The Power Of The Roman Catholic Church

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The Roman Catholic Church claims that it was founded by Christ and is endowed with authority which is not less than divine. Unlike the church in the New Testament which is conceived primarily as the people of God, this authoritarian church has an ecclesiastical government run by the clerical hierarchy. The pope who is at the top of this hierarchy is held to have been divinely appointed, and he delegates authority to lower ranks of the clergy. So every parish priest shares in the authority of the Church, limited in its exercise by higher ranks of the hierarchy. It is claimed that “the Roman Pontiff has full and supreme jurisdiction over the universal Church,” and submission to the Church headed by the pope is demanded of every Catholic. Catholics …show more content…

It is further claimed that the bishop of Rome, namely the pope, is the successor of Peter; therefore whatever powers were given to Peter have been passed on to the pope. The pope is in principle able to choose his successor if he wills, but under the current system, a new pope is elected by the College of Cardinals. The dogma of papal infallibility is also based on inference from the same words of Jesus in Matthew 16:18-19. This text has been invoked to claim the supremacy of the bishop of Rome (the pope) over all other bishops and over the Christian churches throughout the …show more content…

They hold that the Roman interpretation is unjustified and the papal claim is unfounded. They also point out that the papal claim to primacy is the major reason that the Church of Jesus Christ remains divided despite the earnest plea of the Lord Jesus for unity (John 17:11, 21-22; 10:16). To this, Catholic theologians loyal to the pope invoke another dogma of the Roman Church, namely, the dogma of the Church’s teaching authority (the so-called magisterium), and argue roughly as follows: The Catholic Church is the depository of the supernatural salvific truth of God. The Catholic Church alone, specifically the pope alone, has received the authority of infallibly interpreting and teaching the Bible. Therefore the non-Catholic Churches have no right to put forward an interpretation of the Bible which differs from what the Roman Church proclaims to be the true

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