The title "pope" is given to the Supreme head of the Roman Catholic Church and comes from the word papa, or Father. The pope is often called the Holy Father.

His full title is Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Patriarch of the West, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Sovereign of the State of the Vatican City, now Gloriously Reigning. For these last 3 words are sometimes substituted "Servant of the Servants of God."

We know in 2003 the present pope's real name is Karol Wotyla, but it has not always been the custom for a pope to change his name when elected. In 533, John II became the first pope to change his name, but the practice did not become general until 1009, when a man named Peter was elected pope and changed his name to Sergius IV. After that it became normal for a pope to take a new name.

The book Prompta Bibliotheca Canonica is recommended by The Catholic Encyclopedia. They call is "a precious mine of information." In Volume VI, pages 438 and 442 it says, "The pope is of so great dignity and so exalted that he is not a mere man, but as it were God, and the vicar of God. The pope is as it were God on earth, sole sovereign of the faithful in Christ, chief king of kings, having plenitude of power, to whom has been entrusted by the omnipotent God direction not only of the earthly but also of the heavenly kingdom. The pope can modify divine law, since his power is not of man but of God."

A more modern definition of the pope is given by Dr. Murray of Maynooth Seminary in Ireland commented on the words of Jesus in Matthew 16:18. Dr. Murray said: "By saying these words, Jesus appointed Peter supreme head of the Church, and gave him full authority to legislate for it; to teach, to inspect and judge; to reject and denounce all false doctrines, and to declare what is the true Faith; to appoint all its clergy and teachers and to arrange their work; in short, the whole church, its officers, its constitution, its work, were entrusted to Peter."

The Vatican II Document Lumen Gentium says, "For the Roman Pontiff, by reason of his office as Vicar of Christ namely, and as pastor of the entire church, has full supreme and universal power over the whole church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered" That is found in the book Vatican II, edited by the Dominican priest Austin Flannery, page 375.

Paragraph 882 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994) quotes word for word from the quotation we just gave from Lumen Gentium. That certainly establishes the Roman Catholic position about the pope and his primacy. He certainly is Number One in the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

There are a number of ways that we can deal with Matthew 16:18, but it is interesting to note that the seven verses of scripture that the Catholic Church had infallibly defined, Matthew 16:18 was not among them. This is probably because the Council of Trent stated that scripture could only be interpreted according to the unanimous consent of the Church Fathers. It is an admitted fact that the Church Fathers were less than unanimous on this scripture. Over 70% of them did not believe that Peter was the Rock. But we have never had a desire to prove something by using the Church Fathers. God says we should go to the Bible, not the Church Fathers!

One way we can biblically deal with this problem is to ask whether Peter ever was considered the primate of the Church.

Catholics will be quick to point out that Peter's name is mentioned first in every listing we have of the Apostles, but that does not guarantee primacy; it only means that Peter was the spokesperson of the disciples.

Yes, and we remember that he often, as the saying goes, put his foot in his mouth.

One instance that disproves Peter's primacy occurs in Luke 22:24. This happened after the time at Caerarea Philippi when Jesus supposedly told the disciples that Peter was to be the Primate of the Church.

Yet in this passage the disciples were arguing about who would be Number One. If Peter already had that position given to him by Jesus Christ Himself, there would be no reason to argue about it.

Then we go to Acts 8:14, "Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John."

The very fact that Peter and John were sent by the apostolic college, proves that the combined group of apostles had authority over Peter. Today, even if all the bishops of the world would unite against the pope, he still has complete and universal power over the church, which is called primacy. No one, nor any group, can send the pope anywhere. All the trips he takes he takes on his own volition.

The concept of papal primacy is very important to Roman Catholics. Ludwig Ott, probably the most respected conservative Roman Catholic theologian, has written a book, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma. On page 303 he says, "The unity both of faith and of communion is guaranteed by the Primacy of the Pope." In other words, the entire belief structure of Roman Catholicism and its being the Church of Jesus Christ depends on the primacy of the pope. And we have already seen that the Bible definitely teaches that Peter was not the primate of the early church, so that is another point on which Roman Catholicism does not measure up to scripture.

