Peter the Rock

In Matthew’s parallel section of this week’s Gospel reading we find Jesus changing Peter’s name from Simon.  In response to Simon’s (ie Peter) answer the Jesus the Christ, the son of the living God Jesus tells Peter that he is indeed blessed and on the Rock of Peter that His Church will be built (Matt 16:16-18).  Here’s a short exchange on how to defend the Catholic position that Jesus made Peter the first Pope on that day...

For a layman, I suppose I was reasonably well informed about my faith—at least I never doubted it or ceased to practice it—but my own reading had not equipped me for verbal duels.

Then, one day, I came across a nugget of information that sent a shock wave through the next missionary who rang the bell and that proved to me that becoming skilled in apologetics isn’t really all that difficult. Here’s what happened.

When I answered the door, the lone missionary introduced himself as a Seventh-day Adventist. He asked if he could "share" with me some insights from the Bible. I told him to go ahead.

He flipped from one page to another, quoting this verse and that, trying to demonstrate the errors of the Church of Rome and the manifest truth of his own denomination’s position.

Some of the verses I had encountered before. I wasn’t entirely illiterate with respect to the Bible, but many verses were new to me. Whether familiar or not, the verses elicited no response from me, because I didn’t know enough about the Bible to respond effectively.

Finally the missionary got to Matthew 16:18: "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church."

"Hold it right there!" I said. "I know that verse. That’s where Jesus appointed Simon the earthly head of the Church. That’s where he appointed him the first pope." I paused and smiled broadly, knowing what the missionary would say in response.

I knew he usually didn’t get any defense of the Catholic position at all as he went door to door, but sometimes a Catholic would speak up as I had. He had a reply, and I knew what it would be, and I was ready for it.

"I understand your thinking," he said, "but you Catholics misunderstand this verse because you don’t know any Greek. That’s the trouble with your Church and with your scholars. You people don’t know the language in which the New Testament was written. To understand Matthew 16:18, we have to get behind the English to the Greek."

"Is that so?" I said, leading him on. I pretended to be ignorant of the trap being laid for me.

"Yes," he said. "In Greek, the word for rock is petra, which means a large, massive stone. The word used for Simon’s new name is different; it’s Petros, which means a little stone, a pebble."

In reality, what the missionary was telling me at this point was false. As Greek scholars—even non-Catholic ones—admit, the words petros and petra were synonyms in first century Greek. They meant "small stone" and "large rock" in some ancient Greek poetry, centuries before the time of Christ, but that distinction had disappeared from the language by the time Matthew’s Gospel was rendered in Greek. The difference in meaning can only be found in Attic Greek, but the New Testament was written in Koine Greek—an entirely different dialect. In Koine Greek, both petros andpetra simply meant "rock." If Jesus had wanted to call Simon a small stone, the Greek lithos would have been used. The missionary’s argument didn’t work and showed a faulty knowledge of Greek. (For an Evangelical Protestant Greek scholar’s admission of this, see D. A. Carson, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984], Frank E. Gaebelein, ed., 8:368).

"You Catholics," the missionary continued, "because you don’t know Greek, imagine that Jesus was equating Simon and the rock. Actually, of course, it was just the opposite. He was contrasting them. On the one side, the rock on which the Church would be built, Jesus himself; on the other, this mere pebble. Jesus was really saying that he himself would be the foundation, and he was emphasizing that Simon wasn’t remotely qualified to be it."

"Case closed," he thought.

It was the missionary’s turn to pause and smile broadly. He had followed the training he had been given. He had been told that a rare Catholic might have heard of Matthew 16:18 and might argue that it proved the establishment of the papacy. He knew what he was supposed to say to prove otherwise, and he had said it.

"Well," I replied, beginning to use that nugget of information I had come across, "I agree with you that we must get behind the English to the Greek." He smiled some more and nodded. "But I’m sure you’ll agree with me that we must get behind the Greek to the Aramaic."

"The what?" he asked.

"The Aramaic," I said. "As you know, Aramaic was the language Jesus and the apostles and all the Jews in Palestine spoke. It was the common language of the place."

"I thought Greek was."

