Gospel e-Letter

The authority of the Roman Catholic Church depends on the apostolic succession of the Pope. The Pope should be obeyed as the universal and infallible ruler, the Catholic teaching insists, because his authority has been transmitted over the centuries from the apostle Peter in an unbroken lineage of Popes. Let us then briefly examine this claim from a historical and biblical perspective. It is not particularly edifying to go through all the filth and corruption of papal history. A few examples should suffice. Pope Honorius was condemned as a heretic by the Sixth Ecumenical Council. Pope Christopher became pope by forcibly dethroning his predecessor, Leo V, and putting him into prison. He was then driven from the chair by his successor, Sergius III. Pope John XII was a coarse, immoral man, whose life was such that the Lateran was spoken of as a house of prostitution, and the moral corruption in Rome became the subject of general odium. Pope Benedict IX sold the papacy to Pope Gregory VI...

John Henry Newman wrote, ‘To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.’ Does this often-quoted statement imply, as many seem to assume, that to be deep in history is to commence to be a Roman Catholic? Are the teachings and practices of the modern Roman Catholic Church identical to the early church? By the time of his death, Newman believed the dogma of the infallibility of the Pope. However papal infallibility was a mere theological opinion at the time of his conversion to Catholicism. A popular Catholic catechism at that time asked, ‘Must not Catholics believe the Pope in himself to be infallible?’ The catechism answered, ‘This is a Protestant invention; it is no article of the Catholic faith.’ (Keenan's Controversial Catechism, 1851). A few years later, by 1870, the ‘Protestant invention’ was declared dogma by the First Vatican Council. Did Newman accept new dogma on the evidence of history? He must have read the book, 'The Pope and the Council,' by the in...

Protestants, as well as Catholics, confess their belief in one church. But the two groups understand church unity differently. According to a recent document published by the Vatican, the church of Jesus Christ is identified with the church “governed by the successor of Peter and the Bishops in communion with him”. Christian unity is conceived as a world-wide organized society under the leadership of Catholic bishops and headed by the bishop of Rome.  According to this theory, the Orthodox and Protestant churches “suffer from defects”; the latter are merely “ecclesial Communities” and not “churches in the proper sense” -- primarily because they do not submit to the headship of the Pope, the bishop of Rome. However, there is no convincing biblical evidence that Peter was appointed supreme pastor and ruler of the whole church. We know from the New Testament that Peter was considered a pillar in the early church, but he shared this reputation with two other apostles. “James, Peter, an...