Dr. Ott, on page 283, quotes from the (First) Vatican Council. "If anyone denies that in virtue of the decree of Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, Blessed Peter has perpetual successors in his Primacy over the Universal Church, let him be anathema. That the primacy is to be perpetuated in the successors of Peter is, indeed, not expressly stated in the words of the promise and conferring of the Primacy by Our Lord but it flows as an inference from the nature and purpose of the Primacy itself. As the function of the Primacy is to preserve the unity and solidarity of the Church; and as the Church, according to the will of her Divine Founder, is to continue substantially unchanged until the end of time for the perpetuation of the work of salvation, the Primacy also must be perpetuated. But Peter, like every other human being, was subject to death, consequently his office must be transmitted to others. The structure of the Church cannot continue without the foundation which supports it: Christ's flock cannot exist without shepherds."

First, Dr. Ott is pronouncing a condemnation or anathema upon anyone who denies that Jesus Christ Himself decreed that Peter and all his perpetual successors have Primacy over the Universal Church. We know that they claim that Jesus, in Matthew 16, gave primacy to Peter, but have also seen in scripture where this was not the case. Peter's importance in the early church is indisputable; his primacy is unprovable.

Dr. Ott claims that "it flows as an inference from the nature and purpose of the Primacy itself." He claims, as we have seen from the earlier quote, that "the function of the Primacy is to preserve the unity and solidarity of the Church." But the Bible speaks of the unity of the Spirit, and certainly the Holy Spirit is better able to maintain the unity of the Church rather than a pope who often, while supposed to be concerned with keeping the church together. Was more concerned with the adulterous relations with which many earlier popes were involved.

While all Christians are thankful for the ministry of those who are called to care for the flock of God, the Bible makes it very plain that the shepherding of the flock is ultimately being continued and perfected by the Good Shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ.

We have a plain Old Testament reference to that in the 23^rd Psalm, often called the Shepherd's Psalm. David did not look to a high Priest, although priests were necessary in the economy of Hebrew worship. He said, The Lord is my shepherd.

In the next verse he indicated very clearly that it was the Good Shepherd Who would meet his every need. The entire Psalm testifies not only to David faith in the provision of his Shepherd and Savior, but in the faithfulness of God, Who was the shepherd of the shepherd boy David.

Not only would David's Great Shepherd lead him and sustain him in this life, he ends the Psalm with a glorious note of assurance - And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

The whole history of the papacy points away from the receiving of spiritual earthly or heavenly blessings. There is not one single salvation text in the Bible that the pope has ever infallibly interpreted, even though you would think the main job of this supposed God-appointed shepherd would be to lead his sheep into life eternal. What a contrast there is between papal shepherding and the discourse on the Good Shepherd in John chapter 10. We can follow Jesus Christ, our Good Shepherd, because we hear His Voice. He promises us salvation and abundant life, and the most glorious words of our Shepherd are found in John 10:11 - I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.

It would be unusual if God had to rely upon sinful man to carry on the work of salvation in the world. Although He does use men, all that pertains to life and godliness is found only in Him, and He promised that the good work He had begun He would finish. He is not just the beginning of our salvation; He is Author and Finisher. Our Catholic friends seemingly want to have some human being as the primate of their church because it was the Popes themselves who began to interpret Matthew 16 to mean that they were primates. The Church Fathers certainly did not accept this proposition, and the popes who pushed for this were the power-hungry despots who found this a convenient way to exercise complete control over their subjects.

There are some Catholics who unreservedly give the pope the position of primacy which they are told he must have. But there are increasing numbers who, while having an outward show of kneeling to him, are really quite disobedient of his rules. We have watched the pope in his journeys to various countries. When he comes to America, a vast multitude of Catholics turn out to welcome him. At the same time, polls show that over 75% of American Catholics would like to have women priests, which is something their supposed primate would not allow. So he has the name of primacy, but is not always able exercise it unhindered, as he is supposed to.

It is commonly known that Catholics admire him and applaud him, but to obey him is something completely different. One Catholic writer said that a practicing Catholic is someone who reads the pope's encyclicals before disobeying them. They have that sinful human being as the absolute authority, and yet they feel quite free to disobey him whenever it is convenient. When he comes to their town, they are all ears - but as soon as he leaves, his te aching goes in one ear and out the other.

The biggest contradiction is that they have a visible head who is supposed to show them the way to Heaven, but he apparently doesn't even know it himself, for in the latest Catholic catechism it states the way to Heaven is by right conduct, and we know the Bible says, "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us."

The pope presides over a system that tells us that good works are necessary for Heaven, but the Bible says, "For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast!!!