"No," I answered. "Many, if not most of them, knew Greek, of course, because Greek was the lingua franca of the Mediterranean world. It was the language of culture and commerce; and most of the books of the New Testament were written in it, because they were written not just for Christians in Palestine but also for Christians in places such as Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, places where Aramaic wasn’t the spoken language.

"I say most of the New Testament was written in Greek, but not all. Many hold that Matthew was written in Aramaic—we know this from records kept by Eusebius of Caesarea—but it was translated into Greek early on, perhaps by Matthew himself. In any case the Aramaic original is lost (as are all the originals of the New Testament books), so all we have today is the Greek."

I stopped for a moment and looked at the missionary. He seemed a bit uncomfortable, perhaps doubting that I was a Catholic because I seemed to know what I was talking about. I continued.

"We know that Jesus spoke Aramaic because some of his words are preserved for us in the Gospels. Look at Matthew 27:46, where he says from the cross, ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’ That isn’t Greek; it’s Aramaic, and it means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’

"What’s more," I said, "in Paul’s epistles—four times in Galatians and four times in 1 Corinthians—we have the Aramaic form of Simon’s new name preserved for us. In our English Bibles it comes out as Cephas. That isn’t Greek. That’s a transliteration of the Aramaic word Kepha (rendered as Kephas in its Hellenistic form).

"And what does Kepha mean? It means a rock, the same as petra. (It doesn’t mean a little stone or a pebble. What Jesus said to Simon in Matthew 16:18 was this: ‘You are Kepha, and on thiskepha I will build my Church.’

"When you understand what the Aramaic says, you see that Jesus was equating Simon and the rock; he wasn’t contrasting them. We see this vividly in some modern English translations, which render the verse this way: ‘You are Rock, and upon this rock I will build my church.’ In French one word, pierre, has always been used both for Simon’s new name and for the rock."

Text copied from http://www.catholic.com/tracts/peter-the-rock

God Bless
Nathan

Fortnight 4 Freedom

The U.S. Bishops have called for a Fortnight for Freedom from June 21 to July 4, 2014. Please visit www.fortnight4freedom.org for more information on this important time of prayer, education, and action in support of religious freedom!

 

What do we mean by religious liberty?

 

In Catholic teaching, the Second Vatican Council explained in Dignitatis Humanae that the foundation of the principle of religious freedom is rooted in the dignity of the human person, who is endowed with reason and free will, and therefore able to take responsibility for his or her actions. Religious liberty is protected in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and in federal and state laws. Religious liberty includes more than our ability to go to Mass on Sunday or pray the Rosary at home; it also encompasses our ability to contribute freely to the common good of all Americans.

"We are Catholics. We are Americans. We are proud to be both, grateful for the gift of faith which is ours as Christian disciples, and grateful for the gift of liberty which is ours as American citizens. To be Catholic and American should mean not having to choose one over the other. Our allegiances are distinct, but they need not be contradictory, and should instead be complementary. That is the teaching of our Catholic faith, which obliges us to work together with fellow citizens for the common good of all who live in this land. That is the vision of our founding and our Constitution, which guarantees citizens of all religious faiths the right to contribute to our common life together. "

Religious Liberty Is More Than Freedom of Worship

 

Religious liberty is not only about our ability to go to Mass on Sunday or pray the Rosary at home. It is about whether we can make our contribution to the common good of all Americans. Can we do the good works our faith calls us to do, without having to compromise that very same faith? Without religious liberty properly understood, all Americans suffer, deprived of the essential contribution in education, health care, feeding the hungry, civil rights, and social services that religious Americans make every day, both here at home and overseas.

 

What is at stake is whether America will continue to have a free, creative, and robust civil society—or whether the state alone will determine who gets to contribute to the common good, and how they get to do it. Religious believers are part of American civil society, which includes neighbors helping each other, community associations, fraternal service clubs, sports leagues, and youth groups. All these Americans make their contribution to our common life, and they do not need the permission of the government to do so. Restrictions on religious liberty are an attack on civil society and the American genius for voluntary associations.

 

The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America issued a statement about the administration's contraception and sterilization mandate that captured exactly the danger that we face:

Most troubling, is the Administration's underlying rationale for its decision, which appears to be a view that if a religious entity is not insular, but engaged with broader society, it loses its "religious" character and liberties. Many faiths firmly believe in being open to and engaged with broader society and fellow citizens of other faiths. The Administration's ruling makes the price of such an outward approach the violation of an organization's religious principles. This is deeply disappointing.

