The papacy’s murky origins

The Wall Street Journal has a “Saturday Essay” entitled “How the Pope was Picked”.

I left a comment -- my comment is #6, linked here.

I said this:

My hope is that he will have the courage to relate research about the papacy’s murky origins. At a very recent ecumenical discussion, the Roman Catholic New Testament Scholar John Meier said “A papacy that cannot give a credible historical account of its own origins can hardly hope to be a catalyst for unity among divided Christians.” Catholic Archbishop Roland Minnerath said “At the heart of the estrangement that progressively arose between East and West, there may be a historical misunderstanding. The East never shared the Petrine theology as elaborated in the West.” And the Lutheran scholar John Reumann said “historically a gap occurs at the point where it has been claimed “the apostles were careful to appoint successors.” All of this is related in “How Can the Petrine Ministry Be a Service to the Unity of the Universal Church?” James F. Puglisi, Editor, Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, ©2010. It’s time for the Catholic Church to own up to this publicly.