when Popes were already seated for some time.
The Popes and the Church had direct influence on which books made it into the New Testament so they ostensibly “created” the scripture being the “preeminent original authority of the Roman see and as a constitutive element” in the process of creating the New Testament.
I will confess that Benedict is not easy to understand especially when he writes in German and someone has to translate it into English.
He places emphasis on the fact that Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome as if that makes Rome somehow special and he ends with the notion that God must have meant the Catholic Church to be his Church because he has protected it and made it thrive throughout all these years; this in the face of bad Popes and bad Papal behavior, wars, schisms and on and on.
If you know anything about the history of the Papacy you will have to agree that it is a “miracle” that it has existed so long and has managed to retain its strength and significance.
Benedict assumes a lot in his arguments. Since we do not have a definitive and reliable secular historic account of what happened after Jesus was put to death, we have to assemble bits and pieces from many sources and come up with some plausible conclusions.
I personally think the Catholic Church has been living a lie and it knows it and has known it for a very long time. I am talking about the smart dudes at the top whose job is to defend the faith according to tradition come hell or high water or even in the face of evidence that may potentially expose their lie.
I read a book in the early 1970s that was very influential on my thinking. The book was THE WORD by Irving Wallace. It was fiction but very authentic when it came to detail. It was about the discovery of an ancient papyrus, a Gospel by James the brother of Jesus, dealing with the time of his ministry and the time after his death. The new Gospel basically contradicted the existing accounts of his life and therefore destroying the foundation that Christianity and Western Civilization were built on.
The story includes attempts to have this new information revealed to the world and obviously the desperate measures by the religious (Roman Church) to destroy it or at least prevent it from ever becoming public.
The book was fiction but I will try to show in the next blog where the premise of the fiction may absolutely be what really happened.
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