This is not a Catholic issue. This is not a Jewish issue. This is not an Orthodox, Mormon, or Muslim issue. It is an American issue.

 

 

"All the Energies the Catholic Community Can Muster"

 

What we ask is nothing more than that our God-given right to religious liberty be respected. We ask nothing less than that the Constitution and laws of the United States, which recognize that right, be respected.

 

In insisting that our liberties as Americans be respected, we know as bishops that what our Holy Father said is true. This work belongs to "an engaged, articulate and well-formed Catholic laity endowed with a strong critical sense vis-à-vis the dominant culture."

As bishops we seek to bring the light of the Gospel to our public life, but the work of politics is properly that of committed and courageous lay Catholics. We exhort them to be both engaged and articulate in insisting that as Catholics and as Americans we do not have to choose between the two. There is an urgent need for the lay faithful, in cooperation with Christians, Jews, and others, to impress upon our elected representatives the importance of continued protection of religious liberty in a free society.

 

We address a particular word to those holding public office. It is your noble task to govern for the common good. It does not serve the common good to treat the good works of religious believers as a threat to our common life; to the contrary, they are essential to its proper functioning. It is also your task to protect and defend those fundamental liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. This ought not to be a partisan issue. The Constitution is not for Democrats or Republicans or Independents. It is for all of us, and a great nonpartisan effort should be led by our elected representatives to ensure that it remains so.

 

Text taken from, and for more information, please go to:
http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/religious-liberty/

 

God Bless
Nathan

Religious Liberty

Current Threats to Religious Liberty

An Overview of Specific Examples

Pope Benedict XVI spoke in 2012 about his worry that religious liberty in the United States is being weakened. He called religious liberty the “most cherished of American freedoms.” However, unfortunately, our most cherished freedom is under threat. Consider the following:

• HHS mandate for contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs. The mandate of the Department of Health and Human Services forces religious institutions to facilitate and fund a product contrary to their own moral teaching. Further, the federal government tries to define which religious institutions are “religious enough” to merit protection of their religious liberty.
• Catholic foster care and adoption services. Boston, San Francisco, the District of Columbia, and the State of Illinois have driven local Catholic Charities out of the business of providing adoption or foster care services—by revoking their licenses, by ending their government contracts, or both—because those Charities refused to place children with same-sex couples or unmarried opposite-sex couples who cohabit.
• State immigration laws. Several states have recently passed laws that forbid what they deem as “harboring” of undocumented immigrants—and what the Church deems Christian charity and pastoral care to these immigrants.
• Discrimination against small church congregations. New York City adopted a policy that barred the Bronx Household of Faith and other churches from renting public schools on weekends for worship services, even though non-religious groups could rent the same schools for many other uses. Litigation in this case continues.
• Discrimination against Catholic humanitarian services. After years of excellent performance by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services (MRS) in administering contract services for victims of human trafficking, the federal government changed its contract specifications to require MRS to provide or refer for contraceptive and abortion services in violation of Catholic teaching.
• Christian students on campus. In its over-100-year history, the University of California Hastings College of Law has denied student organization status to only one group, the Christian Legal Society, because it required its leaders to be Christian and to abstain from sexual activity outside of marriage.
• Forcing religious groups to host same-sex “marriage”or civil union ceremonies. A New Jersey judge recently found that a Methodist ministry violated state law when the ministry declined to allow two women to hold a “civil union” ceremony on its private property. Further, a civil rights complaint has been filed against the Catholic Church in Hawaii by a person requesting to use a chapel to hold a same-sex “marriage” ceremony.

Is our most cherished freedom truly under threat? Yes, Pope Benedict XVI recognized in 2012 that various attempts to limit the freedom of religion in the U.S. are particularly concerning. The threat to religious freedom is larger than any single case or issue and has its roots in secularism in our culture. The Holy Father has asked for the laity to have courage to counter secularism that would“delegitimize the Church’s participation in public debate about the issues which are determining the future of American society.”

