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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: The world, absent the RCC
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Mudfrog
Shipmate
# 8116
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Posted
AD 325
First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea. The Christian Church separates the calculation of the date of Easter from the Jewish Passover:
"It was ... declared improper to follow the custom of the Jews in the celebration of this holy festival, because, their hands having been stained with crime, the minds of these wretched men are necessarily blinded.... Let us, then, have nothing in common with the Jews, who are our adversaries. ... avoiding all contact with that evil way. ... who, after having compassed the death of the Lord, being out of their minds, are guided not by sound reason, but by an unrestrained passion, wherever their innate madness carries them. ... a people so utterly depraved. ... Therefore, this irregularity must be corrected, in order that we may no more have any thing in common with those parricides and the murderers of our Lord. ... no single point in common with the perjury of the Jews."
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 8237 | From: North Yorkshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2004
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pererin
Shipmate
# 16956
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by pererin:
Easter Day is at Passover (or to be pedantic, on the Sunday falling between the 15th and 21st of Nisan). That's what all the stuff about moons and solstices is there to determine. The only slight snag is that the calendar currently used by Jews has become slightly detached from the seasons, so that in three years in nineteen, they observe Passover a month off. Unfortunately, no-one in modern Judaism seems to have the authority to reform the calendar.
Apologies for replying to myself, but I just noticed another suspiciously Jewish-looking feature of the calendar: with Easter averaging 18th Nisan, Ash Wednesday averages 1st Adar, and Passion Sunday is always the first Sunday in Nisan. This may all be coincidence, but I find it interesting...
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"They go to and fro in the evening, they grin like a dog, and run about through the city." (Psalm 59.6)
Posts: 446 | From: Llantrisant | Registered: Feb 2012
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Trisagion
Shipmate
# 5235
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
AD 325
First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea. The Christian Church separates the calculation of the date of Easter from the Jewish Passover:
"It was ... declared improper to follow the custom of the Jews in the celebration of this holy festival, because, their hands having been stained with crime, the minds of these wretched men are necessarily blinded.... Let us, then, have nothing in common with the Jews, who are our adversaries. ... avoiding all contact with that evil way. ... who, after having compassed the death of the Lord, being out of their minds, are guided not by sound reason, but by an unrestrained passion, wherever their innate madness carries them. ... a people so utterly depraved. ... Therefore, this irregularity must be corrected, in order that we may no more have any thing in common with those parricides and the murderers of our Lord. ... no single point in common with the perjury of the Jews."
. . . and this demonstrates Papal anti-semitism how, exactly?
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ceterum autem censeo tabula delenda esse
Posts: 3923 | Registered: Nov 2003
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Aye this is US, Christendom. We are all guilty of this foul evil, enshrined every Easter. Have we ever confessed this to the Jews and begged their forgiveness? This specific sin of ours? Not the first, in a long, long list?
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Ad Orientem
Shipmate
# 17574
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Posted
What sin? That we don't celebrate Easter when the Jews celebrate Passover? Well, call me a sinner because, quite frankly, it doesn't mean much then.
Posts: 2606 | From: Finland | Registered: Feb 2013
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Cara:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
suspect the problem is that the protestant conception of what early Christianity was like is as much a fantasy as the Roman attempt to project backwards the monarchical papacy.
why would it have to be a Christianity that is the way Protestants envisage early Christianity? Why not the way Catholics do? Or why not something else altogether, that none of us has correctly envisaged....?
[/QUOTE]
If I've understood it right, the classical Protestant view is that the New Testament suffices, and that therefore their view of the early Church is that which an honest enquirer would reach by reading the NT and nothing more. That vision therefore contains nothing of confessionals, indulgences, rosaries etc, which are seen as Catholic add-ons. The question as I see it was asking what the Church would be had there been no such add-ons.
The classical Catholic position is that the RCC is the Church, that St Peter set up the institution of the Papacy as a way of fulfilling the responsibility for the Church given him by Jesus. From this perspective, the question makes no sense. Some Catholics are also tempted to the philosophical error which projects any historical development back into the early church, supposedly preserved by Oral Tradition.
