If No One Is Pope, Everyone is Pope – A Homily for the 21st Sunday of the Year

Archdiocese of Washington ^ | 8/23/2014 | Msgr. Charles Pope

[HarleyD]

I would suggest that the very verse you are citing IS a matter of interpretation. There are many instances throughout scripture where God is called the "Rock".

Deu 32:3-4 For I will proclaim the name of the LORD; ascribe greatness to our God! "The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he.

Paul and, yes, Peter also called Christ the "rock".

1Co_10:4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.

1Pe_2:8 and "A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense." They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.

There isn't any room for misinterpreting these verses. They are very clear that Christ is the Rock.

If Christ’s meaning for Peter to be the foundation and leader of the Church was to be limited to Peter and not his successors, what was to happen to the church after Peter died? Is it supposed to go on with no chosen leaders?

Those are good questions. You are assuming that man must control the destiny of the church or the church will die out. However, the destiny of the church was always and will always be guided by God.

Being Catholic, I am not at all familiar with the bible, so I can’t offhand cite the scripture where Jesus called himself ‘the rock’.

I would encourage you to personally read the scriptures and ask God to open His word to you. This is a promise of God. If you truly seek to know Him, He can be found in His word and He will reveal Himself to you.

Psa 119:7 I will praise you with an upright heart, when I learn your righteous rules.

[omegatoo]

Your post indicates that the masculine form of the word (boulder or pebble) would not properly describe a rock to be used for a foundation. So either Jesus would have had to use the improper masculine form and have his church built on a pebble, or he would have had to give Peter a feminine name to have the word forms agree. That seems a bit of a stretch.

Anyway, the scripture I was looking for was where Jesus said that He was the rock and foundation, because that is what was asserted in the post I replied to, and what prompted my question about interpretations.

O2

[Cvengr]

Christ is the Rock and the Cornerstone, but He builds His Church upon that which the Father provides. Christ never glorifies Himself.

[daniel1212]

f the Christ-named ‘foundation’ wasn’t the best person to guide the church to find the leaders God wanted, who was?

Please see post 7 and 8

The only command to the churches to ordain leadership after Judas was replaced to maintain the original number of foundational apostles (none were mentioned for James of Acts 12:1,2) was that of ordaining elders, this being the same as overseers/bishops, (Titus 1:7-7) and who are never titled "priests."

For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city, as I had appointed thee: (Titus 1:5)

Moreover, Nor is Peter confirmed to be the rock upon which Christ built His church, but the Christ of Peter's confession is. For in contrast to Peter, that the LORD Jesus is the Rock (“petra”) or "stone" (“lithos,” and which denotes a large rock in Mk. 16:4) upon which the church is built is one of the most abundantly confirmed doctrines in the Bible (petra: Rm. 9:33; 1Cor. 10:4; 1Pet. 2:8; cf. Lk. 6:48; 1Cor. 3:11; lithos: Mat. 21:42; Mk.12:10-11; Lk. 20:17-18; Act. 4:11; Rm. 9:33; Eph. 2:20; cf. Dt. 32:4, Is. 28:16) including by Peter himself. (1Pt. 2:4-8) And even Catholic scholarship provides testimony against the Roman papacy being the reality in the early church.

[daniel1212]

Good to have you onboard

[daniel1212]

What I am citing is essence what Officially the Catholic Church teaches.

So do they, as i could, contrary to your position.

Disagreements among Catholics here on this site, or on other sites, who make themselves more Catholic than the Pope is in reality people who think too much of themselves. In that sense, they are behaving in some sense like your Protestant cohort.

I will try to remember you when i next engage such super RCs. But this simply illustrates my point that submission to the pope in one century as understood as plainly stated, can mean something the opposite in another. Want examples?

[Salvation]

I don’t have that kind of a search engine for the Bible. Mine is focused on books and verses.

[Salvation]

Have you ever studied a foreign language. Genders, etc. verbs, past, present, future have different forms.

[Salvation]

And this took place at Caesarea Philippi. Do you know why?

