Destiny Star's Blog

Yesterday, someone made a tweet about his radio show question about Halloween and the fact that no one was replying with a biblical justification for their opinions. I replied with a message about the Pope’s denunciation of Halloween as being dangerous to Christians with the biblical justification of Matthew 16:18, which is “And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

He responded saying that he wasn’t Catholic and I replied by asking how he biblically justified that given Matt 16:18. He proceeded to make some weak arguments attacking my character given my (now former) profession, and by making a few semantic arguments about how Catholics calling priests “Father” made us apostates because of some verse saying no one but God should be called “Father.”

He made a few other comments of similar irrelevancy without ever adressing how he justified rejecting God’s one, holy, universal (catholic), and apostolic church based on semantic distinctions when Jesus himself makes statements making clear Peter’s primacy of place among the Apostles.

The relevant passage is Matthew 16:17-19 which reads (in KJV for my protestant friends out there)

“And Jesus answered and said unto him, ‘Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.’”

In this, Jesus refers to the fact that he changed Simon’s name to Peter, and made a pun about the word for Peter in Aramaic (Cephas) being quite close to the word for rock. The pun works even better in the contemporary Greek, which Jesus also spoke.

Jesus states that He will build his church on Peter and that hell will never prevail against the church. He also tells Peter that he will give him the keys to the kingdom of heaven and that his word on earth will be as good as Jesus’ own personal word in heaven.

This was, at the time, undisputed to be conferred on whatever successors Peter might have. This is seen fairly clearly with Pope St. Clement’s epistle to the Corinthians of AD 95. Clement was the third successor to Peter and wrote to the Corinthians ordering them to receive back the bishops that a faction in the city had expelled.

This incident is telling because the Apostle John was alive in Ephesus at the time, which was much closer to Corinth. Clement’s letter was welcomed by the Christians of Corinth and had its effect of restoring the Corinthian bishops to their proper places. If the Corinthians appealed to Rome and Clement, it shows that they recognized the primacy of Rome over even an Apostle. If Clement wrote the letter of his own accord, it shows that the Church at Rome had already become conscious of a special authority over the rest of the church.

So, it’s pretty clear that from the earliest days of the church, back to the time of Christ, it was intended that Peter and his successors should be considered to be Christ’s Vicars on earth. So, anyone who claims to follow the bible literally and is not a Catholic, it seems clear to me, is not following with Jesus Christ’s own words recorded in Matthew 16:17-19.

The person arguing with me claimed that the Catholic church had become apostate. A simple review of the logic will show this to be impossible. Christ granted Peter and his successors primacy over the church itself, and, in fact, gave him the power to speak for Christ in matters of faith. When the man on the throne of St. Peter speaks on matters of faith, Christ says in Matthew 16:17-19, it is as Heaven wishes it to be.