[blue-duncan]

") The writings of the earliest Christians show the Catholic system of authority."

"For instance IMHO Acts 15."

The letter from the Jerusalem church was a political tract; a compromise that neither the orthodox Jewish christians nor Paul took seriously. Before Paul and Silas could start the second missionary journey, the orthodox Jewish christians had beaten them to the churches in Galatia and were convincing them that they had to be circumcised, contradicting the letter (Acts 15:24). Paul was distancing the gentile churches from the Jerusalem letter. In Romans 14 and in 1 Corinthians 8 and 10 he tells the churches that it is alright to eat meat offered to idols as long as they don't have personal scruples concerning it or it does not hinder a weaker brother. There is no mention of the letter. The only lasting importance of the letter was the acknowledgment of Paul's mission to the gentiles. But the warrant for his mission came directly from the risen and reigning Christ, not from Jerusalem.

[Mad Dawg]

Here's another way to look at it. The various documents produced by Vatican II have taken 4 decades to be, as it were, digested into the whole body, and some are still causing some indigestion here and there. The SSPX mentioned in this thread, and various groups of sedevacantes (folks who say currently there is no bona fide pope) arose in the wake of Vatican II and tried to resist or ignore the real results of the council, while other groups, in the name of something called "the Spirit of Vatican II" developed a whole range of practices and beliefs that were not intended by the council.

So I'm not surprised or scandalized by the resistance to the decision at Jerusalem, or by Paul's maybe taking the bit in his teeth and running with it.

We cannot bear the burden, encouraged I fear by our own rhetoric sometimes, of a sort of Disney-esque or Ozzy-and-Harriet vision of the Church at any time. Things were wild and woolly in the 1st Century and in most of the intervening centuries. While I admire the heck out of Paul for many reasons, I don't think I would have liked to negotiate with him.

TO me the importance of Acts 15 is that it was a council which not only reached a conclusion but which promulgated that conclusion as seeming good to the Holy Spirit as well as to the council participants.

We are castigated for the authority we think our apostolic leaders have. Our answer is that we see in Acts 15 precedent for that kind of authority. Our leaders are disobeyed now, those leaders were disobeyed then.

As to the letter's being political, my response is similar. It's in the movies or in paintings, but only rarely in real life, that everyone assumes the poses of classical sculpture, with their clothes draped just so, and light shining through a high window or a hole in the clouds on just the right people.

Real life is messy. The Catholic Church is VERY messy. when we say earthen vessels, we ain't kiddin' around.