[CTrent1564]

daniel1212:

No, because your interpretation of any thing you post is your view. You of course are entitled to your view, but you are not an expert on Catholic Doctrine, in my view, you are “likely” an ex-Catholic who thinks he knows Catholic Doctrine and now as Protestant is trying to frame it from your new found Protestantism, which I “predict”, will be a different strand of Protestantism before you die. Again, I am only making observations and predictions, not statements of fact with respect to you.

Now, more to the subject at hand, there are different levels of Catholic teaching, things that are Doctrines that are to be held definitively and are part of Divine Revelation and thus are not teachings that can be changed are different than things that taught as to be held as taught via the ordinary magisterium or through a papal bull to ease tensions in the church or to provide a teaching on a matter as general guidance or another thing. With respect to the Jesuits for example, there have been Papal BUlls that 1)Founded the Jesuits, 2) Put them under restriction, 3) Out right suppressed them and took away their canonical standing and 4) eased the suppression and 5) Fully restored the Jesuits back to Full Canonical Standing. There have been Papal Bulls on Slavery that indicated some Popes wanted to end Slavery going back as far as the 14th century, there were some that tolerated it, but put parameters on it, etc, etc.

On all those matters, we are not talking about the Nicene or Apostles Creed, the Canon of Scripture, the Sacraments, the Primacy of the Church and Bishop of Rome, etc. On these matters, there is a clear teaching that has remained unchanged, as all of these are part of the Dogmatic and Doctrine of the Church and come directly from Divine Revelation of Christ to the Apostles.

This term Super RC, I don’t know of such term in Catholic Canon Law. Do you have a source on that? Perhaps you are talking about SSPX followers or Sedevacantist? You are talking about in the former case, schismatic at a low level [they at least at times have entered into dialogue with the Pope], and the later, outright heretics and schismatics.

Again, I am not interested in what an internet Catholic guy says if he or she is spouting off things that have no basis in official Catholic teaching anymore than I am hearing from Protestants of the same stripe. They in essence, while different are in this case the same, they each set themselves up as their own “Pope”. I am comfortable with the fact that in my lifetime, there have been now 5 Popes and I haven’t been one of them.

[CTrent1564]

daniel212:

The testimony you cite are Catholic Historical critics, I am well aware of them all. The point of the question is when did it become clear of a single Bishop of Rome. The earliest evidence of it is 140AD. That does not mean there was no single Bishop in Rome prior, it just means the evidence is not there definitively. Again, the debate here does not negate the passage from Mt 16:16-18. In fact, the Keys is another significant part of the passage and is a fulfillment of Isiah 22:22. The fact that Christ is called Rock does not mean that Peter was also called Rock as in that sense, He is given a role among the Apostles that is unique as Apostleship is connected to the person of Christ as it means literally, one being sent from. Just as Abraham had his name changed, were both given Divine Missions, and like Peter, Abraham was also called a rock [Is 51:1-2]. The fact that Christ is indeed the Rock which the Apostles were connected to does not mean that Christ can also refer to Peter as rock as well. Saint Paul in Ephesians 2:20 gives what appears to be a tension or contradiction [in the protestant either/or world view] to a Catholic one that is comfortable with the both/and as he writes “members of the household of God built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, which Christ Jesus as the capstone”. Christ is the Rock but his Apostles since they were sent by him, loved him, and faith in him, hoped in him, etc, were also used by Christ as “rocks” to build his Church on [in fact, all save Saint John, would give their blood, including Saint Peter] and among those Rocks, Peter has a chief place among the Apostles.

And as far as Mt 16:16-18, a much more comprehensive commentary on that passage is below.

http://www.clerus.org/bibliaclerusonline/en/index.htm

[CTrent1564]

And Saint Thomas Aquinas Interpretation of John 21, the other important Petrine text, with references to Saint Augustine and Saint John Chrystosem, also indicate Saint Peter’s singular and unique role among the Apostles.

http://dhspriory.org/thomas/John21.htm

[piusv]

Not nearly as boring and well-worn as the Protestant heresies repeated on this forum day in and day out.