Individual Shipmates may of course have views more nuanced - these are just reference points & I'm not trying to put words in anyone's mouth.
I was kind of expecting someone to make a case that all the Catholic accretions were necessary for the survival of the Gospel.
Best wishes,
Russ
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Ad Orientem. Bless.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Anyuta
Shipmate
# 14692
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:
Originally posted by Cara:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
suspect the problem is that the protestant conception of what early Christianity was like is as much a fantasy as the Roman attempt to project backwards the monarchical papacy.
why would it have to be a Christianity that is the way Protestants envisage early Christianity? Why not the way Catholics do? Or why not something else altogether, that none of us has correctly envisaged....?
If I've understood it right, the classical Protestant view is that the New Testament suffices, and that therefore their view of the early Church is that which an honest enquirer would reach by reading the NT and nothing more. That vision therefore contains nothing of confessionals, indulgences, rosaries etc, which are seen as Catholic add-ons. The question as I see it was asking what the Church would be had there been no such add-ons.
The classical Catholic position is that the RCC is the Church, that St Peter set up the institution of the Papacy as a way of fulfilling the responsibility for the Church given him by Jesus. From this perspective, the question makes no sense. Some Catholics are also tempted to the philosophical error which projects any historical development back into the early church, supposedly preserved by Oral Tradition.
Individual Shipmates may of course have views more nuanced - these are just reference points & I'm not trying to put words in anyone's mouth.
I was kind of expecting someone to make a case that all the Catholic accretions were necessary for the survival of the Gospel.
Best wishes,
Russ [/QUOTE]
ah, but you see some of those are not viewed as "add ons" but as something which was there from the start, or at least developed extremely early.. perhaps as early as scripture. The idea that scripture describes the way the early Church was set up is a bit silly, don't you think? I mean, why would it? That clearly is not it's intent. it's sharing a history and a message, NOT setting up a worship framework. I would argue that many "Catholic" elements were organically grown allong side (not after) scripture.
True, I know some such were definitely truly later additions, and I know the RCC does indeed justify them. I won't pretend to speak for the RCC. but your question makes a huge assumption which I don't think is at all justified: that the "additions" are something which the RCC clearly superimposed upon the original, and the only debate is whether they can be sufficiently justified.
Posts: 764 | From: USA | Registered: Mar 2009
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
They can't be as mandatory, hostile, esoteric exclusives, no. And it's not a huge assumption at all. The opposite is true. Neither Jesus nor Paul nor Peter nor John engaged in services - liturgy - anything like historical Roman or Greek ones. Or had a fraction of their 'distinctives'.
All of which are fine as long as they aren't hostile. But they all are.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Cara
Shipmate
# 16966
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Anyuta:
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:
Originally posted by Cara:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
suspect the problem is that the protestant conception of what early Christianity was like is as much a fantasy as the Roman attempt to project backwards the monarchical papacy.
why would it have to be a Christianity that is the way Protestants envisage early Christianity? Why not the way Catholics do? Or why not something else altogether, that none of us has correctly envisaged....?
If I've understood it right, the classical Protestant view is that the New Testament suffices, and that therefore their view of the early Church is that which an honest enquirer would reach by reading the NT and nothing more. That vision therefore contains nothing of confessionals, indulgences, rosaries etc, which are seen as Catholic add-ons. The question as I see it was asking what the Church would be had there been no such add-ons.
The classical Catholic position is that the RCC is the Church, that St Peter set up the institution of the Papacy as a way of fulfilling the responsibility for the Church given him by Jesus. From this perspective, the question makes no sense. Some Catholics are also tempted to the philosophical error which projects any historical development back into the early church, supposedly preserved by Oral Tradition.
Individual Shipmates may of course have views more nuanced - these are just reference points & I'm not trying to put words in anyone's mouth.
I was kind of expecting someone to make a case that all the Catholic accretions were necessary for the survival of the Gospel.
Best wishes,
Russ
ah, but you see some of those are not viewed as "add ons" but as something which was there from the start, or at least developed extremely early.. perhaps as early as scripture. The idea that scripture describes the way the early Church was set up is a bit silly, don't you think? I mean, why would it? That clearly is not it's intent. it's sharing a history and a message, NOT setting up a worship framework. I would argue that many "Catholic" elements were organically grown allong side (not after) scripture.
