Traditional Thomistic Catholic

Tag: priesthood

  • The Mystical Body of Christ’s Differentiation of Roles Such as Priest and Bishops Selected by the Church 

    The Mystical Body of Christ’s Differentiation of Roles Such as Priest and Bishops Selected by the Church 

    My belief is that on the road to Emmaus (Luke 25:13-35) is where some information not written in the Bible comes from by tradition in the Catholic Church where Jesus Christ explains Old Testament references to some disciples. But why did they not write it down, a letter possibly entitled: the Lords talk on the way to Emmaus? Because the two disciples were probably illiterate and they, over the course of their lives, passed on the information by word of mouth.

    The Ethiopian understanding that he needed Philip’s help to understand the Bible (Acts 8:26-40) is why you need an apostolic church and there can really only be one visible apostolic church otherwise you don’t know who to ask. These things make us part of one coherent body – the Mystical Body of Christ.

    The born again quote by Christ (John 3:3) means we are born again into the kingdom of God, not as white, black, Asian, Caucasian, Russian, Chinese, Korean, German, Italian, Greek, Japanese, Filipino, Mexican, Columbian, Canadian or American but as Roman Catholics (Galatians 3:28). The tower of Bable, the separation of mankind is repaired in the universality (the Greek Katholico meaning universal) of the Roman Catholic Church (even in the Churches name the 2 great ancient civilizations are joined – Greek and Roman). The common language of the Roman Catholic Church has been Latin for a millennia and a half – 1500 years. This common language made it possible for priest in different counties to talk to each other to coordinate operations such as the rescue of Jews during WWII just to use a recent example.

    The death on the cross is the consummation of Christs wedding with his bride because his death gives us the privilege of being born again into the Kingdom of Heaven as adopted sons and daughters of God.  Just as the marital act, an act produce by the will of at least one of two parties, can but won’t necessarily produce children between a man and a woman, Jesus Christs death won’t necessarily produce a citizen of heaven in any particular human being, but just as the marital act, might. Just as with Adam and Eve and the whole of salvation history, every one is the result of the cooperation of at least 2 people but their ultimate destiny is in their hands.

    The whole concept of the mystical body of Christ is introduced most clearly in 1 Corinthians 12:12-27 which says: 12 For just as ithe body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, jso it is with Christ. 13 For kin one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—lJews or Greeks, slaves1 or free—and mall were made to drink of one Spirit.

    14 For the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15 If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? 18 But as it is, nGod arranged the members in the body, each one of them, oas he chose. 19 If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts,2 yet one body.

    21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” 22 On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, 24 which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, 25 that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. 26 If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, pall rejoice together.

    27 Now qyou are the body of Christ and individually rmembers of it.

    Priest by tradition are thought of as “altus Christus” or other Christs, this is why they are called “father” as the head of the parish family, with the local parish/church as the bride of Christ. That this is the correct interpretation can be found in Galatians 2:19-21

    19 For I, through the law, am dead to the law, that I may live to God: with Christ I am nailed to the cross.

    20 And I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me. And that I live now in the flesh: I live in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered himself for me.

    21 I cast not away the grace of God. For if justice be by the law, then Christ died in vain.

    Paul’s love for his “parishioners” or diocese as a bishop not because of the law directly, but if he loves his parishioners then he will not drift from the law (Galatians 5:14), but it is the love of God through Paul exemplified by Jesus Christ’s life and death on the cross that informs his actions.

     There are different functions in the same community/body: “some apostles [bishops], some prophets, some and others some evangelists, and others some pastors [priests] (Ephesians 4:11).  This is show that Jesus Christ envisioned there being different functions in his church and it makes sense that who-should -be-what should be selected by merit by the church as Mathias was as a replacement to Judas by the apostles or those who would be their successors – present day bishops. This concept is reinforced in 1 Corinthians 12:28.

    The fact that the guiders or principals of a religion, usually priests (empowered to offer sacrifice for/with the people of the religion), were selected by God, is not new.  In fact it was the case in the precursor of the Roman Catholic church the Jewish religion.  In the Jewish religion the priest were picked by natural law (decedents of Levi and specifically Aaron for high priests Exodus 18:1-5).  To allow for peoples other than Jews to be selected, supernatural law, selection by the apostles, guided by the Holy Ghost, as in the case of Mathias, was the rule in Jesus Christ’s Catholic Church. Christ said He came to fulfil the (Jewish) law not to abolish it. if this is true, after 2 of the most important books in Jewish law: Leviticus and numbers, were written for priest why would Jesus Christ, as suggested by Martin Luther, abolish the priesthood as differentiated from unconsecrated Christians? He would not. In the Old Testament in the book of Numbers chapter 16 God showed what he thought of priests as having a separate vocation from unconsecrated people when He physically and destroyed Korah’s rebellion when Korah and his hoard suggested otherwise. Many would say “but there was also so much describing dietary restrictions.” My reply to that would be: those were all removed when in Mark 7:15 Jesus Christ basically said there is nothing outside of a man that enters into him that can defile him, but the thing that proceeds from him that is what defile him.

