Transcript

The papacy is Catholicism's most distinctive doctrine, but some critics say that even some popes have denied that Christ gave us a church whose visible head is the successor of St. Peter.

So in today's episode, we'll debunk five pieces of fake news when it comes to the idea that a pope said nope to the papacy.

But before we do that, I hope you will say yes to hitting the subscribe button and visiting us at trenthornpodcast.com to help us keep creating great content and keeping it sponsor-free.

So let's start with number one, Pope Leo XIV says the rock is Christ, not Peter.

Back in May, I saw this article from Anglican Ink saying, Pope Leo XIV drops papal supremacy, urging full communion with all Christians.

Of course, Catholics want everyone to belong to Christ's one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, so of course we want full communion with all Christians.

But Pope Leo did not deny the Catholic Church's divine authority.

The article quotes the pope saying in his inaugural homily, The rock is Christ, and then says that this is, quote, A significant departure from conventional Catholic interpretation, which identifies Peter as the rock on which Jesus built the church.

But this article assumes that Pope Leo is saying the rock in Matthew 16 upon which the church is built is Christ rather than Peter.

But in the pope's homily it's clear he was talking about another scripture passage.

Pope Leo said, The Apostle Peter himself tells us that Jesus, quote, 'is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, and has become the cornerstone,' Acts 4:11.

Moreover, if the rock is Christ, Peter must shepherd the flock without ever yielding to the temptation to be an autocrat, lording it over those entrusted to him.

Catholics don't think that Peter is the only rock or the only foundation of the church.

Scripture itself uses multiple metaphors to describe the church's foundation.

Ephesians 2:20 describes, quote, The household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone.

Many symbols in scripture can have more than one meaning, including the rock of Matthew 16.

The catechism says, Moved by the grace of the Holy Spirit and drawn by the Father, we believe in Jesus and confess, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

On the rock of this faith confessed by Saint Peter, Christ built His church.

The rock of Matthew 16 can be seen as Peter's confession of faith, but this is connected to Peter himself, who was blessed by God with this revelation.

That's why the catechism also says, Because of the faith he confessed, Peter will remain the unshakable rock of the church.

His mission will be to keep this faith from every lapse and to strengthen his brothers in it.

Saying the rock of Matthew 16 can be other things besides Peter does not refute the ancient teaching that Peter himself is also truly the rock upon which the church is built.

Protestant scholar D.A. Carson writes, Many have attempted to avoid identifying Peter as the rock on which Jesus builds His church.

Yet if it were not for Protestant reactions against extremes of Roman Catholic interpretations, it is doubtful whether many would have taken rock to be anything or anyone other than Peter.

Number two, Pope Francis believes in sola scriptura.

Shortly before he passed away, Pope Francis posted the following on his English language X account.

In the midst of the confusion and vanity of human words, we need the word of God.

Scripture is the only true compass for our journey, and it alone is capable of leading us back to the true meaning of life amid so much woundedness and confusion.

Many Protestants later said that Pope Francis, even inadvertently, adopted sola scriptura here in saying that scripture is our only guide to truth.

But there's two problems.

First, this was probably a translation error.

The pope's archived Italian and Spanish language accounts, for example, do not include the word scripture in this post.

The Italian account says, We need the word of God, the only one that is a compass for our journey.

And the Spanish account says, We need the word of God, the only one that serves as a compass for our journey.

The second problem is that contrary to what many people think, the term word of God is not simply a synonym for scripture.

God's word comes to us in both a written form, sacred scripture, and in an unwritten form, sacred tradition.

Sacred tradition tells us, for example, which books are the written word of God and that public revelation of God's word ended during the age of the apostles.

These are truths that are not found in scripture.

And the word of God existed in the apostolic church for 20 years before any scripture was ever written, and no scripture says that all of God's word was confined eventually to the written word or would eventually be located only there.

In First Thessalonians 2:13, Paul thanks the Thessalonicans, saying, When you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.

The word of God isn't just something found in a written document.

It is something that is lived out in the faith and practice of the church, which Saint Paul calls the pillar and bulwark, or foundation, of truth.

