[HarleyD]

Paul was different, as he attests here....

I'm not into "different" with God. God shows no partiality and if He does something for one, He can do it for another. What's to say that God didn't appoint Martin Luther in much the same way? Or Erving down the street?

Peter was the overall chief servant apostle of the holy catholic apostolic church, ie., all its churches.

There is nothing in scripture that supports this. In fact, Acts 15 which talks about the Jerusalem Council puts the elders and apostles on the same par:
Act 15:6 The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter.

They all came together to make a decision. And less you say it was up to Peter, Peter never made the decision. The matter was decided by James:

Act 15:19 Therefore my judgment [sic: James]is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God,

I would suggest a closer look at the text.

John did not succeed Peter as bishop of Rome, where the head of the holy apostolic church moved

There is absolutely no evidence that Peter ever went to Rome, contrary to Catholic beliefs. Peter's mission was "to the Jews" while Paul's mission was "to the Gentiles". So this naturally begs the question that if the Jews were in Israel, why would Peter even consider leaving to go where Gentiles live? Especially if Peter's mission was to the Jews. This seems to me to be a big, DUH!!! But then that's just me.

As far as John not being "a bishop of Rome", he was an apostle. So that makes me wonder what is considered more important, being a bishop of some church or being appointed by Christ Himself? But we do have our priorities.

I think we have a very different view as to what "submitting to the Church" means. There was a Jewish cardinal of France who stood up to blessed John Paul II as well

There is a vast difference between standing up and blessing the Pope and standing up to tell the Pope he's condemned for teaching false doctrine. That, if memory serves me correctly, is what Martin Luther did and it didn't fair none too well for him.

[xone]

tell the Pope he's condemned for teaching false doctrine. That, if memory serves me correctly, is what Martin Luther did and it didn't fair none too well for him.

But it worked out for the Body of Christ.

[af_vet_1981]

What's to say that God didn't appoint Martin Luther in much the same way?

1. It is appalling that men should take this filthy talker, whose hopelessly dirty language indicated the morally diseased state of his mind, as a guide to expound Eternal Law, and that they should hang upon his words, hold him up for imitation and entrust to him their salvation. It is pitiable but true that men have eyes and see not, they have ears and hear not, they have hearts and feel not. Oh! that the eyes and the ears and the hearts of our separated brethren, if their faculties are not blunted, would come to recognize the unspeakable character of the heresiarch's utterances, his obscene remarks, his vulgar jokes, his habitual nasty references to sexual matters, and discover in time that this open, brazen and shameless violator of all conventional decency could not in any sense have been raised up by the All-Holy to lead men to the Kingdom of Heaven.
2. Martin Luther - "The Jews & Their Lies"
3. The prevailing view[28] among historians is that Luther's anti-Jewish rhetoric contributed significantly to the development of antisemitism in Germany,[29] and in the 1930s and 1940s provided an ideal foundation for the Nazi Party's attacks on Jews.[30] Reinhold Lewin writes that "whoever wrote against the Jews for whatever reason believed he had the right to justify himself by triumphantly referring to Luther." According to Michael, just about every anti-Jewish book printed in the Third Reich contained references to and quotations from Luther. Diarmaid MacCulloch argues that Luther's 1543 pamphlet On the Jews and Their Lies was a "blueprint" for the Kristallnacht.[31] Shortly after the Kristallnacht, Martin Sasse, Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Thuringia, published a compendium of Martin Luther's writings ; Sasse "applauded the burning of the synagogues" and the coincidence of the day, writing in the introduction, "On November 10, 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany." The German people, he urged, ought to heed these words "of the greatest anti-Semite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews."[32] In 1940, Heinrich Himmler wrote admiringly of Luther's writings and sermons on the Jews.[33] The city of Nuremberg presented a first edition of On the Jews and their Lies to Julius Streicher, editor of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer, on his birthday in 1937; the newspaper described it as the most radically antisemitic tract ever published.[34] ... Regarding Luther's treatise, On the Jews and Their Lies, the German philosopher Karl Jaspers wrote: "There you already have the whole Nazi program".[38]
4. The prevailing scholarly view[42] since the Second World War is that the treatise exercised a major and persistent influence on Germany's attitude toward its Jewish citizens in the centuries between the Reformation and the Holocaust. Four hundred years after it was written, the Nazi Party displayed On the Jews and Their Lies during Nuremberg rallies, and the city of Nuremberg presented a first edition to Julius Streicher, editor of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer, the newspaper describing it as the most radically antisemitic tract ever published