     The information in the square brackets was added for emphasis and clarity to the original bible quotes.

  • Salvations Climax Summarized

            The a few blogs ago (before the summer movie reviews) we spoke about the last supper, the passion and crucifixion at calvary and the Ascension. The last thing that should be mentioned is Pentecost. In the Old Testament, God the Father interacted with man directly, communicating with him, punishing him, rewarding him and giving prophets the information that He would be sending a messiah to save them from the punishment due to original sin, which they promptly transmitted to the people of Isreal. The information on the Messiah was detailed (see the book of the prophet Isaiah) so that Isreal would know when Salvation had come but unfortunately, they were a stiff-necked people (Exodus 32:9, Jeremiah 17:23 and Acts 7:51) and either refused to see the signs that Jesus Christ was the Messiah or ignored the signs through pride!

            Of all the people that had ever lived, only one was clearly predicted to come over 600 years before he was born, and that person was Jesus Christ.  In the New Testament, Jesus Christ, God Himself, came to fulfill the law (Matthew 5:17-20) that priest of old had been transmitting to the Jewish people. The priests of the Old Jewish religion were selected by God the Father using the natural law, i.e. the sons of Levi for priests and the sons of Aaron for the high priest. In the New Testament the priest and bishops were selected by supernatural law, by decisions by bishops or Christ Himself in the case of St. Paul which had to be “ratified” by someone who was a disciple and had presumably through at least the sacrament of confirmation if not Holy Orders (on reception of the Spirit being a prerequisite to full service to God see Acts 8:15-17)  had received the Spirit (the first 13 being the 11 apostles who chose the 12th Matthias in Acts 1:15-26 – a decision by the bishops for a successor to Judas Iscariot, and St. Paul, selected supernaturally by the risen Christ from heaven but ratified by a disciple Ananias, see acts 9:10-18, presumably blessed by the apostles to be the equivalent of a priest in those days sometimes referred to a Presbyter in the Douey-Rhiems version of the bible the first English translation of the Vulgate bible, the Vulgate being the first book produced by the first printing press).

           The reason for the implementation of a supernatural law to select priest and, with the advent of New Testament times, senior priests was two-fold: 1) to enable God to select non-Jews (i.e. gentiles) to be priests in his religion and 2) Since gentiles are everywhere, other than the place Isreal has always been, He wanted a religion that was “portable,” where a church or diocese could be anywhere even another planet.  This is why even the idea that dogma/doctrine that is solid, or that it can even change, is so ridiculous.  If man travels to the other side of the galaxy or even universe, how do they get news of that dogma/doctrine has changed?  The same with the holy sacrifice of the mass (the Sunday ritual worship of the Roman Catholic religion), if it is always done and transmitted in Latin, it is a common language neither the rich/[powerful nor poor can lay claim too and can keep the meaning of dogma constant and unconfused. No matter how language changes, if we assume the speed of light is the limiting factor for information transmission, changes in ritual or clarification of dogma will still insure the “old dogma” is not wrong.  Almighty God planned it this way and why everything in the Old and New Testament is infallibly transmitted and meaning is intended to be constant and unchanging.

             Many non-Catholic Christians, who follow Christ’s philosophy, appear to have problem’s with the fact that Christ might leave some visible authority who’s power is traceable back to God, specifically Jesus Christ.  They appear to think that to pick up a bible, learn it then preach it gives them the authority of a true representative of Christ which of course only a priest or bishop selected through apostolic succession/selection is. Hebrews 9:11,24-25 reads:

    “But Christ being come an high priest of the good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hand, that is, not of this creation: . . . For Jesus is not entered into the holies made with hands, the patterns of the true: but into heaven itself, that He may appear now in the presence of God for us.

    Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holies, every year with the blood of others:”

    Because the bible talks exclusively of Christ as the high priest, people reading the Bible take this to mean he is the only priest, priests having to be consecrated by some authorities are not self-selecting.  The fact is that if  he is indeed the high priest, not “the only priest,” which is not something He said, then it is implied that He has other priests working for him as the “high priest.” Also, a priest’s function is to offer sacrifice but they hold that Christ sacrifice was all that was needed and made total restitution for our sins, which is true, but at the last the supper saying “do this in remembrance of me” meant to renew the power of Calvery, as well as the memory of Calvery, through this union with the original sacrifice to continually draw power for the forgiveness of sins from that sacrifice. The Catholic Church is clear on this point, each mass is not a new sacrifice, it is the self-same sacrifice, to be pulled throughout time to renew the power of this sacrifice, through the remembrance that was asked for by Christ at the last supper.

