About Marvin C. Fox Expertise I am a cradle catholic who rebelled against the faith in my teenage years. My faith returned in November 1992 after a powerful conversion experience on my first wedding anniversary. The Lord graced me with the answers needed to understand the marital conflict my wife and I experienced and this grace continued into a deep knowledge of Christ and His Church. My answers to questions of the faith come from my own experience as a participant in the redemptive suffering of our Lord. Although my answers are in accord with Catholic teaching, I don`t answer from a schooled knowledge base but from private study and from the experience of being a witness to Christ`s suffering. If a question is outside of the expertise my experience offers, for example, canon law, or the finer points of Church history I have no problem saying so.
Experience I have been answering questions concerning the faith since 1993 and am currently a moderator for an online catholic study group.
I just needed to know who or what a Pope is
can u give me as much information as possible
Because to get a excellence I need wide range of information.
Thanks for helping me
Vic
Answer Hello Vic,
The first time God intervened in man's affairs and related to him in regards to and as a national collective, or better said, related to man as a nation, He taught 'vicariously'(note that the Pope is called the 'vicar' of Christ) through Moses. Scripture even quotes God as saying that Moses is to be regarded as God to his brother Aaron the priest. Statement s such as that are revealing the kind of authority Moses possessed and that in Moses authority was to be given the same distinction as if it was directly coming from God Himself. God's authority once revealed on the public level possesses His attributes of immoveable changelessness and absolute inerrancy. This kind of authority is permanently seated within history once established. Traditionally judgement was always given from a seated position, for these reasons the authority possessed by Moses is an office known as the Chair of Moses.
When Christ came He didn't come to sit in that chair of authority, in fact He taught His listeners to do what those currently sitting in that chair tell them to do. But added don't act as they act. The reason Christ said to obey the chair of Moses was because He wasn't there to replace it but to raise it to a higher standard. That higher standard was revealed in the person of Peter who the chair is now named after.
Now God teaches 'vicariously' through the chair of Peter on which sit's His vicar the Pope. The Pope sits on the same chair of authority established by public revelation through Moses who ruled over the house of which the keys thereof were given by Christ to Peter.
I will post a couple of website addresses that have much more to say and I will close by sharing a personal insight to Peter's authority as it relates to our spiritual Papa the Holy Father. In the Gospel passage where Peter professes Christ and is given the keys to the kingdom it is the Father who shares Himself with Peter and in so doing reveals Jesus as His Son. Peter then say's " You are the Son of the Living God." Peter knows through this union that God is indeed a Living God and is God of the Living as shown by His Son because He Himself is not under the curse but is Living as well. Peter experiences the Father's life as a father so that Jesus would be experienced by Peter as the Son of the Father rather than say the brother of the Father. Peter experiences the paternal bond the Father experiences with Jesus. The Father shares the Trinitarian bond through which the apostolic bond is established which to this day is characterized as paternal and the successors of which are refered to as Father. This explains why Peter is bold eneogh to discuss things with Jesus as if He were an equal right after the Father reveals Jesus to him as His Son. That same bond, the same authority, and the same inerrant proclamation of Christ is continued today through the Papal office and expressed by the Holy Father Pope John Paul II.
