If No One is Pope, Everyone is Pope. Reflection on the Unitive Dimension -- Pope’s Office& Charism

Today we welcome Pope Francis to the United States. In so doing, we welcome more than just a popular public figure. We welcome someone whom the Lord prays for in a very special manner. Simon Peter and his successors enjoy a special charism to unite us, by the Lord’s prayer and grace. Let’s look at the scriptural foundation of this prayer and charism and see how essential the office of the pope is for us.

One day, near the final ascent to Jerusalem, the Lord warned of a fundamental problem that the Church would face: disunity. He turned to Simon Peter and said of the Twelve,

Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you all that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers (Luke 22:31-32).

To “sift like wheat” is to divide, and Satan would work hard at it in order to divide the apostles, and the Church with them. The debate about who was the greatest only served to show what a mess we human beings, when left to our own devices, will make of something.

Yes, Jesus plainly says that the devil is going to work hard to divide you. And Jesus’ plan is not to write a book and then just hope that everyone follows it and interprets it in the same way. His plan is not to pray that they all work out their differences.

Jesus’ plan is to pray for one man, Simon Peter. Now Peter is not invisible, nor do his words require interpretation. For if anyone wants to ask, “What do you mean by this?” he can just go right up to Peter and say, “Peter, what do you mean by this?” And the real Peter can answer.

So, the Lord’s plan for unity is to have one visible man; one living, breathing source of unity. The Lord will pray for him; thus we can be assured of right outcomes in matters of faith and morals if we follow Peter (and his successors, the popes) in matters that might divide us.

Peter fulfilled this task of unity well and consistently, as recounted in the Acts of the Apostles, the history of the early Church. He rose to settle the question of Judas’ successor (Acts 1:15ff). He preached the first public sermon (Acts 2). He was inspired in a dream and then baptized the first Gentile converts (Acts 10). He arose at the Council of Jerusalem to settle the dispute between the “Party of James” and Paul, Barnabas, and others about Gentile converts (Acts 15).

Yes, Peter strengthened and unified the brethren. This does not mean that he did so without sin. On one occasion St. Paul even had to rebuke Peter (cf Gal 2). For though Peter had taught correctly (that Gentiles were in without lots of customary Jewish observances), he did not fully live the teaching, drawing back from close association with the Gentiles in order to avoid offending Jewish Christians. We do not argue that Peter and his successors are sinless, only that in solemnly teaching on faith and morals they enjoy the prayer of the Lord and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, never to teach error and thus unite us in the truth.

Peter’s successors must unite us. Though they are not sinless men, we trust in God’s protection for their solemn teachings and thus preserve union through the prayers of the Lord for Peter.

And boy do we need it! We Catholics are a difficult lot. Shepherding Catholics is harder than herding cats. But thanks be to God for the Lord’s Prayer and for the Holy Spirit. If it were not for these, the Church wouldn’t have lasted twenty minutes! But here we are more than two thousand years later, not without our troubles and tensions, but here and fundamentally united (with legitimate diversity). There is just no other way to describe the fundamental unity of the Catholic Church for all these years than as a miracle.

Compare this to the Protestant denominations, which severed their ties to Simon Peter and have now divided and subdivided some thirty thousand times—sifted like wheat to say the least. And the divisions are not just about minor things like vestments or the type of music. The differences are about fundamental and essential doctrines such as how one is saved, if once saved means always saved, if Baptism is necessary, if adultery is grounds for divorce, whether homosexual acts are sinful, if abortion is wrong, whether there is a priesthood, and how critical texts of the Bible are to be understood. The moral and doctrinal divisions are deep and concern foundational matters related to salvation. So divided is Protestantism that many Evangelicals have more in common with Catholics (on the moral issues) than with the old, mainline Protestants.

The tragic disunity of Christendom is not entirely the fault of the Protestants. We Catholics contributed to breaks that happened in the 12^th century (with the Orthodox) and the 16^th century (with the Protestants).

But the disunity among Protestants does put to the lie that people can be united by a book or by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (apart from the authentic discernment of the Church’s magisterium).

The simple fact is that we have to have a pope. And if no one is pope, everyone is pope. Some may be dismissive of the need for “some pope” to tell them what to think. But truth be told, by not acknowledging some visible authority outside their own mind, they are merely appointing themselves as pope of their own little “denomination of one.”

The pope is not possessed of unlimited power. He is the Servant of Divine Revelation, not its source. He cannot overrule dogmatically defined faith that comes from Holy Scripture and Sacred Tradition. Neither does he micromanage every aspect of Church life. But in service of the Lord’s prayer and vision, Simon Peter and his successors strengthen and unite us by working with the bishops to resolve significant matters that arise in the Church in terms of discipline and the understanding of doctrine.

But without him, we are trouble, serious trouble—trouble times thirty thousand!

In welcoming Pope Francis, we welcome the visible source of our unity. It is not merely that Jorge Bergoglio is a good negotiator. Whatever personal skills he may have, our faith lies not in those skills but in the prayer of the Lord Jesus for him to strengthen and unify us. Unity is not always easy. To accept the leadership of another is, frankly, hard. But the unity the Lord intends us to have with Simon Peter is a lot easier than the endless divisions we create on our own, apart from the Lord’s Prayer for Peter.

