Ask the Pastors S6 E18: “What do Catholics actually believe about the Pope?”

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Well, welcome listener, viewer, reader if you're reading the manuscript. My name is Brian, I'm here with Thad. Hey everyone. And Will, I'm so sorry. We are Austin list today. We dunno where he is. I don't. You guys probably do.

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He's writing a term paper. Oh,

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You can pray for

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Him a New Testament term paper. It's going to go great. He always stresses out and then always gets a pluses.

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Yeah, should be fine. Sure. Yeah. We got a question about the Pope today. Who submitted this one? Was he you will?

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No, my wife.

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Your wife did. Awesome. Thanks Polly.

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Just all the Pope being all up in our newsfeeds. Absolutely. She thought, you know what? I'm sure this is on people's minds, but they're too lazy to research so why don't you do something they can listen to while they're doing those dishes.

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I love it.

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Can they only

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Listen to she listen?

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Oh yeah. Just make sure I'm walking in and hearing my own voice in my house. It's a beautiful

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Thing. It's comforting. So the question that Pauly asked is what do Catholics actually believe about the Pope?

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Yeah.

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What

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Do they actually believe? What a great trick question because I think there are different spectrums of Catholics.

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I think Catholics, can I just be wildly offensive right out of the gate? I think Catholics don't know what they're supposed to believe about any number of things. I think what is official doctrine? Doctrine and what if you interviewed 10 Catholics put it this way for all of the emphasis on the catechizing and the ritual and making sure everybody memorize the same, wrote, answered everything. I think if you point blank ask 10 Catholics, what do you believe about the Pope? You probably get 10 different answers. Agreed. But I think all we can really do is go off of what again, the official Catholic

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Catholic doctrine is. So, I mean I don't know about, I know you don't like when we just read stuff, but I thought especially on this topic that it would be helpful to hear Catholics in their own voice and then obviously for us to engage with it. Because I mean really the better question than what do Catholics believe about the Pope? You can just Google for that is really the unspoken, I think thing that maybe I want to believe my wife was asking in that is what should we think about what Catholics think about the Pope? And so then maybe we can all kind of engage with some of those answers if that's cool, either just as we go so it's not boring and we read, sit there and read

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From all, none of this is boring, that's all engaging,

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Just interject and as thoughts come to you. But this is from catholic.com so it's official. It's official

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For sure.

• Read more

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  It's got to be, I mean how did they get the URL? If it wasn't, it's probably the Pope wrote this, the word pope. Which one? Good question one. If they're all infallible, I don't know. We will get to that catholic.com. The word pope comes from the Latin papa meaning father in the Catholic church. The Pope serves as the spiritual father and servant leader of the universal church as the bishop of Rome. He holds the highest teaching authority safeguarding Catholics and faith in morals under the guidance of the Holy Spirit IE when teaching in a definitive manner. And so we're going to get to that with the definitive manner. What does that mean? Safeguarding the doctrine of the church. Catholics believe the Pope continues the mission of St. Peter whom Jesus Christ made the foundation of his church as Jesus declares in Matthew 1618. And I tell you, you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church and the powers of death shall not prevail against it.

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  In saying these words, Jesus establishes Peter's unique role among the apostles and he also guarantees the church will endure until his second coming to accomplish this mission. Jesus institutes a visible leadership structure founded on Peter and the other apostles one which continues in their apostolic successors. And so that's going to be a big kind of term that you may have heard that you need to kind of understand if you're going to understand how Catholics understand the Pope is apostolic succession and apostolic authority. So the idea is apostolic referring back to the apostles, the first 12 disciples who became other than Judas, who gets replaced with Mathias in Acts chapter one. So the disciples turned apostles, disciples, followers, apostles sent one sent out. And so Jesus sends them out into the world and the idea is that they have this unique special authority and trusted in them. Basically when Catholics read so many of really this is be a whole nother topic, but when Catholics read so many of the types of, for instance, the great commission that we recite and every single Sunday to end our services and we really purposely change the words to make them personal, we will go therefore and make disciples.