In a book called The Illustrated History of The Popes - Saint Peter to John Paul II written by Jesuit priest Michael Walsh, we read in Chapter I: "There has been a great debate over Matthew 16:18 because, as we shall see, this is the crucial text by which the popes attempted to justify their claim to rule over the whole church, and not just over their local community in Rome. But whatever the interpretation of the facts, the facts themselves are these: in Aramaic, the language Jesus was using, the word `Peter' and the word `rock' are the same: kepha. Until Jesus bestowed it on Simon, kepha was not a personal name, and neither was its Greek equivalent, Petros ... But the name kepha was translated into Greek as Petros. So those who were writing and translating the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles clearly did not want the significance of the word kepha (meaning rock) to be lost."

There has been a great debate over Matthew 16:18. Of the early church fathers, only a minority of them believed it referred to Peter, so there was no agreement on this text, and yet the Council of Trent plainly stated that scripture could only be interpreted "by the unanimous consent of the fathers."

The Catholics have two problems - they have to prove first that Peter acted in a way that made him the first pope, and then that the Bishops of Rome who followed him were also popes by way of Apostolic succession.

The first part of that problem hinges mainly on two points - what does the Aramaic word "kepha" mean, and did Matthew write his Gospel in Aramaic. If we can clear those up, we can proceed with the petra-Petros issue.

There is no evidence that Matthew's Gospel was first written in Aramaic. While we have Greek and Hebrew manuscripts from which the Bible has been and can be translated, there is no existing Gospel of Matthew in Aramaic.

The Greek word translated Cephas in our King James Bibles refers back to the Chaldean word keph, which means a hollow rock. It comes from the word kaphaph, which means to curve, and is translated to bow down. This definition does not fit in with what the Catholic Church would like to believe. The Aramaic word doesn't prove anything, and if the Catholics want to believe that Matthew's Gospel was in Aramaic, I wonder who they would say translated it into Greek?

They would have to say it was a Catholic scholar, and then we would ask them why the Catholic scholar used two different Greek words - petra and Petros. One answer they would give was that petra is feminine and couldn't be used to designate Peter.

Then we would point them to 1 Corinthians 10:4, where it says "that Rock was Christ" and it uses petra, which is feminine and means a foundation rock.

There is even more proof right from the word of God. In John 1, the first meeting of Jesus and Peter is mentioned. Christ said that his name would be called Cephas. But the Catholic Church says the word Cephas can either mean a foundation rock or a small pebble. That is where we get help from the Holy Spirit, the Author of scripture. He concludes this verse by saying that Cephas is, by interpretation, a stone. The Greek word used is petros, not petra.

From the Roman Catholic book How to Find The True Church, on page 45 it says, "Peter acted as chief of the apostles, as for instance, at the election of Matthias."

It is true that Peter suggested that they should ordain someone to take the place of Judas, but, if he were acting like a pope, he would have appointed the person, but the Bible says, THEY appointed two, prayed to God (not to Mary ) and, the Bible says, gave forth their lots. The exact way they accomplished this is not stated; it may have been a secret ballot. But the important thing is that they did not ask Peter to choose someone. According to Catholicism, he was now formally installed as pope, and he didn't act at all like one.

Peter never asserted his primacy in the early church. He was certainly one of the leaders of the church in Jerusalem, but although God used him greatly, his actions never hinted that he had what the Catholic church calls a primacy which he can always exercise unhindered.

The Catholic position on a church council is that it should be convened by the pope.

The determination that there should be a council at Jerusalem is recorded in Acts 15:1,2.

The Bible says that certain men who were teaching salvation through keeping the law of Moses determined that Paul and Barnabas should go up to Jerusalem to confer with the apostles and elders. Although Peter gave a fine speech telling about his visit to Cornelius some years before, he fails to mention anything about his primacy. According to Catholic chronology, he was supposed to already be Bishop of Rome, but he doesn't, as they say, pull his rank on them. After he was finished, the multitude listened to Paul and Barnabas as they told of their experiences with the Gentiles.

Then James stands up and gives his sentence. Going back to Strong's Concordance, we find this means that he gives his decision. And while he mentions Peter's work favorably, he supplies scripture to back up his decision, and said the gathering should write four specific rules for the Gentiles to follow - none of which were mentioned by Peter!