True, I know some such were definitely truly later additions, and I know the RCC does indeed justify them. I won't pretend to speak for the RCC. but your question makes a huge assumption which I don't think is at all justified: that the "additions" are something which the RCC clearly superimposed upon the original, and the only debate is whether they can be sufficiently justified. [/QUOTE]
Thanks Russ, I see what you meant now.
Problem is, seems to me the question doesn't really make sense, whether you are a Catholic or not. The RCC didn't exist as a separate thing until comparatively recently. There was just Christianity. With many regional variations and so on, of course,(and the split with the eastern churches) but it was Christianity. And yes, over time it changed a bit and some things got added, not to the core message so much as to the practice-- "confessionals, rosaries...").
I (once Catholic) am one of those who feels (without knowing the history in any expert sense) that the Church as it was at the time of the Reformation had indeed lost its way somewhat, and there were many encrustations that obscured the original heart of the Gospel.
BUT. At this distance we cannot easily judge how much of the development of doctrine, how many of the "accretions," etc were in fact guided by the Holy Spirit.
AND we simply cannot really know what the early church was like.
As Anyuta says, how could we possibly know everything about the early church from reading the New Testament! Of course there must have been so much more (is it at the end of St John's gospel that it says so much more could be written and there wouldn't be enough books to contain it all?) that was not written down. Many of the NT texts were written for people who were already believers and there must have been so much about worship/custom/belief that wasn't spelled out there because the readers/hearers knew it already.
So there must indeed be much more that the church has kept down the centuries through oral tradition, and we can't easily know how old each strand is. Of course the church survived on oral tradition alone for a few decades (scholars differ on how many, I prefer J.A..Robinson's earlier dates for the gospels). It was oral tradition that preserved the gospel stories, obviously, until they were written down. So it's only through oral tradition that we have anything.
But the early Christians couldn't possibly write everything down! We don't really even know much about the early forms of worship from the NT--hence the disagreements between scholars.
Didache gives a little more information, as does Justin Martyr...these and other very early texts help, but we can never really know.
So some Reformers, in trying to strip away almost everything that they felt wasn't true to the earliest Christianity, seem to me to have been throwing out the baby along with the bathwater--because by that time, the baby and the bathwater were all mingled.
Even if, for myself, I eventually felt that some Catholic doctrine was indeed "add-on," I feel very strongly that we should study and cherish the early and medieval Christian centuries, and all the richness and beauty of the Christian story through time--it's our heritage.
With its mistakes and distortions and all. Mixed in with them is so much that is valuable and beautiful.
So, though it's fun discussing, the original question doesn't really make sense to me. You simply can't untangle it all enough to posit a Christianity where "the RCC never existed."
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Pondering.
Posts: 898 | Registered: Feb 2012
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Cara, exclusion, esotericism, hostility and corruption were part of Christian tradition from the start. In Peter. In the Galatians. In the Gnostics. In Pergamum. Withstood by Paul and John respectively. And in Paul. We battle against these institutionalized traditions in ourselves, here to this day.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Cara
Shipmate
# 16966
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Cara, exclusion, esotericism, hostility and corruption were part of Christian tradition from the start. In Peter. In the Galatians. In the Gnostics. In Pergamum. Withstood by Paul and John respectively. And in Paul. We battle against these institutionalized traditions in ourselves, here to this day.
Well yes, Martin, that's true, of course...flawed from the start, because humans are flawed.
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Pondering.
Posts: 898 | Registered: Feb 2012
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
Seems to me that if you believe in free will then it is meaningful to talk about alternate histories, about other ways that things might have turned out if people collectively had made different decisions, had chosen to apply their effort in different directions.
Of course we cannot know for certain how such an alternative history would turn out - for the same reason, that people later in history had free will, and may have chosen differently in different circumstances.
