The tail wagging the God

On response to a question on Bavarian TV in 1997, Cardinal Ratzinger said:

“I would not say so, in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the Pope. . . . I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined. . . . There are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit obviously would not have picked!”

That poses a dilemma. On the one hand it relieves Catholic apologists and theologians from the daunting task of having to defend weird or awful popes as God's pick. 

On the other hand, it binds God in the service of a pope he didn't choose. If the Catholic church is indefectible, and what makes it indefectible is (in large part) that God is committed to uphold the papacy, yet God doesn't choose who will be pope, then God is in the subordinate position of rubber-stamping whatever candidate the conclave chooses, even if he's a royal stinker. So the tail is wagging the God. It chains God to the results of a process he didn't control. God must play the hand the conclave dealt it. "Here's the pope, now make it work!" 

Pope Francis, the Thoroughly “Postmodern” Pope, Sweeps Augustine, the Inquisition, and 15 centuries of Roman Policy Under the Rug

This image of Pope Francis
posted by "Livius" on FreeRepublic

Sandro Magister, the Italian journalist (and a conservative Roman Catholic) has been offering a running commentary on “Pope Francis” that seems to be lamenting that Pope Bergoglio is actually a postmodern in sheep’s clothing.

You’ve heard the phrase “50 is the new 30”. Well, Bergoglio may be taking a page out of the book of a great American “great communicator”, Ronald Reagan, and going over the heads of everyone who might want to “interpret” the papal message and make certain that it conforms to “Roman Catholic Teaching”. In doing so, he is simply sweeping under the rug some 1500 years-worth of Roman Catholic policy.

The “papal interview” is the new “papal encyclical”

ROME, October 7, 2013 - As the days go by, the two interviews of Pope Francis with the Jesuit Antonio Spadaro, director of “La Civiltà Cattolica," and with the atheist professor Eugenio Scalfari, founder of the leading Italian secular newspaper, “la Repubblica," appear more and more as milestones of the beginning of his pontificate.

In them Jorge Mario Bergoglio declares his inspiring principles, tells how he sees the current state of the Church, indicates his priorities, enunciates his program.

Interestingly, while “Pope Francis” may be able to “go over the heads” of his own handlers, he can’t avoid the “infallible interpreters” among the Internet apologists, who continue to want to tell us “what he really means”.

Magister is not one of those who agrees that what “Pope Francis” is saying is completely harmless to the Roman Catholic cause:

Wet Willie TV

You'll want to expand this to "full screen" to get the full effect of it.

We Have a Problem

This is an hour-long radio program that deserves the broadest possible audience among the Reformed and evangelical churches:

Habemus a Problemo: Thoughts on the Papal Election

“Pope Francis”

http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/papabile-day-men-who-could-be-pope-13

"We have a Pop!"

L’Osservatore Romano

The first day of the conclave was a boisterous affair. There was frenzy in St. Peter’s Square when the BBC erroneously reported the election of a new pope. The report quickly spread to other news outlets, and went viral on Internet within seconds.

A half hour later, the BBC retracted the claim. According to the retraction, a Swiss Guard thought he overheard Cardinal Dolan exclaim “Habemus Papam!” during lunch break. As it turns out, Cardinal Dolan actually told a caterer, “I’ll have a pop.”

In another news, an imposter was ejected from the conclave. According to Italian authorities, the imposter was a man named Dave Armstrong from Detroit, Michigan. Authorities found a receipt from a Roman costume shop in his pocket.

Mr. Armstrong aroused suspicion in the conclave when he addressed various cardinals in Pig Latin and spent inordinate amounts of time gazing at himself in a cosmetic mirror.

Mr. Armstrong was quite irate as police handcuffed him and hustled him off into a nearby paddy wagon, shouting to the throngs in St. Peter’s Square, “I am the pope! I’m the real pope! Let’s make it official!”

To top it off, police discovered Cardinal George, bound, gagged, and attired in his long johns, in the basement of Meryl Streep’s Salisbury, Connecticut residence.