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  We will baptize them, teach them, dah, dah, dah. Catholics are going to read that very different than us. They're going to read that as Jesus said that specifically to his apostles and he sent them out. So you're going to get a lot more frankly, I think safe to say sort of passivity. And so that whole sort of dichotomy and division between the clergy, the professionals that get paid to do it, that are the priests that dah, dah dah versus the laity,

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  There's going to be a lot more sort of even theological justification for them of well we're the laity. And when we read these things about these people that were sent out to go and change the world, he was talking to a specific group of people at a specific time that was for them. So they would probably be real just confused and weirded out to join for some of what we do. And we read scripture as God's saying it to a specific group of people, but for us, and we're supposed to really act on this, they would say, well, I mean that's the pope in the cardinals and bishops because they all receive that same apostolic authority too. But the idea is Jesus invested special people with a special authority from him. Not all of his followers but just some of them. And then they're the leaders and they get his unique authority and then they passed it on and they gave that authority. And Pope Peter picked who they believe is the first pope of the Catholic church of the church. And Pope Peter tapped or touched or knighted or however that special a prayer, I don't want to completely mock it. I mean Peter invested his authority in Pope Clement who invested it in pope dah dah all the way down through however many hundreds of popes have lived over the last 2000 years. Now

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  When

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  You're 66, something like

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  That,

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  All the way

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  There's a debate on how many popes,

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  Theism and all of that because that's where if we would just want to go ahead and talk about it now, our view of apostolic authority and where it gets so messy is there was a specific time during the middle age, well actually a couple different times. I mean we got some folks going through the church history class right now. So hopefully they're getting into just the scandalous, juicy parts of the church history where you get

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  Crusades two weeks ago and then yeah,

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  You had the great schism in the 11th century. Obviously you get the Protestant Reformation 16th century, but even before that you had multiple times where especially with the great schism and the split in the west and the east and Rome being sort of the seed of power and influence in the Roman papacy, and then you have the whole eastern orthodoxy, eastern branch of Christianity that splits off in the 11th century and Constantinople and the Byzantine kind of empire and that whole we want authority and we believe we have the true pope. And even within that, even within Rome, just the western church in Roman Catholicism, there's a variety of times, multiple times throughout church history where you have basically just two, and I'm not enough of a church historian to give you all the details on exactly how it happened, whether it was they're supposed to have a two thirds majority in, we can talk about how popes are elected basically and they say a prayer and then they vote and they just keep voting until somebody gets a two third majority in this conclave and then they send out the white smoke and all that.

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  But whether it was we couldn't get to a two thirds majority and he got half and he got half. So we're just, well, I'm not giving it to you. And so there's two popes sometimes I know in at least one or two of those cases it was over a case of really moral failure and scandal where you had a pope that it came out, I mean this is straight out of the tabloids these days. It's like a pope that all of a sudden there's these three or four kids and baby mamas that come forward and say, Hey, the Pope knocked me up and so then well wait. He can't be pope. He is supposed to be

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  Celibate, not to mention the spiritual father and the moral example and all that kind of thing, but he didn't want to give up his power. So he keeps claiming to be Pope and somebody they elect another pope. And some people still follow this pope. Anyway, it is all this fascinating history. But to go back to the apostolic authority idea, we would understand and interpret what, because this really is an important passage for all of us to deal with Matthew 1615 through 18 where Jesus says, who do you say that I am? His disciples say, well, some say you're John the Baptist, Elijah, dah, dah, dah prophet. And Jesus said, no, no, no. Who do you say I am? And Simon says, you're the Christ, you're the son of the living God. And Jesus says, blessed to you Simon bar Jonah for flesh and blood did not reveal this to you but my father in heaven.