But just as art requires constraints that are not too tight and not too loose, so there are fruitful speculations about how things might have been, neither too constrained by what really did happen or too ungrounded in how things do tend to work. Drawing together a plausible narrative from the odds and ends that we do know about the past is a worthy art. I don't have the skill, but I can appreciate it when someone does it well.
Best wishes,
Russ
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
I can't deal with an alternative history in which Jesus never existed.
I must have missed the part where he visited Rome.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
And Peter ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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pererin
Shipmate
# 16956
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
And Peter
He wasn't at Rome either. He was after all the first Patriarch of Antioch. It's not his fault the Arabs overran Syria.
(And, yes, both claims fail: the Book of Acts has Peter resolutely in Jerusalem as congregations start in both Antioch and Rome. Indeed, Acts reads as a bit of a whitewash job for his seeming lack of support for Paul and his exploits amongst the heathen. But clearly in both cases, being the successor of Ignatius or Clement just wasn't good enough for some too-big-for-his-boots bishop at some point.)
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"They go to and fro in the evening, they grin like a dog, and run about through the city." (Psalm 59.6)
Posts: 446 | From: Llantrisant | Registered: Feb 2012
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Ad Orientem
Shipmate
# 17574
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Posted
No one seriously believes nowadays that St. Peter never went to Rome. There's just too much evidence that he did, like he's tomb, for instance.
Posts: 2606 | From: Finland | Registered: Feb 2013
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malik3000
Shipmate
# 11437
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
No one seriously believes nowadays that St. Peter never went to Rome. There's just too much evidence that he did, like he's tomb, for instance.
DNA evidence?
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God = love.
Otherwise, things are not just black or white.
Posts: 3149 | From: North America | Registered: May 2006
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
Well, people's tombs can be moved after they died, anyway. I was in Hawaii recently and discovered that the remains of a group of chiefs have been moved at least 3 times.
Edit: I'm not expressing a view one way or another, I'm just observing that a tomb isn't conclusive proof of where someone lived, even if you could absolutely prove it really is Peter in Peter's tomb.
[ 06. September 2013, 02:37: Message edited by: orfeo ]
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
You can tell 100% for sure who's in a tomb by what's written on the outside. Those inscriptions are never, ever wrong.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Zach82
Shipmate
# 3208
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Posted
Apropos of nothing, there's a joke I heard. A Dominican, a Benedictine and a Jesuit go to the Holy Land for an archeological dig. They find a tomb marked "Jesus, son of Joseph, who was crucified by Pontius Pilate" with bones inside. The Dominican cries "This changes everything! The Church has all been a lie!"
The Benedictine insists "We must build a shrine to these holy bones."
The Jesuit says "What do you know- he did exist!"
Sorry.
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Don't give up yet, no, don't ever quit/ There's always a chance of a critical hit. Ghost Mice
Posts: 9148 | From: Boston, MA | Registered: Aug 2002
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
There's quite a few "Jesus' Bones" jokes like that.
pererin (and Martin) - it might make a bit more sense if you could unpack your belief that Peter "wasn't at Rome" a bit more. Why do you believe this? Which bit of Acts are you referring to?
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Anglo-Cthulhic
Posts: 4857 | From: the corridors of Pah! | Registered: May 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
All of it. There is no biblical evidence that he ever was. And objectively one would not infer it from his character.
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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pererin
Shipmate
# 16956
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
No one seriously believes nowadays that St. Peter never went to Rome.
That's the RCC's default apologetic position. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
There's just too much evidence that he did, like he's tomb, for instance.
And the archaeologist who found the alleged tomb had grave doubts (sorry, couldn't resist the pun). But, assuming for sake of argument, that the supposed tomb of St Peter is what he found, the Liber Pontificalis says that the bones were moved there by Cornelius (Bishop of Rome 251-253); so the most that it really can prove is that these are the same relics that a 3rd-century bishop found.
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
pererin (and Martin) - it might make a bit more sense if you could unpack your belief that Peter "wasn't at Rome" a bit more. Why do you believe this? Which bit of Acts are you referring to?
Okay. First I'll dust off the scriptural basis of the Antioch tradition, because it's simpler: Paul says he met Cephas (=Peter) in Antioch (Galatians 2.11). It's not an enormous leap from that for Antiochene wishful thinking to go on.
