Wednesday, 2/22/17
Today we honor St. Peter and those who followed as him as
bishops of Rome. However, we need to see that Jesus gave authority to the other
Apostles, and to their successors as bishops. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians tells us about a time when
Peter in refusing to eat with Gentiles had Paul standing up to him, telling him
he was wrong.
Between 1962 and 1965 Pope John XXIII, recognizing their
authority, called in all the world’s bishops to straighten out our beliefs on
every aspect of our faith that has come down to us from the Apostles. He
quietly accepted the truths the bishops published.
Back in the year 100, a man named Polycarp delighted in the many hours he had sat listening to St. John talk about what he had
heard from Jesus. Now, this man Polycarp had a student named Irenaeus who loved
hearing Polycarp talk about the basic Christian message.
When Irenaeus was in his fifties he met with people who claimed
that God had revealed a new Christianity
to them. Irenaeus straightened them out,
saying that there could be no true Christianity that conflicts with what was
handed on by the Apostles. He wrote that to hear that message one must listen
to the unique Christian message derived from the Apostles Peter and Paul and preserved
in Rome.
It was in the year 500 that we made the mistake of seeing
the pope as the only witness to the true Gospel. The way that happened was that
Christianity was almost wiped out when a strong new nation, the Franks, came
into the Church. As good as that was, there was a little glitch. The Franks believed
that in their nation God had given all power to their King Chlodwech, and so
they insisted that in his church God had given all authority to its Pope Symmachus.
The Church in later centuries should not go against its
practice in earlier centuries. In 255 when St. Cyprian of Carthage told Pope Stephen
he should not interfere in naming bishops to north Arica, and Stephen accepted
the rebuke.
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