Difficulties With The Papacy

One of my posts last week responded to a video by Cameron Bertuzzi about how Protestants view Hebrews, including its canonicity. Catholics often bring up the subject as an example of one or more problems with Protestantism, such as how difficult it is to justify the canonicity of Hebrews from a Protestant perspective. As my earlier post mentioned, there are similar issues in Catholicism, like Catholic disagreements over which papal teachings are infallible. See here for Trent Horn's comments on the subject in a debate he had with Gavin Ortlund, for example. When something like that Catholic disagreement over papal infallibility occurs in a Protestant context, it's often suggested that the disagreement over the subject is an unacceptable form of disunity, it proves that we need an infallible source to settle things for us, it's evidence that Protestantism is a blueprint for anarchy, and so forth. One of the things we're told is that the papacy is the solution. It brings about the clarity, unity, etc. that we need. But what if the papacy is what people are having difficulty with, are disagreeing about, and so on?

Another example was unintentionally alluded to in Cameron's video that I responded to in my earlier post. He refers to how some people have thought that Hebrews was written by the third Pope.

At this point, you might be consulting a list of Popes to see who the second Pope was after Stephen became the first Roman bishop we know of to claim something like papal authority in the middle of the third century. But Cameron wasn't referring to the actual history of the papacy. He was referring to the Roman Catholic history of the office. He had Clement of Rome in mind.

Catholics have disagreed among themselves about who the Popes have been. Even if Cameron misspoke, his misspeaking reflects longstanding disagreements over the identity of the Popes, including the earliest ones. See here and here for lists that place Clement fourth.

Some other examples:

"Clement, of whom the apostle Paul writing to the Philippians says 'With Clement and others of my fellow-workers whose names are written in the book of life,' [Philippians 4:3] the fourth bishop of Rome after Peter, if indeed the second was Linus and the third Anacletus, although most of the Latins think that Clement was second after the apostle." (Jerome, Lives Of Illustrious Men 15)

"As he [Stephen II, an alleged Pope] was never consecrated, and consecration was deemed essential by the canon law of the time, he was not reckoned a pope by LP [Liber Pontificalis] or any medieval document; only since the 16th cent. did the practice of considering him one, on the ground that valid election is all that is required for a man to be pope, become general in Catholic circles. Thus the Annuario Pontificio included him as 'Stefano II' in its official list until 1960, but editions since 1961 have suppressed his name and given subsequent popes called Stephen a dual numbering....The legitimacy of [Leo VIII's] pontificate, at least until John XII's death, has been contested; it depends on the validity, debated among canonists, of John's deposition....[Silvester III's] right to be considered an authentic pope is open to question....Usually classified as an antipope, [Alexander V's] claim to be an authentic pope is still debated, and some historians give him the compromise description of 'council pope'." (J.N.D. Kelly, Oxford Dictionary Of Popes [New York: Oxford University Press, 1996], 90-91, 127, 144, 237)