According to her maid, Miss Streep, an outspoken feminist, was plotting to infiltrate the conclave and get herself elected the first female pontiff in a thousand years. Her recent role as Sis. Aloysius Beauvier was preparatory for the top job.

Knowing Steep’s thespian ability to impersonate anyone, Vatican officials asked TSA to loan them full body scans to forestall a disastrous replay of the Pope Joan mishap. 

It should all be over soon

Now that the cardinals are voting, it seems likely that the conclave won’t be a long one. The graphic below shows the course of the conclaves since the beginning of the 20th century.

What will be their concerns as they vote?

The 115 cardinals who begin voting here on Tuesday are caught in a crosscurrent of priorities and different geographical loyalties. Cardinals inside the Roman Curia—the governing body of the Vatican—want to maintain their status in Rome. Without a strong internal candidate, however, they are looking outside their ranks for a new leader.

Cardinals from major dioceses in the U.S., Europe and Latin America, meanwhile, have united in publicly calling for an overhaul in the governance of the Curia. But they are weighing myriad candidates, and they are split over where the papacy should focus its attention: in Europe, where the Church's influence has faded, or in Latin America, where it is still a dominant force.

So far, the overriding question of how the church—particularly the Curia—governs is topping the agenda after months of turmoil, including a leaks scandal that exposed waste and infighting at the Vatican.

"A divide exists between the cardinals who work outside of Rome and those who work in the Curia," Rev. Thomas Reese, an analyst on Catholic issues, said Monday.

"There is a need for the general administration of the church to be put in good order," retired Cardinal Edward Egan said in a recent interview. He noted that over the past half-century, the central organization of the Vatican had gotten too large, inefficient and lost focus on what is happening in local parishes.

Some cardinals have suggested restructuring the Curia's chain of command, breaking up the all-powerful post of secretary of state, which was held by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone under Pope Benedict XVI.

Not Officially Sanctioned

Now that the actual voting in the conclave is under way, The Wall Street Journal is giving front-page coverage to it, and I would commend their coverage to you (it seems to be available without subscription).

They have caught on to some of the less “sanctioned” activities, such as the blatant campaigning for the Ghana’s Cardinal Peter Turkson (who recently put together “a proposal to reform the international financial system by creating a Global Public Authority and a Global Bank that consider the interest of all developing countries”). Turkson is also named “Peter” which should keep the conspiracy theorists happy.

This article highlights the gambling that is taking place surrounding the conclave:

A throng of prognosticators have been following Mr. Rauen's lead in turning to bracketology to handicap the papal race. Some have used odds set in Las Vegas, the U.K. and elsewhere as a guide for populating the brackets.

A group at Duquesne, a Catholic University in Pittsburgh, launched a bracket challenge for students, with the winner to receive a $100 gift card.

The Religion News Service has created a "Sweet Sistine" game that uses an interactive tool allowing users to see how thousands of players voted in the various rounds.

Cari Donaldson, a 37-year-old freelance writer who home-schools four of her six children, created a bracket of 64 past pontiffs in order to pick the best pope ever. She sees it as a way to assist her study of religion and history.

"My knowledge of papal history was embarrassingly inadequate," said Ms. Donaldson, who published the bracket on a Catholic blog.

Vatican watchers, passionate Catholics and history buffs aren't the only ones keeping an eye on the goings on at the Vatican. Organizers of the Rome Marathon, scheduled for Sunday, have contingency plans should there be a papal enthronement the morning of the race. If there is, they will delay the start time.

Generally, the rule is, if you are papabile going into the conclave, you will be disappointed coming out.

[NCR has also published the odds: “As of March 8, their odds place Cardinal Angelo Scola (3-1) as the favorite, after Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana (7-2) had held the spot for more than a week. Out of the gate, Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet stood as the pack leader (5-2, on Feb. 11; currently 10-1).”]

A Brief History of the Interpretation of Matthew 16:18: “On this rock I will build my church”

Matthew 16:18, of course, is the famous proof-text used by Roman Catholics to “prove” that Peter was the first pope. Ulrich Luz, a leading commentator on the Gospel of Matthew, is author of the three-volume Hermeneia Commentary on Matthew series.

