Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: mmh@cs.qmw.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Ordination in general Message-ID: Date: 2 Sep 90 04:07:49 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Computer Science Dept, QMW, University of London, UK. Lines: 20 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article bcsaic!carroll@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Jeff Carroll) writes: > Another good example is the "You are Peter, and upon this rock I >will build my church" line. Even if this is authentic (which some >scholars doubt), Christ is not quoted as saying, "You are to be the >first Bishop of Rome, and your successors shall be acknowledged as the >infallible heads of My Church." Well neither is Christ quoted as saying "Here's the book of my religion, now get on with it". The Catholic belief is that these things developed through the working of the Holy Spirit. If they are not explicitly found in scripture, their foundation is and their development is in the spirit of Christs's teaching. (BTW, I don't know how many times I have to post this, but the Catholic teaching is that the Pope is "infallible" ONLY when expressing views already held by the whole Church, thus Jeff Carroll's wording is, if not actually wrong, misleading in that it suggests the common Protestant fallacy that the Pope is a sort of pseudo-God for Catholics) Matthew Huntbach