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  And then that's where he says, I tell you you are Peter. And he basically renames Simon as Peter pets petros in Greek means rock, petras and on this rock I will bill my church and the powers of dish shall not prevail. The power of Elian not prevail against it. We would read that not as Jesus saying there's something so special about this man, Peter, that I'm basically certainly will get to all of the different ways that Catholics think about the papacy and the Pope and his power. Certainly not anything about, well, I got to go away, so now Peter, you're going to be my special representative kind of thing. No, no, no. But rather Peter's confession itself. So the statement that Peter made of faith in acknowledging Jesus for who he truly was, really in a first and profound kind of way in the history because they're constantly up until that point, who is this guy?

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  I mean even the waves obey him like who is this guy? And then when Peter says here's who he is because God like Jesus said, God told Peter Simon, this is who my son is. But based on that confession and that statement, that profession of faith, that is what is really the powerful, unique thing. Again, Jesus says, flesh and blood, there's nothing special about you Peter. You're a man, your flesh and blood and this had to be revealed to you by God. And so based on this rock, I think it's Catholics are going to say, well, the word rock Petra at Peter. So clearly he is talking about Peter. I would look at it even just on face value interpreting, say he says, I tell you you are Peter and on this rock. So Jesus immediately makes it impersonal. He doesn't say, and on you the rock, I will Bill Cher. He says, you're Peter and on this rock. So why is he making it impersonal? Because he is making it about the bedrock of that confession of faith about who Christ is. And again, I'll build my church, not your church, it's my church.

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  And I would add to that where if we were sitting here with a Catholic and saying, well this is really the only place you have to look. And in general people would say, where does the idea of the Pope come from? This is the passage they turn to. But a

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  True Catholic would also say not just that. They would also say when you have Jesus referring to the disciples or in the Book of Acts, it's always Peter is referenced first as a leader, as the head of the disciples, therefore the apostles in there. So they would also connect all of those other texts that reference the disciples with Peter being listed first as a sign of He is head over all as a affirmation for the Pope. Again, we would disagree and say, no, it's not Peter. Jesus is building this church on it's Peter's confession about who Jesus actually is.

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  Yeah,

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  Big difference. There

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  It is. But if you continue on in that passage, the next verse, verse 19 is also significant because that's where Jesus says, and I will give you the keys

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  Of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. Whatever you lose on earth shall be loose in heaven. And so here my catholic.com response says in Matthew 1619, Jesus entrust Peter with the keys of the kingdom of heaven, which symbolize his primacy in governing the church in Christ's name. Similarly, Jesus singles out Peter in praying that his faith may not fail so that he can confirm his brethren In Luke 22 verses 31, 32 also in John 21, Jesus commands Peter to feed my sheep further affirming his responsibility to lead his fellow Christians faithfully as the successor of St. Peter. The Pope carries on this apostolic mission ensuring unity in the church's teaching and protecting the faith from error. And so we're going to get to some of that with again, the whole idea of papal infallibility. But I would just say on that point too about this whole Peter being special Peter confirming his brethren, Peter feeding my sheep. There's no question that Jesus, that Jesus, if you want to put it, this had kind of his inner circle certainly favorites within his disciples as Peter, James and John and were kind of the big three within the 12, within the 70 within the whatever.

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  But this idea, I mean you could make some of the same arguments for John where in John's gospel, John's called the beloved one and the disciple Jesus loved is like his nickname and he's the one that in all the gospels I think, or at least multiple, not just John, where Jesus has the moment right before as he's carrying the cross up the hill where he says to Mary, behold, woman, this is your son now son, this is your mother now. So basically you could really play up the impact of that as John being Jesus's sort of favorite disciple that he tapped to stand in his place so to speak. You're going to take care of my mom. So I think, and maybe the even bigger, I think problem with this whole argument of extrapolating from Matthew 1619 and Peter confirm your brothers his questions about what does that even mean?