What follows is from Chapter 4 of his work, “Matthew in History: Interpretation, Influence, and Effects” (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Press ©1994), Chapter Four: “Peter: The True Christian or the Pope (Matthew 16)”:

There are four main types of interpretations of Matt. 16:18 in the history of exegesis.

1. The first is the typological interpretation, which is not only the oldest that we know but the “mother” of two other types of interpretation. We could call it the “democratic” interpretation of Matt. 16:18. Its classical representative is Origen. According to him, Peter symbolizes every true, spiritual Christian. He says, “A rock is every disciple … who drank of the spiritual Rock [Christ], who followed them” (1 Cor 10:4 [citing Origen’s Commentary on Matthew 12.10]). Elsewhere Origen says that the church is built on the word in every human being, and, in this way, every Christian becomes strong like a rock [citing Contra Celsum 6.77]. According to this interpretation, Peter is the type of the true, spiritual, and perfect Christian.

The Papacy: Changing in History, Theology, and Dogma

In previous blog posts, I’ve given some short history about the development and growth of the historical papacy.

The papacy is 1600 years old, not 2000 years old

The Crafting of the 4th Century Roman Church, Doctrine, and Papacy

The Papacy: “Self-Consciously” Modeled After the 4th Century Roman State

“Pope Leo the Great”

When you are talking about the papacy, there are three things to consider:

• The history of it
• The theology behind it
• The doctrine of it

Views of all three of these are changing, and they are changing precisely because we’re learning more about the history of the [nonexistent] early papacy.

Shotwell and Loomis, in the 1927 introduction to their work “The See of Peter” (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, ©1927, 1955, 1991), describe how closely these (especially history and doctrine) are intertwined:

What is the value of tradition as a basis for the papal claims? … although it is safe to say that few traditions are more solidly fixed, and few groups of them so readily fuse, as regards their essential facts, as those which support the Petrine clams of the papacy, this does not finally settle the matter. Indeed it can never be settled, so far as historical evidence is concerned. The Catholic scholar is sure to see more in the argument than the Protestant, because one is predisposed to accept and the other to refuse (pg xxiii).

To be sure, this is the way the discussion has worked over the years. The problem for Roman Catholics, however, is that the history, as we have come to understand it over the last 100 years, and especially the last 50 years, has tended further and further away from Roman accounting of things.

Shotwell and Loomis continue:

With reference to the Petrine doctrine, however, the Catholic attitude is much more than a “pre-disposition to believe.” That doctrine is the fundamental basis of the whole papal structure. It may be summed up in three main claims: They are: first, that Peter was appointed by Christ to be his chief representative and successor and the head of his Church; second, that Peter went to Rome and founded the bishopric there; third, that his successors succeeded to his prerogatives, and to all the authority implied thereby.

I hope to address each of these three “main claims” in the near future. My hope is to show how those claims historically manifested themselves, what the Roman Catholic church has said about them historically and doctrinally over the centuries, how the growth of our historical knowledge has been pushing back on these claims, and how the “doctrines” of the papacy have been evolving in a way that tries (but fails) to take into account the history as we know it.

Shotwell and Loomis continue:

In dealing with these claims we are passing along the border line between history and dogmatic theology. The primacy of Peter and his appointment by Christ to succeed Him as head of the Church are accepted by the Catholic Church as the indubitable word of inspired Gospel, in its only possible meaning. That Peter went to Rome and founded there his See, is just a s definitely what is termed in Catholic theology a dogmatic fact. This has been defined by an eminent Catholic theologian as “historical fact so intimately connected with some great Catholic truths that it would be believed even if time and accident had destroyed all of the original evidence therefor” (pgs xxiii–xxiv).

In a very real sense, this is almost precisely what happened, except: it was not “time and accident” that has destroyed “all the original evidence”, but rather, an increase in our knowledge about how the ancient world functioned.

