Rocking Around The Clock

He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"
Simon Peter said in reply,
"You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."
Jesus said to him in reply, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah.
For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.
And so I say to you, you are Peter,
and upon this rock I will build my Church,
and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.
I will give you the keys to the Kingdom of heaven. 
Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven;
and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." 

Today the Church celebrates the feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul.  I send my prayerful congratulations out to both of these important men and I know that Paul won't mind if I concentrate on Peter today.

You have to hand it to Jesus, He hired quite a crew when He chose those who would carry on for Him once His mission was completed and He returned to the Father.  What people, particularly Protestants seem to forget is that Jesus did not proclaim a democracy, He proclaimed a Kingdom.  A kingdom, of course, is ruled over by the king.  The king decides policy and he appoints ministers to enforce the policies that he makes up.  The king cannot be everywhere at once so he normally has a chief or prime minister to handle things for him.  This minister is given authority far above the other run of the mill ministers that help run the kingdom.  As a matter of fact, all other ministers report to the prime minister.  An ordinary minister has the power of his office.  For example, he can collect taxes.  But this ordinary minister does not decide how much and from whom the taxes will be collected.  This is done through the king and through his proxy, the prime minister. The prime minister, on the other hand, can make decisions that affect the other ministers the king has placed under him.  The prime minister has been given the keys to the kingdom.  Doors that he opens, others do not have the authority to close and ones that he closes, no other may open.  The prime minister's decisions have the effect of law.

In today's reading, we see that Peter has been appointed as the rock upon which Jesus will build His Church.  Notice that the Church is not Peter's church, it is the Church of Jesus.  Jesus is the King and Peter has been appointed as his prime minister being given the keys to the kingdom.  More than that, Jesus declares that the gates of the netherworld will not prevail against His Church and decisions made by Peter on earth will be honored in heaven.  Peter is given the authority of the prime minister, he can bind and loose. 

Peter is arguably a curious choice for this post of being the first in a long unbroken line of popes.  Yes, I know Jesus did not say the word "pope."  The word simply means father or better yet, papa. As we follow the story, not too far down the line Peter fails the first time and Jesus tells him, "Get thee behind me Satan."  Later on, Peter, the prime minister bravely denies his master while warming himself at the fire in the courtyard of the high priest.  But in the early Church, controversies came up and were discussed at length.  But when Peter spoke, the discussion ended and the matter was settled. 

So we salute Peter, the first Pope and see in him a human being who went back to fishing until  Jesus called him back. We see a man who made decisions that helped the young Church grow.  And he was a man that proved his love of Jesus in the end because he requested to be crucified upside down when the time for his martyrdom came because he felt unworthy to die as his Master did.  So, thank you Peter, the first Pope, the first servant of the servants of God. 

Things Protestants Don't Understand About The Church - Call No Man Father

"And call no man your father on earth for you have one Father who is in Heaven." 

Matthew Chapter 23 verse 9 is used by anti-Catholics to show that the Catholic Church is not scriptural.  I have to admit that at first blush you may have stumbled upon something that the Catholic Church has gotten wrong. When I greet my pastor, I will say; "Hello Father Joe." An aside here, when I was a boy, in the pre-Vatican Two church, we never called priests by their first name.  For example, back then my pastor was named "Father Shannon."  I never knew his first name!  But we Catholics do call our priests father and it would appear that this is against what is said in the passage quoted above.   As I said, this is at first blush. When we take the time to analyze the passage in light of its context we find a whole different meaning altogether. 

First of all, we have a bit of a problem in that if we apply the teaching exactly as it is written, we have no title for the husband of our mother.  We call that individual by the title of, you guessed it, Father. Well, wouldn't this be an exception?  If we apply the teaching using the fundamentalist point of view then there is no room to call any man father.  Jesus did not make any allowance for this. 

Obviously, something is wrong here.  One of the ten commandments reads; "Honor thy father and mother."  The author of the ten commandments, God Himself, recognizes the existence of a father in human life. 

What Jesus is teaching here is profoundly simple.  He is saying that God, the Heavenly Father, is the ultimate source of all authority.  You cannot just clip this sentence out of context and use it to condemn anything.  You have to review what is being said with this verse as part of the whole. 

Then said Jesus to the crowds and to his disciples,  "The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat;  so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice.  They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with their finger.  They do all their deeds to be seen by men; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long,  and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues,  and salutations in the market places, and being called rabbi by men.  But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brethren.  And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven.  Neither be called masters, for you have one master, the Christ.  He who is greatest among you shall be your servant;  whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. "But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.

Jesus says we are not to be called rabbi or teacher or father or master. So if a protestant minister is called a good teacher, well we've violated this saying of Jesus.  Actually, Jesus is not condemning these titles per se. He is condemning the attitudes that the scribes and Pharisees clung to while assuming these titles.  He says that they create burdens for the common person that they themselves will not move.  He says that they are hypocrites.  To take away simply that a title should not be used robs this passage of all of its meaning and strength and wisdom. 

The first-century church had no issue with calling priests father or rabbis teacher. Neither did Jesus!  In the story of the rich man and poor Lazarus Jesus calls Abraham Father Abraham.  Paul had no issue with the term father either because he writes in First Corinthians chapter 4 verse 15; "I became your father in Christ Jesus through the Gospel."  

If "call no man father" is all of the ammunition that you have to prove that the Catholic Church is not Biblical, well, your proof fails.  Authors such as Lorraine Bittner and Jack Chick are masters at creating issues where there are no issues.  Critics of the Catholic Church argue from a position of weakness because in many cases they are using nonsense generated by people stuck in "that old time religion" who have an ax to grind against the Church but only consult research providers afflicted with the same blindness such as Bittner and Chick

If you truly hate the Catholic Church and want to bring Her crashing to the ground then step out of your ignorance and get the evidence against her directly from Her published teachings.  Hang her with her own rope! The Catechism of the Catholic Church is THE authoritative source to see what Catholics believe and why we believe what we do.  Ignorance can be cured but you have to want to cure it. Of those that hate the Catholic Church there are probably only a handful of people who hate her for what she is.  The rest hate her because of what they THINK she is.  I encourage you to learn more about the Church through the Catechism.  It is amazing with truth can do for a person's soul.