The best scriptural case against Peter's having founded the church in Rome is actually Paul's Epistle to the Romans. It's an argument from silence, but it is very strange how, in his epic defence against antinomianism, he doesn't mention Cephas at all (he does mention Linus though). The conclusion that is generally drawn critically is that Peter was not there.
As for Acts, there are three major issues:
1) in chapter 28, it is Paul who evangelizes Rome, and not Peter; note that this isn't an argument from historical reliability — we know from the Epistle to the Romans that the Roman church was not a Pauline foundation — but one from the author of Acts' ignorance of any tradition that Peter was responsible;
2) 11.19 gives a tantalizing glimpse of historical reality: Rome isn't mentioned (Antioch, amusingly enough is), but it is a diaspora of anonymous people fleeing persecution who are given credit for Christianity's spread through the empire, not a named apostle;
3) the other one is more subtle: Jerome translating Eusebius claims (a) that Peter was at Rome for 25 years and (b) that Peter died under Nero; we learn from Galatians 1.18 and 2.1 that the Jerusalem Conference (in Acts 15, the last we see of Peter in Acts) was 17 years after Paul's conversion; given Nero's death in AD68 and Paul's conversion c.AD35, the numbers just don't add up, which casts some doubt on Eusebius.
RC apologists (e.g. S.K. Ray) resort to giving Peter three spells in Rome to try and reconcile these difficulties.
Our earliest evidence for the tradition of Peter's martyrdom being at Rome is the pseudepigraphon 1 Peter (5.13). It seems wholly plausible that at some point late in Nero's reign, Peter was rounded up, taken to Rome, and put to death. But that is not the same as his having had any effect on the church there. And it seems rather elaborate to go to all that bother: it may be that this is a garbled tradition that he was rounded up by the Romans and done in in, say, Caesarea.
These aren't the only difficulties with the early history of the episcopate at Rome (e.g. 1 Clement not claiming to be from Clement is another good one), but I'll keep this to Peter for now.
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"They go to and fro in the evening, they grin like a dog, and run about through the city." (Psalm 59.6)
Posts: 446 | From: Llantrisant | Registered: Feb 2012
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
This whole discussion is remarkably pointless. It's not that an apostle's presence in Rome makes that apostle pope, or St Paul would have been pope. It is not as if the pope not being in Rome does anything to the papacy. It's just a place. A place with a lot of history by now, but still just a place. St Peter counts as the first pope by virtue of being the head of the original apostles, and his successors in office are the popes henceforth. All we need for the legitimacy of the papacy establishing itself in Rome is that the acknowledged successors of St Peter at some point made it their regular base of operations. That seems fairly undeniable. Whether St Peter acted as bishop of Rome himself, or just got himself killed there, or just had his bones transferred there later on is really not of particular importance. If it wasn't St Peter who took on the office of the bishop of Rome, then it was St Linus. Or St Anacletus. Or St Clement I. Or whoever. There is at any rate no serious doubt possible that a legitimate successor to St Peter set up shop in Rome, initiating the good but still human and in principle changeable tradition of associating that particular bishopric with being the vicar of Christ. The apostolic succession is passed on through people, not places, even though these people minister to specific territories.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Hawk
Semi-social raptor
# 14289
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
There is at any rate no serious doubt possible that a legitimate successor to St Peter set up shop in Rome,
What makes one a legitimate successor, as opposed to just claiming to be in order to set oneself up as more important than one's fellows?
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“We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know." Dietrich Bonhoeffer
See my blog for 'interesting' thoughts
Posts: 1739 | From: Oxford, UK | Registered: Nov 2008
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Jane R
Shipmate
# 331
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Posted
pererin: quote:
It seems wholly plausible that at some point late in Nero's reign, Peter was rounded up, taken to Rome, and put to death.[...] it seems rather elaborate to go to all that bother...
No more elaborate than taking the kings and chiefs of conquered peoples to Rome for execution in the victorious general's triumph, surely? And we know the Romans did that sort of thing, many times. If Peter was known as a leader of the Christians it is certainly plausible that the Judean governor might arrest him and send him to Rome for execution as a way of currying favour with Nero.