In an era in which (during the last 200 years) there has been an amazing increase in our understanding of ancient Palestine, the ancient Roman empire, the life, death, and Resurrection of Christ, and the testimonies of the Apostles, one thing is moved in precisely in the opposite direction, and that is, the triple notions that Peter was appointed to succeed Christ as the head of the Church, that Peter went to Rome and founded a bishopric there, and third, that his successors succeeded to his [so-called] prerogatives.

This three-fold assertion is repeated throughout time: according to Shotwell and Loomis:

…the student who has read the records of the Papacy of the Roman Empire is also aware that the famous sermon of Leo on the Petrine supremacy, quoted in so many textbooks, and his assertion of doctrinal authority over the Council of Chalcedon were but repetitions in forcible terms of the claims that were first enunciated by his predecessors two hundred years before (Stephen in ~250 AD), (pg xxvi).

Vatican I makes these same claims, as does Pope Leo XIII, as does Joseph Ratzinger in his work “Called to Communion”. But whereas Leo I, Vatican I, and Leo XIII make these claims in “forcible terms”, Ratzinger in 1991 makes them in somewhat less “forcible” terms, and an official document, produced by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1996, following some of the major historical studies, makes these claims in less forcible terms still.

In fact, it is so much less “forcible” that it very much appears to be a different doctrine.

Leonard de Chirico: A Short Guide Waiting for the Conclave

Lane Keister has published A Guest Post by Leonard de Chirico on the topic of “Who Will Be the Next Pope?”

De Chirico analyzes and dismisses a scenario that I think is highly likely – that “After two non-Italian Popes (the Polish Wojtyła and the German Ratzinger) is it time for an Italian one?” According to de Chirico, there is only one likely Italian candidate at this time.

If this is the case, then the Archbishop of Milan Angelo Scola (72) is the first and perhaps only option. The Italian candidates, however, could pay the price of a possible showdown. Many of the recent scandals (e.g. Vatileaks and the Vatican bank’s financially opaque maneuvers) originated in the Roman curia, which is mainly governed by Italian prelates. Moreover, the Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone (78), himself an Italian, is part of the on-going controversy. So the poor performance of the Italian hierarchy may result in leaving Italians out of the game to wait for the next round.

He looks at a list of other names we’ve seen elsewhere.

The speculation is merely that: speculation. There is a saying in those circles that those men entering the conclave as papabile end up disappointed. Ratzinger, the long time doctrinal watchdog during the papacy of John Paul II, was an obvious exception to this rule. But there aren’t many globally-recognized names at this point, and another likely response is simply that we won’t have any idea who the new man is who emerges as pope.

He also provides a brief “list of Evangelical desires” which seems to hope for a pope who is more cognizant of the need for pluralism and of the Evangelical world generally.

An early commenter asks the question, “And we Reformed types need to care about any of this because why now?”

My response to that was: “if only to understand how a vast enemy and mission field works. If we are more cognizant of the inner workings of Roman Catholicism, we are better able to discuss their religion with them on their own terms, show them its weakness, and introduce the Gospel at appropriate points in the discussion.”

Whomever is named, however, will yet again face the choice of being honest with history and admitting to the fraudulent nature of the nonexistent early papacy, or simply smiling and trying to hide it again from the view of the masses of Roman Catholics who genuinely need to hear the Truth.

The Papacy: “Self-Consciously” Modeled After the 4th Century Roman State

Roman Catholics today like to tell us that “Christ is the head of the church,” but Pope Siricius (384-399), who was the successor of the murderer pope Damasus, “self-consciously … began to model their actions and style as Christian leaders on the procedures of the Roman state. … [Siricius responded to an inquiry from a neighboring bishop in Spain] in the form of a decretal, modeled directly on an imperial rescript, and like the rescripts, providing authoritative rulings which were designed to establish legal precedents on the issues concerned. Siricius commended the [inquiring] Bishop for consulting Rome ‘as to the head of your body’, and instructed to him to pass on ‘the salutary ordinances we have made’ to the bishops of all the surrounding provinces, for ‘no priest of the Lord is free to be ignorant of the statutes of the Apostolic See’” (Duffy 40).

