Given from the Catholic Broadcasting Station 2SM Sydney Australia
Choose a topic from Vol 4:
Yes. We know that Christ established His Church and called the Apostles, devoting three years to their training. These Apostles He appointed as constitutional officials in His Church, giving them the threefold power to teach, rule and sanctify others in His name. But it is to be noted that He commissioned them, as the appointed officials of His Church, to "teach all nations" and promised to be with them "all days till the end of the world." Now it is clear that the Apostles themselves could not "teach all nations;" nor could they personally live "all days till the end of the world." Yet the Church had to continue, and with the constitution Christ had given it. It follows that the power and the authority of the Apostles must have been transmitted to their official successors. For evidence that this did happen we can scarcely look to the New Testament itself, which was written whilst the Apostles were still alive; but documents from the earliest days of the Church record the fact. Thus St. Clement of Rome, writing before the end of the 1st century, tells us that the Apostles appointed others to succeed them St. Clement knew the Apostles personally, and is himself mentioned by name in the New Testament, Philip, IV, 3. In the 2nd century St Irenaeus in his controversy with the Gnostics who claimed to possess secret doctrines derived from the Apostles, pointed out the publicly known succession of the Bishops in the Church from the Apostles, enumerating particularly the Bishops of Rome as successors of St. Peter, and declaring that no authority could belong to the teachings of those not in union with these official successors of the Apostles.
Catholics do not maintain an unbroken line in the sense you have in mind. We do not hold that, after the death of one Pope, there cannot be any intervening period before the election of another. Constitutionally the Papal Office remains, whilst an unbroken continuity of Apostolic orders and jurisdiction is ever maintained in the Catholic Church.
We do not claim that. We claim that there has never been a break in the continuous transmission of valid priestly and episcopal orders in the Catholic Church from the Apostles themselves, a subject with which I have dealt in the previous chapter, nos. 94-101. There is bound to be a break of some kind between the death of one Pope and the election of another.
True. Therefore the Apostolic Succession of valid priestly and episcopal orders has continued in the Catholic Church. Also, as an office, the primatial episcopal See of Rome has continued. Naturally that See is vacant between the death of one Pope and the election of another; but the office itself does not go out of existence. It continues with all its prerogatives and authority according to the constitution of the Church. Canon Law itself provides that, on the death of a Pope, some two weeks must be allowed to elapse before the election of another so that the Cardinals even from the most distant places may arrive in Rome in time for the Conclave. That break of two weeks�and it would not matter if it were two months or two years�does not mean a break in the continuity of the Papal Office.
A revised list of the names of the various Popes from the very beginning was then published by the Vatican. This new list is the fruit of many years of critical historical research. At various stages during the past twenty centuries different writers have compiled lists of the Popes until their day, relying on such authorities as were accessible to them. But there were differences between the catalogs on which they relied, sometimes due to copyists' errors, at other times due to lack of historical precision. Some were obviously content with giving an approximate list only, preferring to include rather than omit names of which they were doubtful. In 1947 Vatican scholars published the results of a comprehensive study of all ancient lists, eliminating inaccuracies whereever they had crept in.
There is no need for him to be sure of that. Protestant papers are hard put to it when they have to fall back on such supposed arguments against the Catholic Church! The fact that the Vatican itself published its own correction of previous lists of the Popes should have made the editor of "The Evangelical Christian" realize that the matter was merely one of historical research, with no bearing on the question of the truth of the Catholic Church and its claim to an unbroken succession of Papal authority from St. Peter himself. Catholics have never been required to believe in the infallibility of historians and copyists in recording or transcribing previous records of names and dates belonging to different periods of history! No intelligent scholar or theologian would dream of basing an argument against the Catholic Church on such considerations.
The historical argument. The more I thought over the whole matter the more convinced I became of the truth of Cardinal Newman's statement that "to be deeply read in history is to cease to be a Protestant." Christ had promised to be with His Church all days till the end of the world. The true Church, therefore, must have been in this world all days since His time and must still be here even as it will continue till the end of the world. The Catholic Church is the only Christian Church which can comply with the first of these conditions. She alone has been in this world since the time of Christ and of the Apostles; and if she is not the Church established by Christ, there never was a Church established by Him at all. Believing in the absolute truth of the Christian religion I had no option but to join the Catholic Church.
Yes.
"THAT CATHOLIC CHURCH
A Radio Analysis"
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