Comments on: The Petrine Principal

By: Terry Fenwick

Terry Fenwick — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 19:51:30 +0000

Posted this to my page – good stuff – really good stuff! Years ago, at a training seminar for speaking/teaching, a really great Bible teacher taught me something that sounds strange but really says it all – “Know your stuff, know who you are stuffin’ and stuff’em in Style.” You really do that, Mike. I always feel wiser after I read your ‘stuff’.

By: Mike Aquilina

Mike Aquilina — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 01:20:10 +0000

When puns are explained, they die.

By: A Raphael Lombardi

A Raphael Lombardi — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 15:04:30 +0000

It would help the author’s credibility to have clarified the use of the word “principal” to avoid confusion with the traditional context of “principle.”

By: ducdebrabant

ducdebrabant — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:16:05 +0000

If the “first among equals” status of the Bishop of Rome were really to be conflated with the pretensions of Peter’s successor to absolute rule of every other Bishop and diocese, there would have been no need for the many church councils over the years, including the Council of Nicaea. It’s nonsensical to claim that the view of the Pope’s role by every priest of the church was the same as the Pope’s own view of it in the 11th Century. Were that so, the priests of the eastern empire would have accepted unhesitatingly the Pope’s excommunication of the Patriarch of Constantinople, and there would have been no East/West Schism of 1084. The Corinthian church which “hallowed St. Peter’s letter” a century later, nonetheless ended up part of the Eastern Orthodox Church. One cannot simply ignore the decision (which still stands) of the eastern dioceses to obey their own bishops rather than the Pope when one sets forth what those Christians’ attitudes, in fact, were. Did they revere the descendant of St. Peter? Certainly. Did they consider him (and not Jesus Christ) the head of Christ’s church on earth? Certainly not. Their refusal to do so is an historical fact.

By: jmpetty

jmpetty — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 18:59:48 +0000

regarding the Petrine Office.
Could I recomend Father Puller’s ‘The See of Rome and the Primitive Saints.”

Interesting and Informative”
.

By: Mike Aquilina

Mike Aquilina — Thu, 18 May 2006 03:16:57 +0000

Father Dominic’s fellow Capuchin, Father Ronald Lawler, could, to his last days on earth, recite the Irenaeus passage from memory in Latin.

By: Mike Aquilina

Mike Aquilina — Thu, 18 May 2006 00:23:08 +0000

When Dominic Unger turned in his manuscript for the first Ancient Christian Writers’ volume of Irenaeus, that Petrine passage was buttressed by a 100-page footnote! That’s how carried away Father Dominic was with his passion for the Petrine office, and for Irenaeus’s testimony. The editors, however, told him that there’s no such thing as a 100-page footnote. So he published it as a monograph: “St. Irenaeus and the Roman Primacy” — still a great read.

By: Michael Barber

Michael Barber — Wed, 17 May 2006 23:49:49 +0000

One of my favorite citations is from Ireneaus.

“But since it would be too long to enumerate in such a volume as this the succession of all the churches, we shall confound all those who, in whatever manner, whether through self-satisfaction or vainglory, or through blindness and wicked opinion, assemble other than where it is proper, by pointing out here the successions of the bishops of the greatest and most ancient church known to all, founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul, that church which has the tradition and the faith which comes down to us after having been announced to men by the apostles. With that church, because of its superior origin, all the churches must agree, that is, all the faithful in the whole world, and it is in her that the faithful everywhere have maintained the apostolic tradition” (Against Heresies 3:3:2 [A.D. 189]).