Shotwell and Loomis, who a almost a century ago, compiled virtually all the writings concerning the “early papacy” into a single volume, go into somewhat greater detail:

We see that Siricius, in taking up, as he says, the responsibilities of Damasus, assumes the right to make ordinances for the metropolitans [city bishops] and clergy of the West and classes the statutes of the Apostolic See and the venerable canons of the councils together as laws of which no priest of the Lord may be ignorant. He is writing, one must note, for western churches only, as far as his explicit directions go, but his West includes Spaniards and Gauls and Carthaginians in provinces far beyond Italy.

The decretal itself is more than the instructions of a senior bishop to his junior colleagues on ways to remedy evils in congregations under their authority. In several of its provisions it goes behind the local bishop and metropolitan altogether and establishes relations by its own authority directly with the lesser clergy, monks and laity of these distant regions. The local bishop is for the moment merely the organ of communication between the chief shepherd and the sheep. All priests are to keep the rules or be “plucked from the solid, apostolic rock upon which Christ built the universal Church.” Offenders are “Deposed by authority of the Apostolic See from every ecclesiastical position which they have abused.” (Shotwell and Loomis, “The See of Peter,” New York: Columbia University Press, ©1927, 1955, 1991, pgs 699-700).

This is perhaps the earliest of these epistolae decretales on record. It was contemporary with the time that all that the Eastern bishops, at the council of Constantinople (381), had decreed that “appeals in the cases of bishops should be heard within the bishop’s own province,” as Duffy had said, “a direct rebuttal of Rome’s claim to be the final court of appeal in all such cases (34). The Eastern bishops had no concept at all that the Roman bishop had the right to interfere with or make laws in their regions.

Duffy notes that “the apostolic stability of Rome, its testimony to ancient truth, would now be imagined not simply as the handing on of the ancient paradosis, the tradition, but specifically in the form of lawgiving. Law became a major preoccupation of the Roman church, and the Pope was seen as the Church’s supreme lawgiver. As Pope Innocent I (401-417) wrote to the bishops of Africa, ‘it has been decreed by a divine, not a human authority, that whatever action is taken in any of the provinces, however distant or remote, it should not be brought to a conclusion before it comes to the knowledge of this see, so that every decision may be affirmed by our authority’” (Duffy 40). And of course, nepotism reigned:

Round the papal household there developed a whole clerical culture, staffed by men drawn often from the Roman aristocracy, intensely self-conscious and intensely proud of their own tradition – Jerome dubbed them ‘the senate’. Damasus himself was a product of this world, the son of a senior Roman priest who had himself founded a titulus church. Pope Boniface was the son of a Roman priest, Innocent I was the son of his predecessor as pope, Anastasius I (399-401), and had served his father as a deacon.

But probably the pinnacle of admixture between Roman imperial law and arrogance and usurpation of the nepotism system came in the person of “Pope Leo the Great” (440-461).

More on Leo the Great next time.

Good Pope John

Paul Bassett sent me the ad nearby. I wrote back to tell him I already have a job:

Habemus Papam!

Revolution in Rome

It’s been a year since the Vatican came under new management. Readers will remember the precipitating event, when Catholic Answers elevated John Bugay to the Pontificate.

As a golden parachute, Pope Bugay offered Benedict XVI the Archdiocese of Detroit. However, that offer hit a snag when Dave Armstrong said Metropolitan Detroit wasn’t big enough for him and the pope.

There was a personnel shakeup at the Vatican City after Pope Bugay took the reins. Robert Sungenis asked the Holy Father to make him astronomer of the Vatican Observatory, where he hoped to reinstate Dantean geology and cosmology, but Peter Pike had already been offered the top slot at the Vatican Observatory.

Sungenis then asked to be appointed to the Commission for religious relations with the Jews, but that post had already been promised to Alan Kurschner.

Rhology became Cardinal Archivist of the Vatican Library, while Turretinfan took over as Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

In other appointments, Jason Engwer chaired the Pontifical Biblical Commission, Evan May chaired the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archeology, Matthew Schultz chaired the International Theological Commission, and Dustin chaired the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization–while Paul Manata headed the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.

