It may never come to pass that you have the time to email me regarding Eastern first millennium witness to the infallibility and universal jurisdiction of the Pope. But I just want to point out, in case you are still reading the thread, that there are a lot of dubious histories out there that ignore this evidence, and yet are not repudiated by otherwise honest members of their respective religious groups. The nineteenth century Anglican divines, Janus, and some of the Eastern Orthodox apologetic work are quite bad about handling the papal evidence. In fact, mistranslations, confusions, ignorance of contextual sources, and even outright fraud are present in some of the famous anti-Catholic historical works of the late nineteenth century (including Janus’ attack on Vatican I).

Saint Maximus the Confessor (580 – 662) is a great saint of the East, acknowledged in both East and West. He writes: “Anyone who anathematizes those who have rejected Pyrrhus anathematizes the Catholic Church, and excommunicates himself, if he is indeed in communion with the Roman See and the Catholic Church of God. . . . If he wishes neither to be a heretic nor to be accounted one, let him not make satisfaction to this or that individual, but let him hasten before all things to satisfy the Roman See. For if that see is satisfied, all will call him orthodox. For he only speaks in vain who thinks he ought to persuade or entrap persons like myself, and does not satisfy and implore the most blessed Pope of the most holy Church of the Romans, that is, the Apostolic See, which from the Incarnate Word of God Himself, and also by all holy synods, according to the holy canons and definitions, has received universal and supreme dominion, authority and power of binding and loosing over all the holy Churches of God in the whole world.”

This was not an unusual opinion among great Saints of the East and West during the first millennium. As far as I can tell, the chief opponents to this opinion were either heretics or those so weakly orthodox that their theological opinions depended on whatever the Emperor believed, and changed as the Emperors changed. Please know that there is a lot of information out there that corrects the horribly misleading statements that EO, Protestants, and Anglicans sometimes make, along the lines of: “roman encroachments were resisted by the East and Africa, as these Churches clung to the ancient traditions of independence that had been passed down to them by the Apostles.” If you are willing to look at reliable Catholic sources (and while he is not perfect, the most reliable I have yet found seems to be Dom John Chapman) you will see that the evidence is so far from such a claim that it is amazing that an honest person could still make it without blushing. There is a large amount of evidence that papal prerogatives were strongly supported in both the South and the East, from the Nicene era until Photius in 850 AD, by the orthodox (but not always by the heretics), who made reference both to ancient tradition and the divine teaching of Christ himself. It is really impossible to draw claims for the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist from our records of antiquity and yet to deny the divine origin of papal power. Please don’t let dishonest historians get in the way of you and Communion.

Sincerely,

K. Doran

Tim Troutman,
Thank you so much for your website at Army of Martyrs that explained for me the claim by John Calvin that the letters of St. Ignatius were all spurious and the final vindication. Not that anyone in my extended family believe it regardless (Reformed Pres Church in the U.S.).

Pray with and for me that my answers continue to be charitable when constantly attacked as idolatrous, superstion, wicked popery, etc. (sigh)
Peace be with you all,
Teri

You said: “I’m going to a Marathon…not in talking :-) In running.” LOL! That was a good one :) Thanks for bringing a laugh on a cold day.

Sincerely,

K. Doran

I had faith in “my faith” in Christ and the scriptures and my feelings, etc. I came to the scriptures, as you guys have stated, with a grid on them that had been handed down to me by “my faith tradition”.

My faith in Christ as Lord and Savior was tied in with my church teaching concerning Him. He was “my Lord” and because He was personal, then it was all about my feelings. Nothing in the world of being a Protestant comes without a grid of interpretation from your traditions.

Strange that I always said just, My Lord, and never, Our Lord. Where is the scripture about those who gather to themselves teachers to scratch their itching ears? We always could point to the other guys in their denominations that didn’t agree with us, but weren’t we all guilty? Isn’t that the point of Protestantism?

If I like this doctrine, this is my faith and my pastor because it scratches where I want it to. If he stops, then out he goes or in other denominations, out I go. Whatever place I land, the guy is scratching my ears because I like him and his grid better than I like the other groups.

In the Catholic faith, we may have a Priest who is really boring or really distant, but the focus is not on him, but on Christ and on the Eucharist. If my ears aren’t being scratched all I can do is try to locate another parish, but change faith, too bad….

It feels so much more real to me to have faith in Christ and His promises than in a system. Systems and people let you down. People in the Catholic Church will let you down….but Christ’s Church cannot fail and let you down.