            Many so called Christians as mentioned above question the churches authority and whether or not priests might still exist (in the bible New Testament presbyters and bishops, which are mentioned are the Catholic Churches names for those officiating at Christs remembrances as replacements for priest and the high priest, so instead of having one temple in one place, each dioceses can have a head official like the former high priest – of which there is still only one, Jesus Christ, who in turn has priests under him), as if God, ever in the Old Testament did not have priests. But Christ said I have not come to abolish the law but to fulfil it in Matthew 5:17. If this is so and if and entire book of the Old Testament Pentateuch, the most holy 5 books of the Jewish religion is dedicated to the ritual and priest – Leviticus, why would he abolish the priesthood, and the fact that they must be selected by some law God (in this case Jesus Christ through His apostles) put into place, in the New Testament? Plus, if Jesus Christ changed anything from the Old Testament he made it stricter and explicit such as the definition of the sin of adultery:  “I say, anyone who even looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:28-29)  Also, similarly his injunction on divorce and remarriage when the spouse is not dead is adultery (Matthew 19: 3-9). Everyone is always looking for loopholes for things that are not easy, so to go harder is always a better bet, and if allowed to interpret the bible any way they want, they may interpret it wrong to their everlasting regret! Unfortunately, they must interpret it all correctly to attain salvation!  But that is what the tradition of the Church and the fathers of the church (great Catholics/Christians in the first 400 years of the church) are for.

           This is why the keeping of tradition (“Therefore, brethren, stand fast; and hold the traditions which you have learned, whether by word, or by our epistle.” – 2 Thessalonians 2:14) is so important. As complex a problem as keeping the Barque/ship of Peter (a popular symbolic representation of the Roman Catholic Religion within the Catholic Church) on the right course to heaven, tradition becomes very important.  Just like a nuclear submarine (if we use this to symbolically represent the Catholic Religion), when built, is accompanied by a manual (this being like the Bible).  The builders wrote the manual, (Jesus Christ – God) also trained the first crew.  This original crew (which is equivalent to the original apostles) learned tricks to run the submarine which became tradition, which one crew passed on to the next when they left through reassignment or retirement.  If It’s important to ensure that a machine that could do incredible damage to the entire world have experienced people pass on the secrets to its efficient operation, how much more important is it to put into place a cadre of professionals to pass on the hard learned secrets to salvation for each and every man’s immortal soul from generation to generation?

            Some things that come to mind when I think of people rebelling against Gods appointed authority in the Old Testament are the respect David had for the ruling king Saul as God’s anointed one in the first and second books of Samuel as well as the rebellion of Korah and 250 followers who said Moses and Aaron were not above the congregation in authority as high priest etc.  God opened up the earth and swallowed them to prove the authority of Moses and Aaron as we see in the book of Numbers chapter 16. Others were not convinced (as seen in the same chapter) and as a result 14,700 Israelites died before the rest of the Israelites got the message loud and clear. Finally, Moses’ own sister Miriam challenged his authority in chapter 12 of the book of Numbers and as a punishment contracted leprosy until she recanted.

           God always leads his people through people He selects, either by natural law or by supernatural law, which in our case is seen in the apostolic succession/selection (see Acts 1:15-26 that this was sanctioned that they should select successors).  Those who pick up a bible and start to preach, should remember this.  God chooses his representative, they are sent by Him, His representatives don’t select themselves.

           But how can people now be thought to represent God? Because as spoke of earlier they are lead by the Holy Ghost, the third Person of the blessed Trinity – that is God, sent first on the last event of salvations climax, Pentecost, to the apostles (as promised by Jesus Christ in John 14:16-17).  They in turned passed it to their successors, for the purpose of the priesthood/episcopate through the sacrament of Holy Orders.  Rank and file Catholics are passed the Holy Ghost in different a way, with out the power to consecrate the bread and wine in mass to make it the body and blood of Jesus Christ, or to forgive sins (God alone can forgive sins  as supported by Matthew 9:2-8 and Mark 2:7, but if the power is delegated to someone in cooperation with the Holy Ghost as in John 20:19-23, then sins can be forgive by God the Holy Ghost through the representative He authorizes – the priest or bishop, through apostolic succession i.e. the sacrament of holy orders).    

       In part of the climax to salvation the apostles are given the Eucharist (Mark 14:22-25) to be able to increase grace in all men and the ability to forgive all sins, but most notably mortal sin (1 John 5:17), to be able to save their souls from eternal damnation should the devil’s wiles succeed in making a man or woman fall hard!  The Eucharist was a most wonderous way for Christ himself to quite literally guide every man and woman (John 6:53-66), at the age of reason, personally.