Patrick Chan presided over the Pontifical Academy of Sciences–when he wasn’t moonlighting as a concierge physician in the Hamptons.

For his part, Matthew Bellisario was made commandant of the Swiss Guard–because he looked so darn cute in the pleated gorget, white gloves and pale grey metal morion with the ostrich-feather plume.

In his capacity as Curator of the Vatican Secret Archives, James Swan discovered a long lost letter from Leo X to Luther, in which Leo admitted that Exsurge Domine was all a big misunderstanding, and preemptively excommunicated anyone who denied sola Scriptura or sola fide.

In other news, Steve Hays retired to the Maldives to write his memoirs.

The Crafting of the 4th Century Roman Church, Doctrine, and Papacy

There is no question that there were “bishops” in Rome, likely beginning in the late second or early third centuries. But these were not “bishops” as we would understand them today.

Roger Collins, in his work “Keepers of the Keys of Heaven: A History of the Papacy”, New York, NY: Basic Books, a Member of the Perseus Books Group, ©2009) wrote:

Not everyone is convinced that what has been called a monarchic bishop, with unquestioned authority over all of the Christian clergy in the city, was to be found in Rome even as early as [155-166], and Fabian (236-250) has been proposed as the first bishop of Rome in the full sense. It is probably not necessary to take so extreme a view. The idea that in principle there should be a single bishop at the head of the whole Christian community of the city existed well before his time. On the other hand, even after 250 the authority of the bishop over all of the Christians in the city could not easily be enforced, as it was impossible to impose uniformity in so large a city when the Christians remained legally proscribed and danger of prosecution by the state (pg 14, emphasis added).

In fact, there were disputes – “street fighting among their followers” – for control long after the 250 date. Collins recounts, “because of the house-church system, such rival bishops could co-exist for as long as they had the backing of some of the city’s many Christian groups. But the divisions usually resulted in violent clashes between the partisans of the two claimants, and in all cases the imperial government intervened to end the bloodshed and to send one or both of the rivals into exile, as happened in 235, and would do so again in 306/7 and 308” (Collins 25-26).

After the conversion of Constantine and the legalization of Christianity in Rome, the bishops of Rome found that they had wealth and splendor, and began building monuments to themselves:

They [bishops of Rome] set about [creating a Christian Rome] by building churches, converting the modest tituli (community church centres) into something grander, and creating new and more public foundations, though to begin with nothing that rivaled the great basilicas at the Lateran and St. Peter’s. Over the next hundred years their churches advanced into the city – Pope Mark’s (336) San Marco within a stone’s throw of the Capitol, Pope Liberius’ massive basilica on the Esquiline (now Santa Maria Maggiore), Pope Damasus’ Santa Anastasia at the foot of the Palatine, Pope Julius’ foundation on the site of the present Santa Maria in Trastevere, Santa Pudenziana near the Baths of Diocletian under Pope Anastasius (399-401), Santa Sabina among the patrician villas on the Aventine under Pope Celestine (422-32).

These churches were a mark of the upbeat confidence of post-Constantinian Christianity in Rome. The popes were potentates, and began to behave like it. Damasus perfectly embodied this growing grandeur. An urbane career cleric like his predecessor Liberius, at home in the wealthy salons of the city, he was also a ruthless power-broker, and he did not he did not hesitate to mobilize both the city police and [a hired mob of gravediggers with pickaxes] to back up his rule…(Eamon Duffy, “Saints and Sinners, A History of the Popes, New Haven and London, Yale Nota Bene, Yale University Press ©1997 and 2001, pgs 37-38). (Eamon Duffy, “Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes”, New Haven and London, Yale Nota Bene, Yale University Press ©1997 and 2001, pgs 37-38).

But the only changes weren’t architectural changes. During the fourth century, these bishops of Rome sought to put their own doctrinal marks on the church.

Since the mid third century there had been a growing assimilation of Christian and secular culture. It is already in evidence long before Constantine with the art of the Christian burial sites round the city, the catacombs. With the imperial adoption of Christianity, this process accelerated. In Damasus’ Rome, wealthy Christians gave each other gifts in which Christian symbols went alongside images of Venus, nereids and sea-monsters, and representations of pagan-style wedding-processions.

