The Nonexistent Early Papacy: Mainstream Versions

An Open Letter to Triablogue Readers:

Over the next several weeks, as Pope Benedict retires (or “abdicates”), and as the Roman Catholic Church holds a conclave to select a new pope, the media will treat us to stories from Roman Catholic sources about the “ancient” nature of their church. But historical scholarship of the last century has greatly put a damper on those claims, in our understanding of the evolution of the office of bishop, then in terms of the evolution of the office of the bishop of Rome and later the papacy.

I’ve written a great deal about “the nonexistent early papacy”. Most of my work has been written for audiences at Triablogue and Beggars All, which (as I understand them) largely consist of pastors, seminarians, and people who are “theologically aware” and even “theologically sophisticated”.

So over the next couple of weeks, my hope is to re-package some of the work that I’ve done, in a format that will be easily digestible by both the secular media (and “religion editors” especially) and also by the reading public at large. My hope is to provide some key insights about what we know about this ancient world, to a broader popular audience.

To that end, I’d like to enlist your help. At the bottom of each Triablogue post, you will see information such as the following:

I’ve created a “Label” through Blogger, “2013 Papal Conclave”; clicking on this label will bring up all the blog posts with this label.

Please “share” these blog posts. Blogger makes a number of small icons available that you can use to “share” these in various ways – through email, re-blogging, and through social media like Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. Also, while I understand “reddit” is not a favorite source for some of you, I’ll be writing these blog posts so that any of them can be shared in the “World News” category. (The “Christianity” category on reddit is rather small and insular, or at least it was last time I looked at it.)

I’m also going to create News Releases, or Media Releases” based on these blog posts, which I hope to post through a variety of outlets (including, sending them to editorial staffs of several major news outlets).

If you can help in any of these efforts, your help will be most appreciated.

Thank you,
John Bugay