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  Confirm and then feed my sheep is that, I mean on the feed my sheep, Paul said the same thing to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20 about caring for the flock. I mean Peter himself says the same thing to the elders of all the churches in the diaspora in one Peter five, your shepherds. So I don't know how far you really want to push that kind of imagery of the shepherd. Lots of, I mean we're shepherds, we're pastors of this flock here. So I think, but to me the bigger thing is if you just look at the book of

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  Acts, I

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  Mean you look at the book of Acts and if you ask yourself, was there something super, super special about Peter where clearly everybody who was in the room when Jesus was talking to Peter picked up on this idea that okay, now the one we're looking to, I think you have to say no, read the book of Acts and if you want to make an argument that anybody is special, it's Paul. And so I would be curious to have a Catholic in the room and to kind of debate him on him and say, what do you do with the book of Acts as a Catholic

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  And how do you explain how Peter is supposed to be this super, super special guy? And there's the one passage in Acts 15 where Peter stands up at the Jerusalem council and he is like, Hey, look here. And then a little bit later Paul comes back from his missionary journeys, but even then it's James as James is leading the church in Jerusalem at that point. So it's like, where did Peter go? So I think there would have to be serious questions about, I mean, yeah, Peter, he heals the guy outside the temple in Acts three and four and there's a couple times because of all of his preaching, he goes to prison and then the angel miraculously gets him out and all that. But again, that's early on. And then the majority of the book of Acts though is really tracing Paul and his whole thing.

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  And even Peter himself in his epistles at the end of first or second Peter where Peter says, talks about has that great line about the writings of Paul and about how hard they are to understand, but Peter puts Paul's writings on par with the rest of scripture. So it's just like I think you are really hard pressed to look at the New Testament epistles and really the book of Acts, which is more history than anything and make a argument that Peter is clearly, he's like the president of or the king, the CEO of the church and that everyone's looking to him and running things by him and that he exerts all this influence. The other thing that I will mention about it is history. And again, I was bummed, I have not obviously preaching on Sundays, not able to join that church history class, but the same Catholics, there was a link about what the early church believed about the papacy.

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  And one of the arguments that they're going to make understandably or try to make is that the pope is special. Peter was special from the start and all the other early popes were special. And that's clear when you look at church history. And then so I clicked on, I was interested and read some firsthand documents, translated of course of what the second Pope, Clement and Ignatius and I, EU and some of the early church fathers had said about the papacy. I mean they're not using that word hope or papacy until much later. I'm not sure exactly when that came in, but about basically the head of the church in Rome or whatever. But again, they're not even calling it that. It's a very thin argument basically is what I'm saying. If you look at the primary source documents that Catholics are going to try and point to about, Hey, look, the early church clearly in their mind had this higher view of the guy in Rome, then the pastor and elders in other churches.

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  It's just not true. It's just not there. There's a couple letters that get written back and forth and Clement says to the church in Corinth, Hey, I think y'all should stop sinning. But it sounds like the kinds of letters that Paul wrote to the church, church in Corinth, like quit sending, but even less bold Paul will make statements. I think I too have the spirit. I think you should probably listen to me. I brought people back from the dead. I'm kind of a big deal. I don't know if you knew. So Paul has even more of that kind of authority that he's willing to appeal to rather than even these later popes in the second third generations of church history that are like, Hey, please listen, I'm in charge of the church in Rome. And it's like, to me that's important. It's kind of how it reads If you actually read the letters, it's kind of interesting again, bum that I can't be in the church history class.

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  But all that to say, I don't think, to me it's actually more clear that this idea that the guy who happens to lead the church in Rome is the important one that everybody's going to listen to. That seems to be like hundreds of years later. I don't know when exactly you would say that. Okay, this doctrine of a pope is really kind of shaping up now, but it is not within the first couple generations of, so to me that even more so points to it being sort of an evolved progression. So anything else on apostolic authority? I guess we should keep going. Papal infallibility, we got to talk about this. What is papal infallibility? You want to

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  Start us on this? I want to read, this is a great resource if anyone's interested in Roman Catholicism, 40 questions about Roman Catholicism by Greg Allison. So he is a evangelical Christian, so he's writing answering 40 questions about the Catholic church, but this is from the Vatican Council, the first one we teach in define as divinely revealed dogma that when the Roman pontiff speaks X cathedra, that is when in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, so saying the Pope is the teacher of all Christians. In virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole church. He possesses by the divine assistance promised to him the infallibility, which the divine redeemer willed his church to enjoy in defining doctrine concerning faith and morals. So essentially that the Pope is infallible, that he is preserved from heir when speaking from the chair cathedra from the chair of Peter as the vicar of Christ to define doctrine concerning faith and moral. So anything that the Pope says according to Catholic doctrine is true that it binds the whole Catholic church together in his teaching. What that does not mean though is that the Pope is infallible and everything he says or does, they would say it is specifically in regards to speaking from the chair on faith and morals, that those specific teachings,