[Springfield Reformer]

Have you ever studied a foreign language. Genders, etc. verbs, past, present, future have different forms.

I can't speak for metmom, but I have studied a number of foreign languages, both modern and ancient, and while it is true that the same root word can have different genders applied in a superficial way, it is also true that the rules for that can be fairly complex, and you can have one-off situations where the rule you think should apply doesn't because that's just the history of the construct in that language.

For example, dig through Liddell & Scott or any of the better lexicons and you will pick up abundant clues that petros and petra are distinguishable from each other by usage patterns over time.  They are words with similar roots but different histories, sort of like twins separated at birth.  So while there can be times when they are used in an overlapping way, there is a meaningful history of difference that cannot be ignored.

So just writing off the structural difference in Matthew 16:18 to masculinizing petra to accommodate use as a male name is a shallow approach, linguistically speaking.  For example, it isn't even necessary for feminine nouns to be given masculine endings to make a male name.  Ever heard of Zorba the Greek?  That's a feminine ending.  As far as I am aware, it is simply not a rule that nouns per se are subject to the natural gender rule that would apply, for example, to pronouns.  Thus the argument cannot be won or lost solely on this point by either side.  

As for the question of where Jesus is identified as the Petra, Paul does that here:

1Co 10:1-4  Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea;  (2)  And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea;  (3)  And did all eat the same spiritual meat;  (4)  And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.

Again, no ambiguity here.  From Paul's approach we see that he treated his readers as Jewish or otherwise aware of Jewish history.  Same thing applies to the "rock" passage in Matthew 16:18.  It would have been very easy for those hearers to associate the Petra with the divine intervention of God on behalf of the wandering Israelites, and therefore quite a stretch for them to think it could ever refer to Peter.

Peace,

SR

[Cvengr]

Why?

[metmom]

THANK YOU for that.

I went to Biblehub, which gives the Greek. Here is the link.

http://biblehub.com/text/1_corinthians/10-4.htm

If you look for *rock* in taht passage that identifies the Rock as Christ, it DOES us *petra*.

*Petra*, Jesus, is the rock on which Christ is building His church.

[GeronL]

funny enough, Petra is also carved out of rock

[metmom]

Additionally. the form *petra* is used for Christ in two other places.

One is Romans 9:33 and the other is 1 Peter 2:8, where both Paul and Peter identify *petra* as Christ, the stone of stumbling and the *ROCK* (petra) of offense.

[daniel1212]

I don’t have that kind of a search engine for the Bible. Mine is focused on books and verses.

Then what are you doing inferring Peter’s name is mentioned in the Bible more than ALL the other 12 apostles, when your have already been refuted before in asserting, "Peter’s name in scripture? More than all the other apostles put together"?

And by my searching i found "Peter" mentioned by that name 162 times in all of the NT, sometimes together as "Simon Peter," and separately as "Cephas" 6 times, and separately as Simon 17 times at most, for a total of 185, but which includes duplicate accounts and sometimes in the same verse. In addition, a cursory count finds other apostles are mentioned by name about 80 times.

However, Paul is mentioned 163 as "Paul" and 26 times as "Saul" giving him a total of 189 times.

Moreover, he wrote 13 books of Scripture, nearly 50 percent of the New Testament, and mentions Peter after James in Gal. 2:9, and the latter gave the definitive final decree in Act 15, and Peter is not even heard of in Acts after Acts 12, nor in Paul's extensive list of acquaintances in Rm. 16, nor is submission to or prayers for Peter or mention of him as the supreme head in Rome ever seen in any of the church epistles.

Thus Peter not mentioned by his names more than all the other apostles put together, esp. when not counting duplicate accounts.

Moreover, using popular Catholic reasoning, here are the 51 Biblical proofs of a Pauline papacy and Ephesian primacy.

In addition, using your logic that the more one is mentioned then the higher the primacy, then since Mary the mother of Jesus is mentioned very few times then she must be very low on the VIP list.

Now will you continue to posting specious parroted RC polemics?

[metmom]

I thought of that as well when I was just talking with mr. mm.

Good catch.