Darrell Bock on Pope Francis

Darrell Bock posted the following video this afternoon on Facebook, a discussion of the new pope and Roman Catholicism with Bock, Dr. Lanier Burns, Dr. Scott Horrell, and Dr. Leopoldo Sanchez (a Lutheran):



It’s kind of a milquetoast treatment. They did take care to locate the origin of the papacy after Augustine and more specifically with Gregory I. At least there are Protestant seminary professors who've got this on the radar screen.

After listening to the program, I left the following two comments in response:

Darrell you mentioned the “relationships among the institutions” -- Protestants who tend to this pope as a man tend to forget the institution -- at an official level, evangelical churches are not and cannot be called “churches in the proper sense” but “ecclesial communities” lacking “apostolic succession of orders”. See this official document:

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20070629_responsa-quaestiones_en.html

As well, modern Protestants tend to forget about the recent history of negotiations with other churches. Recall the happiness over the "Joint Declaration on Justification", but it was not long afterward that Rome disavowed key elements of that document, and the chief ecumenist John Richard Neuhaus was expressing "Setback in Rome":

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2013/02/rome-is-dialog-partner-that-is-not-to.html