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  Yeah. And significantly this doctrine of papal infallibility was formally stated and put out there and recognized, I guess infallibly. So now in the year 1870 at the first Vatican Council by Pope Pius the ninth. So I think that's another just interesting fact that it wasn't until 150 years ago, so almost 2000 years, 1990 years after Christ's death and all of this, that, and again, what was happening then that would be another interesting, maybe they'll get to it. Probably not because by the time church history anyway,

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  There's a lot of other interesting, I don things going

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  In history. That's what I'm thinking. I don't know a lot about church history in the Catholic church post reformation. It's like we split off and then we do our thing and we forgot about y'all. But it would be interesting to know, okay, what was going on in the Catholic church or in the world in the late 19th century that Pope Pius the nine felt the need to go on record with this? You all need to know that when I talk, not just me, but those will come after me too or yeah, that it's not just authoritative like, oh, pope said it, I should probably listen. It's infallible. It's from God, it cannot air. You might as well be listening to God himself. That's a, anyway, so yeah, I mean that is of course a biggie that for those of us who aren't Catholic, of all the things in Roman Catholicism that we would say, well that's not biblical.

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  I mean that one has to rank pretty high up there. Definitely the idea that you have a human being who's claiming in any sense, I don't care whether you're sitting behind the pulpit or in your whatever, I mean, but you are claiming that when I say it, it's not just me, it's guy. I would never say that I of course strive for that when I step up in the pulpit on Sunday mornings. I don't want to get in the way of you hearing from the Lord. And I believe God speaks through broken instruments like me and the pule, but I would never of course claim that I said it and I said it from the pulpit and therefore it might as well have been God saying it because my humanity gets in the way all the time and so does the popes.

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  And even just with that, your point about the early church not holding this view, that's telling. Telling, yeah. And second, before they came out with the doctrine of papal and fallacy, there at least was one pope who was later condemned as a heretic. How could an infallible pope be condemned of being a heretic if the Pope is infallible with that? So it's not consistent

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  Wrap your brain around that one.

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  You can go to what we would call key moments throughout the broader church history like the Council of NAIA was not called or led by a pope, but by the wider church and the emperor Constantine, not a pope himself calling it. And so even these early bishops, as they were called, acted independently, not as a sent one from Rome.

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  Alright, so at least one more title or role that we have to talk about as far as, again, answering the question, what do Catholics actually believe about the Pope? And that is that he is the vicar of Christ, which sounds really cool. It's an amazing title. If it weren't

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  Heresy talking about that on Sunday,

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  If it weren't

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  Christ.

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  So here's again catholics.com because he is rooted, rooted in the Lord Jesus Christ as we all should be. John 15 abide in the vine, but apparently he is rooted, the Pope represents and maintains the unity of more than a billion Catholics worldwide. Furthermore, because of the divinely founded, sustained nature of his office, the Pope ensures that despite cultural and historical challenges and his own imperfections, the church will remain faithful to Jesus and his teachings in here, it is in his ministry as the vicar of Christ. The Pope is also called to engage, I'm not going to read the list, but in his ministry as the vicar of Christ. And here's what the title of this section is, the Pope as the visible head, the visible head of Christchurch. Now it didn't exactly define for you what vicar of Christ means. So here's got questions.org, one of our favorite resources for these podcasts.