Welcome Pope Francis today and pray for unity among all Catholics and Christians. We may have minor differences and even a few hurtful ones, but thank God we don’t have thirty thousand differences!

Amen to that. Kind of wish everyone would just take care of their own business and leave ours to us.

You could, possibly submit polite request to frequent religion forum posters here, such as the one who originated this thread, to not bring the material here to FreeRepublic, but instead have those items discussed elsewhere, if it belongs to only some select group.

Don't bring it to the discussion forum of FR, if discussion of the issues are troubling when not all agree with one's own preferred views. And don't whine and tell us here on FR that Roman "Catholic" issues are nobody's "business" except for Roman Catholics, not when there is the backdrop of that one church in particular claiming that they (and they only) are the 'one true church' and that all must submit to the bishop of Rome, etc.

As it is, this present bishop of the Church of Rome has been blending politics with religion, and presently, it appears the Vatican in wider sense has allowed whatever trappings of moral authority they may have to be enlisted in Statist environmentalism, which environmentalism in general (not just the Vatican-approved sort) is being leveraged by Statists to further their control over the lives of entire nations, the UN Agenda 21 crowd being among prime examples of what the mentality of 'control' is.

That makes it everyone "business", whether we like it or not.

Yet on the other hand, where else on the web can there be found a single forum which allows forum moderation which has produced the extent of openness to either side of this type intra-religious discussions of Christianity as is found here on FR?

That this forum is figuratively speaking, both as as good as it at times can be, and also not better than it presently is, is due to the participants, and what they chose to say, or not to say.

In this comment, #58 it was noted that many [Roman] Catholics don't like the way Bergoglio has often been choosing to present what is ostensibly supposed to be fully "Christian" message.

Where else would one be able to learn that many held those sentiments in regards to the recent focus of the Latin Church, the topmost leaders of which having seemed to have cultivated within their highest ranks those who appear to borrow from UN Agenda 21.

Here ya' go --without looking up who said the following-- can you see what is being promoted? Read the below excerpt and contemplate what it means. What if people took this seriously, as in this portion were to be among their marching orders of the day;

To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority,...

Whoever said that, in that was leaning strongly towards "world political authority" to be supreme over national authority. Who would end up disarmed? Everyone? equally?

HA!

Dream on!

And in the meantime...should there be a world political authority to be over the United States to "guarantee" protection of the environment and to "regulate migration"?

So far, here of late, to the extent that has been occurring through browbeating and emotionalism of the Western democracies into taking in by the tens of thousands, the hundreds of thousands, and even millions (when the view is extended back far enough to encompass the past few decades), the later arrivals show no real indications of desire to assimilate into the cultures which they have been veritably invading, en masse, but instead are more looking towards transforming those cultures into having the same values of the nations which they once called home, but which they left.

(Oops! Hit the wrong button and posted too soon.)

These days, for the past almost 150 years, Catholic social teaching has been appropriated by people on every hand, most of whom did NOT do the lifting and parsing.

Take unions. I think it's evident, and Rerum Novarum agrees (I think) that people have a right to form associations, and therefore employees, laborers, people in skilled trades, etc. have that right. And why, on the face of it, shouldn't these associations approach employers to negotiate matters of employment?

But that does not give carte blanche to unions to have closed shops, to compel membership, or to be unjust.

For me the best example of this sort of balancing of tensions is how we treat the needy. And perhaps the first idea to convey is that the metaphor of a social family is more suited to Catholic thought than that of an array of political relationships.

Solidarity: In a family, if baby cries, everybody who can pitches in (or HAS pitched in by going to work or whatever.) And in a family, we care for baby so that one day baby will grow to be able to care for others.

Subsidiarity: In a family when everything is ticking over smoothly, mother, father, and maybe older sibs take care of baby. But if one parent gets the galloping whoopses and the other has to plow the fields, then maybe an in-law or an uncle or aunt might kick in, nurse the sick parent and/or help with the plowing.

But as soon as the whoopses leave and the field is harrowed, these more "remote" family members withdraw to their previous roles and mother and father return to their normal duties.

Similarly, we all have a duty to one another and especially to the needy. But the duty falls on what I think of as concentric circles: immediate family, extended family, neighborhood, community, county, state, nation, everybody. If extended family can't do it, then we try neighborhood, and so on. But each layer up helps to get the circle beneath it back to a satisfactory position and then withdraws.

Our experience, though, is that when we go to the state, they NEVER leave, and if we go to the feds, the next thing you know they're teaching baby about anal sex! AND they're telling the taxpayers that we have to pay more and more to service the dependent class that the "helpers" have created and enabled.

So the welfare system as we have it is NOT really what Catholic Social teaching is about. But it's what SOME Catholics and most non-Catholics think of when they hear "Catholic Social Justice" and all the rest. If you want an accurate picture, you have to know a little about the documents that articulate the context.

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