Number three, Pope Benedict XVI denies Vatican I. The Anglican Ink article about Pope Leo XIV tries to make it sound like other recent popes didn't believe in the papacy and cites Cardinal Ratzinger before he became pope, saying, As far as the doctrine of the primacy is concerned, Rome must not require more of the East than was formulated and lived during the first millennium.

The idea that the Eastern Orthodox could be received into full communion with the Catholic Church even if they denied dogmas like papal infallibility or even anything else taught after the Great Schism is not an idea from Pope Benedict.

It sounds more like a proposal floated by the Melkite Catholic Bishop Elias Zogby back in the 1970s and then formed into the following 1995 profession of faith by him.

One, I believe everything which Eastern Orthodoxy teaches.Two, I am in communion with the bishop of Rome as the first among the bishops according to the limits recognized by the holy fathers of the East during the first millennium before the separation.

This was supposed to be a groundbreaking way to unite the Eastern and Western churches, but in practice, many people saw it as just saying that we accept Eastern Orthodoxy as being the true faith, but we can still call ourselves Catholic.

In 1997, three cardinals, Silvestrini, Cassidy, and Ratzinger, wrote a letter to Melkite Bishop Samra commenting on the Zaghi proposal in part, saying this, With respect to communion with the bishop of Rome, one must not forget that doctrine relating to the primacy of the Roman pontiff has been the subject of some development within the elaboration of the church's faith through the ages, and that it must thus be upheld in its entirety from its origins all the way to the present day.

One need only reflect on what the First Vatican Council affirms and on what has been declared at the Second Vatican Council.

So it's clear that Cardinal Ratzinger did not think a Christian was free to reject what the Catholic Church taught since the Great Schism in the 11th century.

Their letter continues, As to the ways in which the Petrine ministry could be exercised today, an issue distinct from that of doctrine, it is true that the Holy Father has recently reminded us all how it is possible to seek together, of course, the forms in which this ministry may accomplish a service of love recognized by all concerned.

Ratzinger quotes Pope Saint John Paul II's encyclical Ut Unum Sint, which focused on creating unity with other Christians by precisely delineating the role of the papacy.

For example, there are some elements of the papacy, like certain claims to temporal power and worldly affairs, that we now see are not essential elements of the papal office, even if they were commonly accepted in the past.

This is similar to my previous episode on purgatory, where I said that while literal purgatorial fire was a common belief in the West, it was never part of the dogma of purgatory, and it doesn't need to be a barrier to Catholic-Orthodox dialogue on the issue.

The Ratzinger quote about only requiring first-millennium beliefs comes from a 1982 book that he wrote, which is written in German.

It was translated into English and then quoted in Francis Sullivan's 1983 book Magisterium.

What most people don't quote though is what Ratzinger says afterwards, which is that, The East should renounce attacking the Western development of the second millennium as heretical and should accept the Catholic Church as legitimate and orthodox in the form which it has found through this development.

And none of what Ratzinger says means that the modern understanding of the papacy is not found in the first millennium.

Just look at what Pope Adrian said at the Second Council of Nicaea in the year 787, which echoes what Pope Gelasius I taught in the 400s.

Quote, The Roman See exercises primacy throughout the world, was set up as the head of all the churches of God, and has always held and retains the primacy which the blessed Peter the Apostle exercises through an injunction of the lords, and with the church no less assenting to the effect that no see in the whole church ought to have a greater executive role than the first, which confirms each synod by its authority and protects it by its continuing guidance.

Number four, Pope Gregory the Great rejects the title of universal bishop.

John Calvin said that Pope Gregory the Great, who reigned from 590 to 604, quote, Desecrates the name of universal bishop as profane, nay blasphemous, and the forerunner of the Antichrist.

But denouncing the idea of a universal bishop does not mean there cannot be a bishop who has universal authority in some respect.

What these apologists are referring to is Pope Gregory the Great's dispute with John the Faster, the patriarch of Constantinople, over John's use of the title universal bishop.

Gregory was critical of this title, but he didn't deny that one bishop had primacy over all the others.

In Gregory's 12th letter, he explicitly says that Constantinople was subject to the authority of the pope, writing, For as to what they say about the Church of Constantinople, who can doubt that it is subject to the Apostolic See, as both the most pious lord, the emperor, and our brother, the bishop of that community, continually acknowledge?