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  The title of vicar comes from the same Latin root word as vicarious. So you think of vicarious like I'm living vicariously through someone else. It's a representative, a surrogate of sorts. So the title carries with it this sense of, it says the bearer has the same jurisdictional power of the official he represents. And that's what you just heard in the catholics.com. Christ is the visible representation as the language visible representation of Jesus Christ got questions by claiming the title of Vicar of Christ. The reigning pope is in fact promising to do what Christ promised in that Christ. Christ himself promised I will build my church. He doesn't delegate this power. Jesus does indeed predict a vicar in the sense of a replacement for his physical presence here on earth. However, the vicar of Christ is not a priest or Pope. The only biblical vicar of Christ is the Holy Spirit in claiming that the Pope is the vicar of Christ. The Catholic church rejects the sufficiency and supremacy of Christ priesthood. So you think about Hebrew seven

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  Where Hebrew seven, I mean all you have to do is read Hebrew seven where the whole chapter is saying there's no more priesthood. Don't even use the term Jesus was the last priest, the greatest high priest, you don't need another one. He was like Melek, not like all the Levi Levitical priest, they all died. No more need for the stuff they did for us. He did it all. He's one Timothy two, five. There's one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ. So he's the mediator, he's the one we need is Jesus. And he is still our high priest in heaven sitting at the right hand of the Father. Interceding for us. We don't need, not only do we not need this visual representation here on earth, we don't need a a whole nother podcast topic of the saints and this and Mary and all the intermediaries. We don't need any of it. We got a direct line through Jesus. But yeah, like I said here, vigor of Christ Catholic Church rejects the sufficiency and supremacy of Christ priesthood grants to the Pope a role that Christ himself declared would belong to his Holy Spirit. So again, that's another one that's just like a pill that we could not even become close to swallowing as biblical

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  Believers to say that. And again, I think you only have to ask two or three follow-up questions to that. What do you mean when you say he's the visual representation of Jesus Christ? And again, you can see why, like I said, you ask Joe Catholic, what do you believe about the Pope? I'm sure there are, I know there are because I know some of really theologically literate and even Bible loving Catholics that would be able to explain that this doctrine and this title Vicar of Christ in a way that sounds less heretical and maybe is in line with what they think about it. But I mean, again, how does that play down to the actual pew

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  People

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  In the pews? And if you ask people what does it mean that to say that Pope Leo now is the visual representation of Jesus, that there could be any confusion that I'm looking at this human being and it might as well be Jesus or something. And when he talks, I might as well be hearing straight from Jesus. It is not right to put it mildly. So yeah, I dunno. Anything else on that that we need to add?

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  No, I think those are the big buckets. I think the other one about what a Catholic would think about the Pope would just be his role, which we've kind of talked around in unifying the Catholic church, that one of his responsibilities is keeping everything united as a visible sign of union just as he is a visible sign of Christ for them. But everything else like that, those are the tenets of what a true in full communion with Rome Catholic would hold to.

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  And we would say scripture, the thing that, and the spirit, scripture and the spirit are the things that hold us together as one body, as believers. And I'll end with this to the extent that Catholics are Catholic, I pray many of them truly brothers and sisters. And that to the extent that they do hold to the scriptures and hold to and are empowered and unified by the Holy Spirit, then we all are part of this one truly Catholic, lower sea Catholic universal church. And I'm grateful that you have seen over the last a hundred, 150 years much more of a willingness amongst Catholics in particular to accept. And there used to be a lot of the doctrines about you had to be Catholic or even Protestants, you going to hell, whatever. And so I appreciate that. And anyway, yeah, maybe we'll do a follow-up at some point and truly invite a Catholic in and debate through some of it more in a more conversational setting like that. But

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  Yeah, it'd be interesting how to engage with a Catholic friend or something like

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  That and ask those questions about Mary and the Saints and Rosary and all the different things we've purgatory talked about, so other podcasts. But

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  Yeah, if you want to hear it, submit the question. And speaking of submitting the questions, you can do that at www.westhillsstl.org or submitting those at our info bar on Sundays. And if you enjoyed this week's episode, hit that like button, subscribe and share it with a friend and join us next week where they, not me, I'll be gone. We'll address the question, did Jesus change the way that God punishes sin? Thanks so much for listening, and we'll catch you next week.