This Romanisation of the Church was not all a matter of worldiness, however. The bishops of the imperial capital had to confront the Roman character of their city and their see. They set about finding a religious dimension to that Romanitias which would have profound implications for the nature of the papacy. Pope Damasus in particular took this task to heart. He set himself to interpret Rome’s past in the light not of paganism, but of Christianity. He would Latinise the Church, and Christianise Latin. He appointed as his secretary the greatest Latin scholar of the day, the Dalmatian presbyter Jerome, and commissioned him to turn the crude dog-Latin of the Bible versions [currently] used in the church into something more urbane and polished. Jerome’s work was never completed, but the Vulgate Bible, as it came to be called, rendered the scriptures of ancient Israel and the early Church into an idiom which Romans could recognize as their own. The covenant legislation of the ancient tribes was now cast in the language of the Roman law-courts [emphasis added], and Jerome’s version of the promises to Peter used familiar Roman legal words for binding and loosing -- ligare and solver -- which underlined the legal character of the Pope’s unique claims (Duffy, 38-39).

It should be noted that this “Latinization” was one of the things that the Reformation worked to undo. It was the focus of the motto, “ad fontes” [“To the sources”].

As Alister McGrath has noted in his “Introduction to Christian Theology,” “the Vulgate translation of several major New Testament texts could not be justified.” Nevertheless, he said, “a number of medieval church practices and beliefs were based upon these texts.”

So in addition to some of the forgeries and works of fiction upon which the papacy aggrandized itself, Roman doctrines themselves were founded upon or expanded with translation errors.

The papacy is 1600 years old, not 2000 years old

In news accounts concerning the upcoming retirement of Pope Benedict XVI and a new papal conclave, one way to check to see if the particular news outlet you are watching had actually checked its facts is if it maintains that the papacy is a 2000 year old institution.

In fact, the overwhelming preponderance of scholarship on the topic – both Roman Catholic and Protestant – affirm that “the papacy” was a late development in the history of the church.

While it is almost universally acknowledged that Peter was an important Apostle, a friend of Jesus of Nazareth and an eyewitness to his life, death, and resurrection, it cannot be said that he was “bishop of Rome” in any meaningful sense, nor can it be said that he had “successors”.

In fact, the Roman Catholic writer Klaus Schatz, in his work “Papal Primacy, From its Origins to the Present”, (the Order of St. Benedict, Inc, Collegeville, MN: A Michael Glazier Book published by The Liturgical Press, 1996), makes the following statement:

It is clear that the Roman primacy was not a given from the outset; it underwent a long process of development whose initial phases extended well into the fifth century (pg 36).

How do we account, then, for the notion that “the papacy extends all the way back to Peter? One key reason given may be termed “pious romance”. As Eamon Duffy says, in his work, “Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes,” (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997, 2001), though tradition is fairly certain that both Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome during the reign of Nero, nothing else is known, and remaining details, often supplied in the second and third centuries, were “pious romance” – works of fiction that were created to fill in some missing details:

These stories were to be accepted as sober history by some of the greatest minds of the early Church -- Origen, Ambrose, Augustine. But they are pious romance, not history, and the fact is that we have no reliable accounts either of Peter's later life or the manner or place of his death. Neither Peter nor Paul founded the Church at Rome, for there were Christians in the city before either of the Apostles set foot there. Nor can we assume, as Irenaeus did, that the Apostles established there a succession of bishops to carry on their work in the city, for all the indications are that there was no single bishop at Rome for almost a century after the deaths of the Apostles. In fact, wherever we turn, the solid outlines of the Petrine succession at Rome seem to blur and dissolve. (Duffy, pg 2.)

Yet another writer, Daniel William O’Connor “Peter in Rome: the literary, liturgical, and archeological evidence”, (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1969), describes in this exhaustively detailed work, that the early church was so eager for details that within one hundred years after the deaths of these Apostles, it created the full accounts which are found in the apocryphal Acts of Peter, Paul, and other Apostles.