  • Biblical Support of the fact God Wants Priests, and Wants to be Able to Choose His Priest and that Peter is Special as Well as the Fact that the Church is the Continuation and Indeed the Fulfilment of the Jewish Religion Supported by a quote from the book “Pope Peter” and the Final Half of the Review of that Book

           The book Pope Peter by Joe Heschmeyer is an entire book “defending the Church’s most distinctive doctrine in a time of Crisis,” that of course is that God Almighty wanted one church, the fulfilment of the Jewish religion, with the arrival of the Messiah (Jesus Christ the Son of God to be the one High Priest in heaven, to lead an earthly priesthood) to be lead on earth, at any particular time in history, by one man, the successor of Peter. The specifics of the book are again:

    Title ‏ : ‎ Pope Peter

    Author ‏ : ‎ Joe Heschmeyer

    Publisher ‏ : ‎ Catholic Answers Press (June 15, 2020)

    Paperback ‏ : ‎ 280 pages

    ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1683571800

    ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1683571803

          This doctrine has been challenged since the protestant reformation along with the idea that God neither wanted a separate cadre of priest (that all Christians were priests, no doubt using 1 Peter 2:9 to support it, which quoted from the Douay-Rheims Bible reads:“ But you are a chosen generation, a kingly priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased people: that you may declare his virtues, who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light:”) nor that God wanted to choose who would be in that cadre. In my opinion this has occurred out of political necessity from the pride of both former Catholic, Bishop Cranmer in England and Catholic Father Martin Luther of Germany both of whom wanted political power, even at possibly the cost of their immortal souls (only God can judge one’s motives, as he sees into the heart, as he did with the first reformer – Satan). If the pope did not have control over “the Church” what the church was became nebulous at best and people were free to decide what they wanted to believe just based on what they read in the bible enlightened directly by the Holy Spirit.  That in my opinion is what is happening in the Catholic Church today.  The early fathers of the church clarified and solidified foundational doctrines which have a clear trajectory as to what should be believed. In the 1890s, modernism began to muddy the dogmatic and doctrinal waters implying that these things could “evolve” even though in Hebrews 13:8 it makes clear that “Jesus Christ, yesterday, and to day, and the same for ever.”

            Another confused artifact of *some protestants’ theology, that has done much to try to undermine the church, by trying to break the continuity between Israel, its religion of the Old Testament and that of the Catholic (the word catholic based on the Greek meaning universal) Church and the religion of the New Testament is called dispensationalism. This is in opposition of the fact that Jesus Christ said in Matthew 5:17: “Do not think that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.”  God wanted only one clearly visible church (Matthew 5:14-16) so it could lead men clearly in one direction toward God and helping their neighbor, not a church of followers focused on themselves and how they want to interpret scripture. The following quote uses Biblical cites to defend the fact that God has really only one church, since Abraham, fulfilled in the coming of the messiah Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ desires to select His own priest.  This selection took place in the Old Testament through the natural law by birth of priests and High Priests through those from the tribe of Levi and decedents of Aaron and in the New Testament through the Church, which is the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 27), and the supernatural inspiration of the third person of the blessed Trinity – the Holy Ghost, for the selection deacons/priests/bishops.

          This first part quoting from the book “Pope Peter” on dispensationalism and support for why the New Testament Catholic church and its religion is a continuation of the Old Testament Jewish religion.

    “    The Crux of dispensationalist theology is the idea that “God had two completely different plans operating in history: one for an earthly people, Israel, and the other for a heavenly people, the church.”  C.I. Scofield (1843-1921), who popularized dispensationalism in America, began his most  famous book (tellingly titled Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth) by explaining that “whoever reads the Bible with any attention cannot fail to perceive that more than half of its contents relate to on nation: the Israelites,” while there is “another distinct body, which is called the church. This body also has a peculiar relation to God and, like Israel, has received from him specific promises.  But similarity ends there, and the most striking contrast begins . . . Comparing, then, what is said in Scripture concerning Israel and the Church, he finds that in origin, calling promise, worship, principles of conduct, and future destiny that allis contrast.

          It is hard to overstate just how radical was the break Scofield saw between Israel and the Church. He went so far as to say that Christians need not worry about the moral law of the Old Testament, including the Ten Commandments, arguing that “it is not, then, a question of dividing what God spoke from Sinai into moral law and ceremonial law – the believer does not come to that mount at all.” James Borland, former president of the Evangelical Theological Society, argues that “the church is not found in the Old Testament.  Rather, the Old Testament anticipates [the] Messiah’s kingdom. . . . But when the Jewish leaders and people rejected Christ’s offer of the kingdom, especially as seen in Matthew 11-12, Jesus announced something new – the church.