But as you say, even if he was executed there it doesn't mean he had any influence on the local church.
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
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Ad Orientem
Shipmate
# 17574
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Posted
Pererin,
Just for the record I'm not an RC. Neither am I claiming that St. Peter was the first pope. The tradition always has both apostles as the founders the Church in Rome, which is confirmed by St. Irenaeus who also tells us that St. Clement heard them preach in Rome.
Posts: 2606 | From: Finland | Registered: Feb 2013
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Augustine the Aleut
Shipmate
# 1472
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Hawk:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
There is at any rate no serious doubt possible that a legitimate successor to St Peter set up shop in Rome,
What makes one a legitimate successor, as opposed to just claiming to be in order to set oneself up as more important than one's fellows?
Possibly in that Linus, Cletus, Clement and the others seem to have been accepted as such by the members of the local church and beyond. What is perhaps more debatable is what exactly that means.
Posts: 6236 | From: Ottawa, Canada | Registered: Oct 2001
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Hawk:
What makes one a legitimate successor, as opposed to just claiming to be in order to set oneself up as more important than one's fellows?
Being elected and/or acknowledged by the apostolic peers as the successor of that person. See Acts 1, which describes the process of Judas' succession. What precisely happened in Rome back then I do not know. If the association of this particular succession with Rome already had been developed by St Peter's death, which is likely if St Peter was active as "bishop" in Rome (scare quotes because this would have been an inchoate version of our modern concept), then quite possibly St Linus was put forward by the local Roman faithful and clergy, and accepted by the still living apostles and their successors explicitly or implicitly (by not raising a protest...). However, we can also simply believe the account given by Irenaeus (in "Against Heresies" III.3.3): "After the Holy Apostles (Peter and Paul) had founded and set the Church in order (in Rome) they gave over the exercise of the episcopal office to Linus. The same Linus is mentioned by St. Paul in his Epistle to Timothy. His successor was Anacletus." If so, then St Linus was in a sense directly elected by St Peter and St Paul (and through them by the other apostles). One should not forget in all this that with the missionary spreading of Christianity, the apostolic succession probably got very "local" for quite a while, and this most likely contributed to the strong association with particular places. The successor to St Peter became whomever the church in Rome was electing in part because the apostles couldn't simply gather to choose a successor. At some point there was little choice for the apostles but to simply nod off the choices of a far distant church. I see no problem with this, since I believe that the papacy is guarded directly by the Holy Spirit.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Alt Wally
Cardinal Ximinez
# 3245
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Posted
In the alternate history it's probably safe to say there would be no Augustine of Hippo, no Book of Kells, no Chartes Cathedral, no Palestrina, no John of the Cross, no Hopkins, no Sacre Coeur, ....
That doesn't sound a lot better to me. I'm sure one could tick off all the historical ills and evils; but going down that read you could plausibly make the argument of the world being a much better place if there no people at all (if one were so inclined).
Posts: 3684 | Registered: Aug 2002
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Was Peter the head of the Church in India? Or Spain? Or Britain? Was Rome? Or Constantinople? Or Antioch? The whole concept is as meaningless then as now. Utterly meaningless. Even the ecumenical councils were tainted with vituperation, violence and anti-Semitism.
Paul had a refreshingly, wonderfully real, unsuperstitious view of leadership - especially Peter's compromised version of it - as he writes in Galatians 2.
No popery there.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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SeraphimSarov
Shipmate
# 4335
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Was Peter the head of the Church in India? Or Spain? Or Britain? Was Rome? Or Constantinople? Or Antioch? The whole concept is as meaningless then as now. Utterly meaningless. Even the ecumenical councils were tainted with vituperation, violence and anti-Semitism.
e.
Utterly wonderful how God can work through flawed human beings tainted by all those things and much worse
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"For those who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing they like"
Posts: 2247 | From: Sacramento, California | Registered: Apr 2003
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Amen. Absolutely. I have no doubt that God was with us in all of it and that He continues to be, here and in the Vatican and Mecca: everywhere. Yearning us all forward.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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