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

Ever wonder where “Papal Conclaves” come from?

Writing about what has been called “The First Reformation”, Diarmaid MacCulloch writes:

The idea of a Reformation in the sixteenth century is probably a familiar one, but it must be realized that an equally crucial Reformation took place in the Western church during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. It was not a rebellion in the ranks like the [16th century] Reformation; on the contrary, it was directed from the top of the church, and it resulted in the creation of the most magnificent single structure of government which Christianity has ever known. Whether we approve of this achievement or not, it deserves the title of Reformation just as much as the actions of Martin Luther and John Calvin (MacCulloch, “Groundwork of Christian History”, London, UK: Epworth Press, ©1987, pg 105).

The timing is important to note. Consider that the Roman Catholic/Eastern Orthodox split had just occurred with mutual anathemas in 1054. Those in charge at Rome had just cut themselves free from the Eastern Patriarchs who, for centuries, had resisted Roman claims to exclusive power. Now they had a chance to enact their own agenda.

Popes in the past had been appointed in a bewildering variety of ways – elected assemblies of clergy and people, hailed by acclamation at the funerals of their predecessors, nominated by local gang-bosses, appointed by emperors.

A synod at the Lateran in April 1059 promulgated a new papal electoral decree, confining the actual choice to the seven cardinal bishops, with the subsequent assent of the cardinal priests and deacons, and then the acclaim of the people: vague and grudging provision was also made for imperial approval.

The ‘cardinals’ were simply the senior clergy of Rome. The word itself is probably derived from the term for a hinge or joint, and was first given to the twenty-eight parish priests of the titular churches of Rome, who also served the five papal basilicas which collectively formed the Pope’s cathedral. This double role made these priests the ‘hinges’ between the See of Rome, and the parishes of Rome. The word lost this precise original meaning, however, and became an honorific sign of status.

It was extended to the holders of the seven ‘subarbican’ bishoprics round Rome, and to the nineteen deacons of the city, and it was this group of fifty-four senior clergy which was now envisaged as the sole electoral body for the papacy, with the initiative and determining role going to the cardinal bishops.

The decree was a clear attempt to exclude lay influence, whether from the Emperor or the Roman nobility, from the whole process.

The same synod made clerical marriage illegal, ordered the laity to boycott the Masses of priests who kept concubines, forbade the acceptance of churches from lay proprietors, and stipulated that the clergy serving a great church should live in common, a move towards a monastic pattern intended to improve clerical morals and discipline (Eamon Duffy, “Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes”, New Haven and London: Yale Nota Bene (Yale University Press) ©2001 edition, pg 118).

For more information, see also this article: What are Cardinals?

Who will be the next pope?

While there’s lots of speculation as to where the next pope will come from, my thought is that we will see another Italian, a “home-body”, from among the gang who actually runs things in Rome.

Here’s why:

The last pope to resign was Pope Gregory XII, who stepped down in 1415 to end a dispute among competing papal claimants.

Given the surprising nature of the announcement, there are no obvious front-runners. The cardinals are now expected to meet in early March for the conclave, the secret meeting to elect a new pope. Just as in 2005, when Pope Benedict was elected, there is likely to be pressure from faithful in developing countries to elect a pope from Africa, Asia or Latin America. Those are the regions where the Catholic faith is thriving.

Still, "there's no consensus around a single name," said Sandro Magister, a longtime Vatican analyst….

Vatican officials also say the church would benefit from a strong hand capable of managing a Vatican administration that has become increasingly unwieldy as it has grown in size. One example is the Vatican Bank, which manages funds for religious orders across the world. The notoriously secretive financial institution is in the middle of a delicate overhaul that has drawn scrutiny from international regulators.

“You need somebody who can run a tight ship,” a senior Vatican official said.

Even among the doctrinal “consistencies” between the last two popes, other things have gotten out of hand “down home”. John Paul II was certainly not seen as having run a tight ship. And Benedict XVI is resigning because of his own infirmities. While there is speculation about a pope from Africa or Latin America, I think that the down-home boys would rather have someone who they can trust to put the house in order.