It’s like the game they played in camp – you close your eyes and fall back trusting that the person or persons behind you are going to catch you before you fall to the ground. That’s faith in Christ…true faith….believing it all and knowing he is ultimately the one that is going to catch you because He made a promise to one Church, that the gates of Hell would not prevail against it.

What do you do with the scripture where Our Lord says something about “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven and those you retain are retained? What happens after those apostles are dead? Where did St. Paul get his authority to judge the Corinthian Church? ? Are we now free to believe that He forgives all of our sins but retains the sins of say….an Arminiam…a Reformed group split from other Reformed groups?
How does that work out?

So does it boil down to – I believe that God gave the keys to John Calvin or Martin Luther or Henry VII? Who has the authority to bind and loosen…everyone? Common sense says this is flawed.
Blessings and I promise to not interrupt anymore. I’m going to a Marathon…not in talking :-) In running.
Teri
Blessings,
Teri

I echo Bryan’s words and add the late Father Neuhaus’, “For the Catholic faith in Christ and faith in His Church is one act of faith.” Also did not Augustine say, “I would not believe the Gospel were it not for the Catholic Church.” The Church is the credible witness, established by Christ, and empowered by the Holy Spirit, to the person and work of Christ. We do not trust the Church blindly, we do not trust the Church because she has the best collection of theologians in the world, we trust the Church and have faith in her out of our confidence in Christ. He gave the Church to bear witness to Him. If the Church is given to bear witness to Him and lead us to Him, then it is not a stretch to think she has been given the charism of infallibility, so that we might know what Christ expects of us. Why? Following Christ is hard enough, what if we had to wonder about the practice of baptism or the right understanding of the Sacraments? The Church is given by Christ that she be the pillar and ground of the truth.

Bryan, it is not merely a matter of authority; it’s a matter of faith (not suggesting the two are mutually exclusive, of course). From where I’m standing, your faith in the inerrancy of the magisterium is one of the blindest leaps I can imagine this side of glory.

As you know, St. Paul wrote the following:

How then shall they call on him, in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they believe him, of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear, without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they be sent? (Rom 10:14-15)

We cannot believe unless we hear, and we cannot hear unless someone preaches and teaches the divine message to us. And the divine message cannot be conjured up by the mind of mere men; it only comes from those divinely authorized and divinely sent by the incarnate Christ. This is why faith and authority not only are not mutually exclusive, they can never be separated this side of glory. Without divine authorization, there is only a cacophony of competing man-made messages, and then Christ cannot be believed in, because Christ and His message and His power cannot be accessed. That’s why I said in #81, “If the Church could “get it really, really wrong” when she defines dogma, hands on the faith, etc., then it would follow that we know next to nothing with any certainty about Christ, His gospel, the canon, etc., including transformation of the bread and wine.” If we do not know who has ecclesial authority, then we cannot have faith, because we cannot know what is the divine message, i.e. the gospel. This is why faith and authority cannot be separated. We cannot even know the canon of Scripture without trusting God by trusting the Church.

From where I’m standing, your faith in the inerrancy of the magisterium is one of the blindest leaps I can imagine this side of glory.

If I thought that the Church were merely a man-made institution, then I would agree with you. Men are fallible, and it would be unjustified to assume, all other things being equal, that a man-made entity would be protected from error. But, the Church is a supernatural entity, because it is the Body of Christ, as I explained in my previous comment. It is not those who have faith in Christ through His Church who are blind, just as it is not those who have faith in Christ through His Apostles who are blind. We believe in Christ by believing through His Church, by finding those having the divine authorization to speak in His Name as His authorized representatives. The notion that a supernatural entity cannot err is not a blind leap; the notion that the Church can error in her definitive teaching on faith and morals is blind either to the divinity of Christ’s Body or to the power of God to avoid error.

Ward’s statement that there “has never been a time when the Church was one” is not true. Moreover, it is a heresy, a direct contradiction of the explicit statement in the Creed that the Church is one. You seem to want to affirm the seven ecumenical councils, and the creeds, but then you take it back by denying an explicit statement in the Creed. There has never been a time when the Church was not one. Ward misinterprets St. Paul in 1 Corinthians; St. Paul’s point is that the Church is one, because Christ is one, and Christ cannot be divided. That’s precisely why St. Paul exhorts the Corinthians not to divide into personality sects.