          In this view, the Church isn’t the fulfillment of God’s plan for Israel so much as his back-up plan.  But while God’s plan for the Church was a radical break from his plan for Israel, the plan for Israel remains in place. Liberty University’s Thomas Ice argues that “the church is unique in the plan of God and separate from his plan for Israel.  The church partakes of the spiritual promises of the Abrahamic covenant as fulfilled through Christ, but Israel – and not the church – will fulfill its national destiny as a separate entity.  As a result, these dispensationalists believe in a “church age” running from Pentecost until the Rapture, after which point “the church has no earthly prophetic destiny.”  This poor ecclesiology partially accounts for the overwhelming support for the modern state of Israel among (particularly older) American Evangelicals.  The core problem here is that it treats Christ and the Church not as the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel, but as something radically distinct, two completely different religions duct-taped together, or running independently, alongside on another.

         This is a sharp contrast from the way the Bible speaks of the New Covenant fulfilling the Old, or the way Jesus speaks of the gathering-in of the Gentiles, or the way St. Paul speaks of the ingrafting of the Gentiles. Paul describes Israel as an olive tree and says that “some of the branches were broken off,” while these Gentile converts “were grafted in their place to share the richness of the olive tree” (Rom. 11:17).  He reminds his Gentile readers, “They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast only through faith. So, do not become proud, but stand in awe.  For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you.” (20-21).  Paul is clearly not describing the wholesale replacement of one covenant people with another, nor is he describing two separate plants, one Jewish and on Gentile (It’s hard to understand how anyone could read the epistle to the Romans and come away with that message).  Instead, he’s saying he continues to prune and maintain the olive tree, the People of God that began with Israel. With the arrival of Christ and the formation of the Church, you have not the disregarding of Israel, but the pruning: those Jews who reject Christ are cast off, and those Gentiles who accept him are grafted in.

       This understanding of ingrafting is critical for understanding the Church. It’s for this reason that Church Fathers like St. Augustine can speak of the body of Christ as existing “from Abel the just right up to the end of the world.” And this is what Jesus means when he warns the chief priests and Pharisees that “the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing the fruits of it” (Matt. 21:43).  He Means nearly the antithesis of the popular dispensationalist view that “the kingdom of God does not exist at all during the church age because it has ben removed from Israel and will be reestablished on earth at Christ’s second coming.”  Rather, the Hardhearted Pharisees and chief priests are broken off the olive tree that is the kingdom, while faithful Gentiles will be grafted in.

         Jesus isn’t throwing out Israel; He’s just evicting some of the faithless tenants and inviting in new ones.  This means that the church is still Israel, simply reorganized.  After all, the New Covenant is made between God and “the house of Israel” (Heb. 8:8-12).  This is why Paul can say that “he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart, spiritual and not literal” (Rom. 2:29) and can end his letter to the Christians of Galatia by saying, “Peace and mercy be upon all who walk by this rule, upon the Israel of God” (Gal. 6:16).  The Church isn’t God’s “plan B” after (some of) the Jews rejected Jesus.  It’s the full expression of the New Covenant that he’d been promising all along.

         This informs how we approach the question oft Church as a visible society.  As we’ve seen, Israel has always been a visible society, and throughout this process of ingrafting, as Israel fulfills its destiny in becoming the Church, opening its doors to the Gentiles, there’s no transition in which it suddenly turns invisible.  Quite the contrary; Jesus says, “I have other sheep, that are not of this fold; I must bring them also and they will heed my voice.  So there shall be one flock , one shepherd” (John 10:16).  In other words, the ingrafting occurs by gathering the Gentiles together.  If he merely meant that there would continue to be God-gearing Gentiles and God-fearing Jews, but that their identities would be known only to him, that was already t5rue.  For his promise to be meaningful, there must be some way in which the Gentiles and Jews are visibly gathered together in one place: the flock of Christ.”

             The utility of including the above quote is found in the fact that if there is no strong link indicating that the Catholic (universal) Church, which was the fulfillment or rather the completion of the partially-constructed “Jewish Church” by the arrival of the messiah identified in Isaiah chapter 53, examples from the Old Testament could not logically be used to prove a point of God’s intention of his damnation of Korah for saying, as protestants appear to say, all of the Jewish religion who want to be priests are.  The following is another quote from “Pope Peter,” which picks up as the very next paragraph after the one above demonstrating rather graphically that God wants to pick his priests.

    “     Not only is this New Covenant community visible, but it’s structured as well.  In a sermon preached against the Catholic priesthood, John MacArthur Claims:

    We don’t need any priests.  Revelation 1, “you are a kingdom of priests.”  We only need one high priest and it’s not the pope.  We have one mediator, the man Christ Jesus. The veil is torn.  We go right into the Holy of Holies.  You are a priest and I am a priest unto God.

         It’s clear that MacArthur is comfortable affirming that there are no priests, that we’re all priests, and that only Christ is a priest. The one position he rejects is that some of us are priests, because “the reformers rejected completely the idea of a special priesthood.”  But this is exactly what God promises about the New Covenant, when he says of the faithful Gentiles, “Some of them also I will take for priests and for Levites” (Isa. 66:21).