And all of this is in accordance with Peter's own humble assessment of himself and his ministry. He called himself a fellow elder and reminds Christians that the eldership doesn't lord it over God's flock, isn't in it for financial gain and does not rile by constraint.

If you look at the papacy for a thousand or more years, the popes acted like demigods, ruling the people and extorting money from them. No, Peter was never part of the papacy and the papacy has no part in Peter. But the Catholic book I just mentioned says, " at the first council, after much discussion Peter gave his opinion to which all submitted." That is just not true.

A message I received from a budding Catholic apologist said, "The so-called worldly popes of the Middle Ages - three in number - were certainly guilty of extravagant pomposity, nepotism and other indiscretions and sins which were not in keeping with the dignity of their high office, nor were they guilty of altering any part of the Church's Christ-given deposit of faith."

Regarding the "three wicked popes," here is the quote from Our Sunday Visitor, February 22, 1998: "Nevertheless, the history of the popes is a challenge to faith. There were popes who may have murdered their predecessors, like the evil popes of the 10th century. Others were tyrants, like Urban VI who reigned from 1378 to 1389, and who even tortured cardinals in his prison. Better known, perhaps, but not less frightening, were the Renaissance popes, whose scandalous lives harmed the Church. For example, Alexander VI, the famous Borgia pope, whose illegitimate children Cesare and Lucrezia were notorious.

Commenting about popes, Priest Kenneth Ryan says, in the February 1994 issue of Catholic Digest, "...Boniface VI was Pope for only 15 days (in 896 AD). Stephen VI was the Pope who presided at the trial and condemnation of the decaying and disinterred body of Pope Formosus, who had died in AD 896. The faction which had favored the politics of Formosus rebelled against Stephen VI, jailed him, and finally had him strangled. John XII was only 18 when he became Pope and, after seven years of dissolute living, died, it is said, in flagrante delicto (while committing adultery). Sergius III was acclaimed Pope in AD 904 after marching on Rome at the head of an armed force. He has his predecessor, Leo V, strangled." The writer concludes, . . Why the Holy Spirit allowed sinners to assume a holy office we don't know, any more than we know why God allowed Adam or Judas to sin."

The excuse given by the Catholic church has always been given that God preserved from error even sinful men who gained the papacy through bribes and armed conflict, but it certainly should cause a Catholic to think when he finds out that his own loyal Catholic historians have painted a picture of a papacy riddled with intrigue and the worst kinds of financial and moral wrong doing.

A Knights of Columbus article reads, "the scandalous ones were very few indeed," and they like to offer, as proof of their papal purity, the popes of the 20th century. All of these, with the possible exception of Pius XII, who very likely has Jewish blood on his hands, lived morally acceptable lives - if condemning 900,000,000 Roman Catholic to hell is morally acceptable.

We can uncover some very interesting things that are reported, not by fanatical anti-Catholics, but by Roman authorities themselves. In the book Keepers of The Keys, by Wilton Wynn and published by Random House, New York in 1988, on page 11 we read "In the year 236 a farmer named Fabian wandered into Rome and stopped to watch the clergy and people select a pope. A dove landed on Fabian's head, and the assembly instantly acclaimed him pope."

Back in those days the people of Rome chose their pope. That was an interesting way of deciding who would be pope, certainly much simpler than today with all the political intrigues that go on in papal elections.

Another article from OUR SUNDAY VISITOR, April 18, 1915, said, "The letters inscribed on the Pope's miter are these: Vicarius Filii Dei, which is Latin for Vicar of The Son of God." The numerical value of these Latin letters is 666. A Catholic apologist writing in The Wanderer stated that this was something which Ralph Woodrow made up in his Book Mystery Babylon Religion.

Yet we find the same title for the pope in the Donation of Constantine, which, although it was proved to be a forgery, was authored by an ardent follower of the papacy.

Roman Catholic ecumenists play down fears of papal jurisdiction over Protestants. They are saying that the Pope is a fellow bishop of all bishops in Christendom. Because he comes from the See where Peter and Paul were martyred he has a prominence that he uses to help his fellow bishops.

During a visit to Des Moines, Iowa in December 1979, John Paul II was welcomed by a Roman Catholic choir singing, "Joy to the world, the Pope has come" And in reports of other papal visits, when the pope glances at the crowd, inevitable there will be some who say, "It was like looking at God."

The Bible teaches us that it is the Lord Jesus who is the image of God, and is the only mediator between God and man.

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