One Holy Catholic And Apostolic by Kenneth Whitehead

Author:Kenneth Whitehead [Whitehead, Kenneth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9780898708028
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2010-09-24T05:00:00+00:00

VII.

Perhaps the most convincing evidence for the primacy of Rome in the second and third centuries comes not so much from the testimony of early Church writers as from actions taken by some of the bishops of Rome. When Pope Pontian convened a Roman synod to review the decision of the Alexandrian tribunal that had condemned Origen, he was exercising the authority to “bind and loose” that Christ had given to all the apostles (Mt 18:18) but to Peter in a special way (Mt 16:18-19). Probably the faithful of the day understood his action in precisely these terms.

The divergent views of some who had departed from Catholic orthodoxy and then argued that the special authority conferred on Peter did not devolve on his successors would logically seem to have to lead to a denial that Catholic bishops in general also inherited the authority given by Christ to their predecessors, the apostles.

No ancient Christian writer—not Tertullian, Origen, or any other—ever denied the apostolic succession or the authority inherited by the bishops. That the Church had been established on the apostles was a truth that no professing Christian would attempt to deny for at least another thousand years, when the mistaken idea that the faith of Christ could somehow be based on “Scripture alone” was launched by the Protestant Reformation. For the Christians of antiquity, the fact that the Church was headed by bishops as successors of the apostles was as plain as the fact that the Church existed.

That the successors of Peter occupied a position in the Church analogous to the position Peter had occupied in the apostolic Church was widely if not universally believed, even if this primacy was not always understood as the strict, legal “primacy of jurisdiction” that Rome would later claim and exercise. The acts of the popes of the second and third centuries provide a number of instances that testify both to the way they thought and acted and to the very definite sense they possessed that their decisions had universal application in the Church.

The story of one of the most interesting incidents concerning the attitudes and actions of an early second-century pope comes from the pen of St. Irenaeus of Lyons, whom we have already encountered. Writing to Pope St. Victor (189-198) about another matter, which we shall consider later, Irenaeus recounts how his own revered teacher, St. Polycarp of Smyrna, had found it necessary to come to Rome around the year 154 or 155—only a year or so before St. Polycarp’s celebrated martyrdom in Asia Minor.

In Rome Polycarp, then nearly ninety, was graciously received by the bishop, Pope St. Anicetus (ca. 155—ca. 166). We are not told the purpose of what must have been his rather arduous journey. From the brief account given by Irenaeus, the bishops of Smyrna and of Rome conferred about the calculation of the date of Easter.

In the East, many of the Churches had maintained the tradition of tying the celebration of the Lord’s resurrection to the time of the Jewish Passover.

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