            The Israel in the Old Testament was “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exod. 19:6) that still had a sacrificial priesthood consisting of some of the members of the tribe of Levi. One of the Levites, Korah, turns against this special priesthood, saying, “All the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the lord is among the; why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?” (Num. 16:3). Korah and his followers are them swallowed into the earth in a literal schism when they attempt to offer sacrifice on their own (32). Likewise, the “Israel of God,” the Church, is “a royal priesthood, a holy nation” (1 Pet. 2:9), that nevertheless has a sacerdotal priesthood. This priesthood fulfills the prophecy through Malachi that “in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure offering, for my name is great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts” (Mal. 1:11).  St Jude warns against those in the Church who “reject authority” and “perish in Korah’s rebellion” (Jude 1:8, 11).”

           This last long quote (in concert with the immediately preceding quote), from the book “Pope Peter” reinforces once again through both Old and New Testament cites God’s requirement that He not only pick, through either natural law (in the Old Testament) or His representatives, those who officially speak for Him such as prophets, kings, priests and bishops but that not only is the calling of Peter special but, His representatives have the power and right to refuse entrance into the priesthood etc. to those they think are neither not ready nor not qualified:

    “     Does God quit calling leaders in the New Testament?  Not at all. Through Jeremiah, God had also promised, “I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding” (Jer. 3:15).  In other words, New Testament shepherds (which is what the word “pastors” means, after all) are given by God, not simply by their own ambition or by popular acclaim. This is illustrated throughout the New Testament.  After spending the night in prayer, Jesus “called his disciples, and chose from them twelve, whom he named apostles” (Luke 6:13).  Or as St. Mark puts it, Jesus “went up into the hills, and called to him those whom he desired: and they came to him. And he appointed twelve, to be with him, and to be sent out to preach and have authority to cast out demons” (Mark 3:13-15).

            After Judas’s death, St. Peter quoted Psalm 108 (“His office let another take,” cf. Acts 1:20) to announce that one of the men “who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us – one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection” (Acts 1:21-22).  The assembled brethren then choose two men who meet these qualifications: “Joseph called Barsabbas, who was surnamed Justus, and Matthias” (23). But the acclaim of the people is not enough.  They all then turned to prayer, and the casting of lots, to let the Lord have the final say (24-26).

           This need for a calling isn’t limited to the apostles in the New Testament church. According to Jesus, one of the critical distinctions between a true pastor and aa “thief and robber” is whether or not the man has a calling for Christ (John 10:1-5):

    Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber; but he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.  To him the gatekeeper opens; the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.  When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.  A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.

    Lest there be any confusion, he adds, “I am the door of the sheep” (John 10:7).  So, the man who simply declares himself to be a pastor, then, is no true shepherd.  He is merely a “thief and a robber,” stealing sheep from the flock of Christ.  The true shepherd must be called by Christ himself.

        How do we know if a man is called by Christ, instead of being a robber or a thief?  Erwin Lutzer proposes three criteria: first, “an inner conviction,” which he distinguishes from “feelings and hunches” which can come and go; second, scriptural confirmation of the call, ensuring that “a person has the qualifications listed in 1 Timothy 3”; and finally, “the body of Christ helps us understand where we fit within the local church framework.”  Although 9Marks [a protestant website] is leery of a “special, supernatural, subjective call from God,” the site also points to the attributes listed in 1 Timothey 3 as the qualifications needed an affirm that the man “should also have a local church’s affirmation of his gifts and character.”  Neither Lutzer nor 9Marks goes so far as to say the Church can refuse ordination to an objectively qualified candidate who desires to become a pastor.  That’s a contrast from the Church of the New Testament.  By all accounts, Barsabbas was objectively qualified to replace Judas as an apostle.  Nothing in Scripture gives us any reason to doubt either his “gifts” or “character.” Indeed, there were likely a great many of the 120 assembled brethren who met the criteria laid out by Peter in Acts 1:21.  But only one man, St. Matthias, was chosen.

         A better understanding of pastoral calling comes from St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622), who points out that when ever the Lord sends anyone, he does so in one of two ways.  The first way, which he called “immediate” or “extraordinary” mission, is “when God himself commands and gives a charge, without the interposition of the ordinary authority which he has placed in the prelates and pastors of the Church.”  He gives the examples of Jesus sending the apostles (Matt. 28:19) and God sending Moses to Pharaoh (Exod. 3:10) and points out that any one claiming to be sent directly from God should be able to “prove it by miracles: for I pray you, where should we be if this pretext of extraordinary mission was to be accepted without proof?