Cardinal Horace Giustiniani at the Council of Florence said, Gregory understood it as an exclusion of all the others so that he who calls himself oecumenic, that is universal, thinks all other patriarchs and bishops to be private persons and himself the only pastor of the inhabited Earth.

End quote.

Gregory denied that the pope or any bishop that serves a metropolitan area, like a patriarch in the East, was the bishop of every individual territory and the bishops under his authority were merely agents acting on his behalf.

Such a view would rob one's brother bishops of their legitimate authority, even though they were still subject to Gregory in virtue of his being Peter's successor.

The Protestant scholar J.N.D. Kelly writes, Gregory argued that Saint Peter's commission in Matthew 16:18-19 made all churches, Constantinople included, subject to Rome.

And number five, Saint Peter says he is just a priest, not the pope.

Here's Protestant pastor Voddie Baucham claiming that Peter's address in his first epistle disproves him being the first pope.

Peter does not see himself as the pope.

He does not see himself as the rock upon which the church is built.

He writes, So I exhort the elders among you as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed.

Shepherd the flock of God that is among you.

Exercise oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you, not for shameful gain, but eagerly, not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.

So the disciples don't see Peter as having been made a pope.Jesus makes it clear that Peter hadn't been made a pope, and Peter later makes it clear that he doesn't see himself as having been established as a pope.

Notice that in all these arguments that we've covered, there's a common theme.

The critic of Catholicism will put up a straw man version of the papacy.

The pope is a domineering, autocratic ruler who manipulates bishops and priests like chess pieces, who only exist to do his bidding.

And when scripture and church history do not portray Peter or his successors in this way, the critic claims this disproves the papacy.

But this only disproves a straw pope, not a true pope.

It's no different than an atheist saying that if the Bible is the word of God, that means God dictated the Bible word for word, which doesn't make sense of passages where the biblical author forgets things, like First Corinthians 1:16, where Paul writes, I did baptize also the household of Stephanas.

Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.

As I show in my book, The Case for Catholicism, and my colleague Joe Heschmeyer shows in his book, Pope Peter, Peter certainly had unique leadership status in this early church, but we have to understand the kind of leader Christ called to shepherd his church.

Some critics make a big fuss about how Jesus did not answer the apostles' question of who among them was the greatest with an answer like, Peter, he's the pope.

Others say the fact that the apostles were even arguing at all over the question shows that they did not believe the title of greatest belonged to Peter.

But the apostles' inability to understand Peter's unique role among them does not refute the doctrine of the papacy any more than their inability to understand the necessity of the crucifixion, even after Jesus said it was going to happen, refutes the doctrine of the atonement.

This argument also cuts against the critics, because Jesus doesn't answer their question with, Who is the greatest?

Well, no one.

All of you are equal amongst each other.

Instead, Jesus explicitly said that one of the disciples would be the leader, and he would become as one who serves.

Jesus indicated that the greatest must act as the servant of all.

That is why, since the 6th century, popes have called themselves servus servorum Dei, or servant of the servants of God.

Continuing this same discourse, which is not interrupted until Verse 35, Jesus singles out Peter and prays for him so that his faith may not fail, and he would strengthen his brethren.

Peter would be a leader, but one who serves others instead of being served.

This explains why Peter refers to himself in First Peter 5:1-2 as a fellow elder, and not as a leader of the church.

In this passage, Peter is heeding his own advice to clothe yourselves with humility toward one another.

By the way, Paul referred to himself as a servant using the Greek word diakonoi, which in other contexts refers to deacons.

But Paul wasn't merely a deacon in the church.

Paul even said he was, quote, The very least of all the saints, in Ephesians 3:8, but that did not detract from St. Paul's unique authority as an apostle.

Finally, Peter's address to his fellow elders does not undermine his authority over the other elders in the church any more than the president's address to my fellow Americans undermines the president's authority over Americans.

The president is an American, but he has a leadership position over all Americans, and he exists, ideally, to serve them.

So those are five cases of popes allegedly denying the papacy being debunked.

If you want to learn more about this subject, I recommend Joe Heschmeyer's book, Pope Peter, and Eric Ybarra's book, The Papacy: Revisiting the Debate Between Catholics and Orthodox.

Thank you for watching, and I hope you have a very blessed day.