In my previous comment I responded to your statement that “I don’t see a unified church today that has the authority to dictate such things” by asking “Ok, if there were such a thing, what do you think it would look like, and how would it look different from the Catholic Church?” And here I would ask you a similar question, “Concerning the claim that the Church of the first millennium was not unified, if that claim were false, and the Church of the first millennium had in fact been one, what would have been different?” Moreover, how would it have been possible for there to be schismatics from the Church in the first millennium, if the Church were not unified? (see my “Branches or Schisms?“) How could St. Ignatius of Antioch talk about the great sin of schism, and the “unity of the Church” if there were no such thing? How could St. Cyprian of Carthage write about the unity of the Church if there were no such thing? How could St. Augustine have talked about the Donatists as being in schism, if there were no such thing as a unified Church?

If the first seven ecumenical councils were products of a divided Church, then why do you think of them as ecumenical? You can’t have it both ways. If the first seven ecumenical councils were products of just one segment/fragment of the Church, then they aren’t ecumenical, and they do not have universal authority. But if you think the first seven ecumenical councils were ecumenical, and do have universal authority over all Christians, then they couldn’t have been the product of just one fragment of the Church; they must have been the product of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.

My concerns are more pragmatic: there is common ground among us (especially as noted above—the 7 ecumenical councils); church authority is part and parcel of that commonality;

With respect to church authority, there is less common ground than it might appear. That is because for Catholics and Orthodox the basis for the authority of these councils is apostolic succession. But for Protestants, the basis for the ‘authority’ of any council is its agreement with [one's interpretation of] Scripture. In other words, when we are talking about “church authority,” we are talking past each other, because the term “Church authority’ means one thing to Catholics but something quite different to Protestants. This Protestant conception of Church authority reduces any ecumenical council’s decision to advice you can take or leave. (And we can see why that is, insofar as Protestants think the first seven ecumenical councils were the products only of one fragment of the Church.)

Regarding Graham Ward, from where I’m standing, he does not have more authority to speak and teach concerning the nature of Christ’s Church than do those authorized by succession from the Apostles. If I have to choose between Graham Ward’s claim that the Church has never been one, and the Council of Constantinople’s (AD 381) claim that the Church is one, well, as for me and my house, I’m going to follow the successor’s of the Apostles on this one. And if that seems to you like a blind leap of faith, then from my point of view that can be only because you are not ’seeing’ the authority of those bishops who assembled at that council.

In the peace of Christ,

- Bryan

I sincerely appreciate your kind words as well. I will pray that Our Lord will give you a clarity and a conviction of what His Church is. I am a new convert to the Catholic Faith, but I have never had such a sense of peace. I have loved Our Lord deeply for a long time, but knew that something was not right with regards to the unity that Christ speaks of. In my small town, there are more churches than people, literally. They are not even blocks apart, much less miles.

I think I can almost understand how it must have looked or felt during the time of the Protestant Reformation, especially Martin Luther. I wonder what I would have done or thought then. Pretty sure I would have escaped Geneva because I’ve never had any love for John Calvin, but would I have believed that God’s judgement had fallen and the keys to the kingdom were being taken away?

Hindsight is 20/20, but I wonder how Our Lord’s close apostles felt when they had to rely on His promise that He would come in the clouds – not in the desert or the hills. Hard to even imagine what it must have been like to have everyone saying the miracle working messiah, Bar Kochba was going to overthrow the Roman yoke and Israel would be free once and for all.

To stand firm on Christ’s promise to not believe in the old way, but stay the course with His promises must have felt frightening. I’m sure there were many who needed their faith strengthened during this time. But we know they didn’t give in to the fear and they had faith in Christ’s promise, because the Church has preserved for us how and when they died. If not for the Church, we would not even know that anyone had been martyred for their faith.

I’ll stop now, but I will be praying for you to feel His peace. It’s a beautiful place to be in this Church that is family. It’s vertical and horizontal…Our Lord and our brothers and sisters that we are one with. I’m reminded of a house set on many acres, all with good fences to keep boundaries – the need to keep out all of the wolves, not to keep the people imprisoned. You can go in the house and feel safe and secure by the fire or wander close to the fence, if that is your job. But it’s all about family and our places in that family.

May you feel His peace and His Holy Spirit guiding you in all things,
Teri

No problem. I think you’re right that we need faith. And I think you’re also right that monolithic homogeneous unity has never existed. Also, you’re right that Catholics sometimes speak as if there has been such a monolithic homogeneous unity.