           But the ordinary way that God sends people isn’t through this kind of miraculous revelation.  It’s through the body of Christ, the Church.  More specifically, it’s a top-down process.  Although qualified candidates might be suggested by the Christian people, they must ultimately be ordained by the laying on of hands. In selecting the first deacons, Peter urged the brethren to “pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may appoint to this duty” (Acts 6:3). But although seven qualified candidates were put forward by the brethren, it was still left to the apostles to do the actual appointing and ordaining: “These [men] they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands upon them” (6).  And this laying on of hands isn’t automatic or a mere formality.  St Paul, who reminds St. Timothy “to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands” (2 Tim. 1:6) also warns him, “do not be hasty in the laying on of hands,” but “keep yourself pure” (1Tim. 5:22).  Paul likewise tells St. Titus that the reason “I left you in Crete” was “that you might amend what was defective, and appoint elders in every town as I directed you” (Titus 1:5).

         Besides direct divine revelation (extraordinary sending) and ordination through the leadership of the Church (ordinary sending), there’s no third option.  Nothing in Christianity permits you to simply go and start your own church because you’re a gifted speaker or preacher.  Indeed, so thoroughly does the Bible (in both the New and Old Testament) reject such an approach that when Paul speaks of the need for evangelization, he asks, “But how are men to call upon him in whom they have not believed?  And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher? And how can men preach unless they are sent?” (Rom. 10:14-15).  It’s unthinkable, in his mind, that a man would just go to preach because he felt as though the job needed doing, or because he felt personally qualified.  That’s not enough.  Instead, the preacher must first be sent.

            This is the different Paul from the caricature one sometimes hears of a rogue apostle, operating entirely independently of the Twelve and the visible structure of the Church. The Paul of the Bible presents himself as one who had an extraordinary sending by Jesus Christ (Gal. 1:11-17), which he nevertheless confirmed with Peter (1:18) and then the other apostles (1-10). Ultimately, it was the Holy Spirit who said through the church at Antioch, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them” (Acts 13:2; cf. 13:9).  And so, we find Paul being sent by Christ, by the church, and by the Spirit speaking through the Church.

          We see this relationship with the Church on full display when Paul and Barnabas run into a group of men teaching a contrary doctrine.  In Acts 15:1, Paul encounters these so-called “Judaizers.” By the next verse, we read that “when Paul and Barnabas had no small dissention and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question” (Acts 15:2).  It turns out, it was these other men who were preaching without authorization, and the resultant Council of Jerusalem laments “that some persons from us have troubled you with words unsettling your minds, although we gave them no instructions,” and remedies the situation by sending Paul, Barnabas, and two other men (24-27).

        In other words, part of the problem that the Church recognized wasn’t just that there were men preaching false doctrines.  It was that these were men who tried to send themselves to preach, and to disastrous effect.  The solution was therefore not merely a theological one, correcting the doctrine.  It was also an ecclesial one, sending Church-commissioned orthodox preachers to replace the self-appointed heretical ones. Paul would later identify these two distinct problems in his description of the Judaizers as “insubordinate men” as well as “empty talkers and deceivers” (Titus 1:10). Their insubordination was rejecting the authority of the visible Church by assuming for themselves the mantle of preacher.

         This biblical view, that a pastor or preacher must be sent either miraculously or through the leadership of the visible Church, is ultimately fatal so the Protestant position.  Amazingly, Martin Luther seemed to recognize this.  In a homily of John 10, in which Jesus contracts the shepherds called by Christ from robbers and thieves, Luther explained:

         No one should step into the office and preach from his own presumption and without a commission from those having the authority.  But under present conditions., if we should wait until we received a commission to preach and to administer the sacraments, we would never perform those offices as long as we live.

          In other words, Luther recognized that what he was doing was the sort of presumptuous behavior condemned by Christ in the gospel he was preaching.  But he reasoned that just this once, the evil was necessary, since otherwise, he wouldn’t ever get to perform the office.  But that’s the whole point: Christ leaves the Church with the ability to refuse pastoral office to those whom the Church chooses.  To say the other party’s consent is important unless it keeps you from getting what you want is merely another way of saying that you don’t really care about consent.

          Moreover, it’s never just this once.  Once you decide it’s okay to ignore the order set up by Christ when it won’t get you what you want, you’ll find more and more reasons to do so. After all, it would be absurd to require the second generation of Protestants to obey the commandments that the first generation of Protestants disregarded.  Moreover, how could those who were never sent in the first place be tasked with passing on the ministry to the next generation?  If the first generation of Reformers were “thieves and robbers,” the mere passage of time doesn’t turn them into proper gatekeepers.  And it’s precisely in this way that we end up today with a situation in which neither Lutzer or 9Marks has much of a role for the Church other than to confirm an aspiring pastor’s gifts and talents and to help him understand where he fits “within the local church framework.”  It’s a sheepfold without a gate, because so many successive generations of pastors have grown accustomed to climbing in “by another way” (John 10:1).