Copy/pasted from:
http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/religious-liberty/current-threats-to-religious-liberty.cfm

For more info, please go to: www.fortnight4freedom.org

 

God Bless
Nathan

Church Authority

“As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  How was Jesus sent?  He was sent by the Father with all authority in heaven and earth (Mat 28:18) in such a way as to never bind a believer to a falsehood since whatever is bound or loosed on earth is also bound or loosed in heaven (Mat 18:15-18).  Nothing untrue can be bound in heaven therefore whatever is bound on earth must be true.

But is this how it was understood at the time of the Apostles?  Were there disagreements between the disciples?  If so, how did they resolve it?  One need not look any further than verses 1 and 2 of the Book of Acts, chapter 15.  It says:

“ ¹ Certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the believers: “Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.” ² This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question.”

One set of Christian teacher were telling new converts that they are to be circumcised first if one was to be saved.  The other set, Paul and Barnabas, told the converts that circumcision was unnecessary.  Who were the converts to believe when confronted with conflicting teachings?  The converts sent both groups to Jerusalem to settle the matter. The leaders of the Church…Of the WHOLE Church decided the matter for all believers in Christ.  As is clearly seen a little further down when Paul and Barnabas traveled through the towns after the Council of Jerusalem, Scripture says that “As they traveled from town to town, they delivered the decisions reached by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem for the people to obey.”  It wasn’t a choice or simply for those believers in Jerusalem but for all believers in Christ.

The first followers went to the Church when disputes arose between believers to settle the matter because that’s how Jesus told the Apostles to do it.  He told them try to settle the matter between themselves but if they couldn’t, they were to go to the Church.  The buck stops at the Church.  Here is how Jesus put it.  When one sins against another (separating oneself from the Body of Christ is a grave sin against the whole body), they are to:

“If your brother sins, go and point out his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won him over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If he still refuses to listen, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.” (Mat 18:15-17)

These verses show us that the Church that Christ builds must have a visible aspect to it because there is no way two individuals in a dispute can go to all believers in Christ (all Christians) when so many believe contradictory doctrines.  Paul tells us in his first letter to Timothy that some will abandon the faith by believing false doctrines and therefore instructs Timothy to go to the Church, the One True Church to settle the matter.  Go to the leaders of the Church.

And because Jesus promised us that the gates of Hell would not prevail against His Church in Matthew 16:19 means that His Church will never teach false doctrines.  If His Church did teach a false doctrine as true then that would put the faithful at peril of losing the faith (1 Tim 4:1).  His Church could never do that since it would go against its very nature of being the upholder and defender of the truth (1 Tim 3:15).

 

Let’s use a concrete example to clarify what I’m saying.  Let’s say my cousin comes to me one day and tells me that his wife is pregnant and she feels she isn’t ready for a child right now.  She decided to have an abortion, and failing to convince her and following Scripture my cousin comes to me with another friend to try to convince her not to have the procedure.  But she still wants an abortion.  My cousin then goes to his church (which is Catholic) for help.  Now, since the Catholic Church teaches that absolutely, abortion is wrong, we know the church will tell her that she shouldn’t have an abortion.  But she just goes to her church (one of many possible ones who do teach that abortion is a personal choice and can even be redemptive).  So now we have come to an impasse, which church are we to listen to?  Which church is actually teaching the truth?  You see how the idea of His Church being only a conglomeration of all believers prevents us from knowing the truth with certainty?  His Church must have a visible entity so that all may know the truth of what He teaches.  And His teachings are made known to us in its fullest form through His Church because only His Church has been given the promise of being led into ALL truth (John 16:13).

The only Church which has had a physical presence throughout the centuries beginning in the first century up to today’s councils is the Catholic Church.  All these councils, 21 in all beginning with the council at Jerusalem found in Acts 15, are teaching doctrinal truth because we know that His Church is the pillar and defender of the truth.  We can know this Church is the Catholic Church by simply going through the writings and declarations inside the documents produced by these councils were written by Catholic Bishops and ratified/approved by the Pope. When it comes to doctrinal matters, either of faith or morals, we are to accept the Catholic Church’s doctrinal teachings whether we like them or not, whether they are easy to follow or not because they are the truth. 

Isn’t it a great blessing to be able to go to an authority that can guide and correct our wayward ways by identifying the truth in a sea of confusing and conflicting ‘truths’?  Thank you Lord for giving us a sure fire way of knowing the truth!

 

God Bless

Nathan