But there has always been some kind of visible unity, with some kind of visible center. When Ignatius of Antioch wrote that the Church of Rome “presides over the love,” in 107 AD, he was stating beautifully what the Church of Rome was meant to do at all times. The fact that sin and confusion and errors (both inside and outside Rome) have continuously arisen to mar this beautiful harmony doesn’t mean that Christ didn’t intend the harmony. It just means that we too often let ourselves get in His way. This was true while the apostles were still alive, even though Peter’s headship was real, and the college of apostles’ headship was real, and the Eucharist was real, etc. And it is still true today, even though Peter’s headship is still real, and the Bishops’ headship is still real, and the Eucharist is still real, etc.

We need to have the faith and the reason to see that the sins that have created visible disunity among Christians from the beginning up until the present have never eliminated the legitimate authority that God has invested in the offices of His Church. When people chose one apostle over another in the apostolic Church, this didn’t eliminate any apostle’s God-given authority. When people chose one bishop over another in the later Church, this didn’t eliminate the bishops’ God-given authorities. Without faith guided by reason, we can see these sins as somehow erasing what God has granted. But they no more erase them today than they did when the apostles were still alive. If we believe that they have erased them today, then — God forbid! — we will conclude by the same logic that the apostles had no real God-given authority either.

So I’m going to pray that you have Faith in the Church Christ founded. If you enter this Church you may receive the first true Eucharist you have ever received. The graces that you’ve already received from your commemorations of the lord’s supper will abound all the more when what you eat is Christ’s own flesh. To say nothing of your first confession. It will change your life forever. Alleluia!

Sincerely,

K. Doran

Also, Teri, thank you for the kindness with which you write. You have your finger, I think, more closely on the matter than Bryan. Bryan, it is not merely a matter of authority; it’s a matter of faith (not suggesting the two are mutually exclusive, of course). From where I’m standing, your faith in the inerrancy of the magisterium is one of the blindest leaps I can imagine this side of glory. My concerns are more pragmatic: there is common ground among us (especially as noted above—the 7 ecumenical councils); church authority is part and parcel of that commonality; yet from the beginning the church has never really been all that unified. Something’s got to give. As Graham Ward writes in his newest book, The Politics of the Discipleship (Baker Academic):

There has never been a time when the church was one. The centralizing of the church around Rome and the papacy was a historical move emerging between the third and fifth centuries in an already divided and contested Christendom. “Each one of you says, ‘I belong to Paul,’ or ‘I belong to Apollos,’ or ‘I belong to Cephas,’ or ‘I belong to Christ,’” as Paul attests in one of his early epistles (1 Cor. 1:12). There has never been a Christendom in terms of a universal kingdom of Christ. While the Roman medieval church was extending both its powers and territorial domain from the eleventh century to the sixteenth, it became increasingly aware of its own smallness. . . . Even before the Reformation’s splintering, Christendom was an ideology only partly realized and internally contested. The church, then, is always to come. It is a promise that forms the horizon within which the churches seek to be and become more fully the church. (p. 25-26)

Ignore if you will his writing that “the centralizing of the church around Rome and the papacy was a historical move emerging between the third and fifth centuries ” because it’s quite beside the point (i.e., even if this move occured in the first century, it still emerged among “an already divided and contested Christendom”). I also don’t think this completely undermines the idea of unity—realitvely speaking. But it does rightly point out that a kind of monolithic homogeneous unity has never existed. But at times, it seems like certain Catholics are saying that it has and does. Pointing out the obvious is not docetism. It’s realism. But there’s hope—now and not yet.

“If then the Church can err, O Calvin, O Luther, to whom shall i have recourse in my difficulties?
To the Scripture, say they. But what shall I, poor man, do, for it is precisely about the Scripture that my difficulty lies.
I am not in doubt whether I must believe the Scripture or not; for who knows not that it is the Word of Truth? What keeps me in anxiety is the understanding of this Scripture, is the conclusions to be drawn from it, which are innumberable and diverse and opposite on the same subject; and everybody takes his view, one this, another that, though out of all there is but one which is sound

Ah! who will give me to know that good among so many bad? who will tell me the real verity through so many specious and masked vanities.
Everybody would embark on the ship of the Holy Spirit; there is but one, and only that one shall reach the port, all the rest are on their way to shipwreck.
Ah! what danger am I in of erring! All shout out their claims with equal assurance and thus deceive the greater part, for all boast that theirs is the ship. Who ever says that our Master has not left us guides in so dangerous and difficulty a way, says that he wishes us to perish.

Whoever says that he has put us aboard at the mercy of wind and tide, without giving us a skillful pilot able to use properly his compass and chart, says that the Saviour is wanting in foresight.”

St. Francis de Sales