          Contrast this with the call of Peter.  We know that Peter, as one of the apostles, was called to be a shepherd over the People of God.  This is clear from Matthew’s account:

         When [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”  And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every infirmity. The names of the twelve apostles are these: first, Simon, who is called Peter (Matt. 9:36-10:2).

         Jesus’ language of “sheep without a shepherd” is an Old Testament allusion.  When Moses neared death, he prayed for a successor “that the congregation of the Lord may not be as sheep which have no shepherd” (Num. 27:17), and it was in response to this prayer that Joshua was chosen to succeed Moses.  Compare that with what happens in the New Testament. Peter and the other disciples are “successors” of Jesus in a different was from how Joshua was a successor of Moses.  Moses wasn’t going to be there to assist Joshua, whereas Christ (being God as well as man) promised, “I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Matt. 28:20).  So the apostles don’t replace Christ in this way, but there is nevertheless a sense in which they are called to continue the mission of Christ in shepherding his people.

         In addition to Peter’s calling simple as one of the Twelve there’s also biblical evidence for a particular calling to be shepherd over the flock of Christ. As we’ll see in greater depth in chapter7, these pastoral images are connected to fishing images.  When Simon Peter expressed astonishment at Jesus performing a miraculous catch of fish through him, Jesus replied to him, “Do not be afraid; henceforth you will be catching men” (Luke 5:10).  We’ll explore the deeper meaning of this calling in the next chapter, but now, suffice it to say that it connects with Jesus’ image of the kingdom of God as a net of good and had fish (Matt. 13:47-5-), and that the risen Jesus deliberately recalls this image via a second miracle in John 20:6.  When the disciples made it back to Jesus on the shore, they discovered “a charcoal fire there, with fish lying on it and bread” (John 21:9).  Each element of the breakfast is significant and evocative.  We then find this exchange between Jesus and Peter:

         When the had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?”  He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.”  He said to him, “Feed my lambs.”  A second time he said to him, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him a third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything, you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, Feed my sheep” (15-17).

          This doesn’t appear to be simply a generic apostolic mission.  During his public ministry, Jesus had already “called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast then out, and to heal every disease and every infirmity.” It’s in this sending that Matthew goes from calling them “disciples,” which means students, to “apostles,” which means messengers (e.g. Matt. 10:1-2).  In this apostolic mission, the Twelve were sent to proclaim that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” and to “heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons” (Matt. 10:7-8).

           Something different is happening here, something specific to Peter. How do we know that Because Jesus has Finished breakfast with several of the Twelve (John 21:2 records that “Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples were together”) and then singled out one of them, Simon Peter.  He addressed Simon by his family name, as it were: ”Simon, son of John.”  And he doesn’t simply ask Peter, “Do you love me?” He asks, “Do you love me more than these?” That is, He’s quite explicitly asking something from Peter that he wouldn’t and couldn’t ask from any of the others (since it would be impossible for each of the disciples to love Jesus more than the others do).

         If Jesus had meant to call the Twelve in this way, of even to call the seven disciples gathered for breakfast, he could easily have done so.  But instead, he draws Peter apart from the rest, asks him for more than the rest, and the tells him (and only him). “Feed my sheep.”  Understood against the backdrop of the Old Testament, this is a clear call to headship and leadership over the whole people.  Recall the Lord’s call to David, upon his royal anointing: “You shall be shepherd of my people Israel, and you shall be prince over Israel“ (2 Sam. 5). Like Moses before him, this call to lead the people of God came while David was tending sheep (1 Sam. 16:11; cf. Exod. 3:1-2). As the psalmist would later recount, the Lord “chose David his servant, and took him from the sheepfolds; from tending the ewes that had young he brought him to be the shepherd of Jacob his people, of Israel his inheritance “ (Ps. 78:70-71).”

         This is but a taste of the depth and the extensive use this author makes of scripture to prove his point of the special authority of priests and bishops but most especially of Peter and his successors. If you want more on the pastoral images alluded to in “Chapter 7” you’ll just have to read the book. Its reliance on the Bible for support of his thesis that Christianity is basically a monarchy with Jesus Christ as king and the pope as his vicar until Jesus Christ comes again, at the end of time in this world, to become the ruler of creation, rewarding the good and putting the evil in a prison who’s horrors will be of their own creation, with no saints or God to prevent them from sinking into perpetrating unspeakable horror.

    * I say ‘some’ because we must remember, at least as I understand it as a non-protestant, each protestant interprets the bible as he or she sees it “inspired” by the Holy Spirit to get the “right” interpretation but the flaw is, there is more than one right interpretation among different protestant denominations. This fact is why I think people should know “the one true church” because the problem of multiple interpretations does not exist in the Catholic church – it identifies the right interpretation for all the laity and clergy that are its members.  There is only one valid interpretation of scripture and it can be found in the Catechism of the Council of Trent for most doctrinal and dogmatic problems and can be extrapolated from it with the help of the Bible derived from the Vulgate,