Revering the pope as supreme leader

The Orthodox Church has a group of bishops that provide shared leadership, and the Protestant Church has more leaders than you can shake a stick at. However, the Catholic Church distinctively has a single leader in charge – the pope. (Check out Chapter 11 for a discussion on why the pope and other Catholic leaders are always men.)

 

The pope is technically the bishop of Rome, but he has authority over all of the Catholic Church. He resides in Vatican City, which is an independent nation located in the heart of Rome, Italy. Since the early days of the Church, Rome has always played a special role in Church leadership. During that time, Rome was the political and economic center of the world, much like New York, Washington D.C., and Tokyo are today. Added to that, the Roman church was large, vibrant, and faithful to the apostles’ teaching. As a result of all these factors, the Roman church exerted an enormous amount of respect and influence within the Church as a whole. Other regions recognized this special role and considered the bishop of Rome “first among equals” (see the “Theological differences” section earlier in this chapter).

 

The bishop of Rome was influential in the early centuries, but he didn’t show authority until the fifth century, when Leo held the office. Leo was the first bishop of Rome to call himself “pope,” though at the time, the Greek word papas and the Latin word papa were both used for many different church leaders. Over the years, however, Christians used the term more and more exclusively for the bishop of Rome, especially after the Great Schism in 1054 (refer to the section, “The Great Separation: Western and Eastern Churches go their own ways,” earlier in this chapter).

 

Catholics believe Jesus himself established the papacy – the Church’s supreme authority – with the apostle Peter when he said, “On this rock I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18). In other words, Jesus is foreshadowing that Peter would take a leadership role in establishing the Church after Jesus ascended into heaven. However, Catholics interpret this verse to mean not Peter personally, but the office of Peter, because he was head of the apostles. Because of this interpretation and because, by the second century, the Church considered Peter a father of the church in Rome, Catholics declared that all future officeholders of the bishop of Rome share that same leadership role.

 

Sacred Tradition is the Catholic Church also says that when the pope teaches ex cathedra (Latin meaning “from the chair”), he’s infallible, or incapable of error. Catholics believe that the Holy Spirit prevents a pope from making a mistake when he speaks officially on matters of the Church. They make it clear that this doesn’t mean that a pope is infallible in private matters. But when he teaches in an official capacity, he’s guaranteed to be free from making a mistake. As a result, a pope can expand on a preceding pope’s official teaching, clarify it, or add to it, but never contradict it.

 

Certain conditions must be fulfilled for the pronouncement to be ex cathedra; not all papal pronouncements reach this level.

 

A second type of pronouncement is known as a papal encyclical (coming from the Latin word for “circular”), in which papal letters that define or clarify the Catholic Church’s position on contemporary issues, such as Humanae Vitae on abortion and birth control, circulate around the world.

 

Personal prayer assistants

You’ve heard of personal digital assistants (PDAs) before, but Catholic and Orthodox Christians also make use of what I call PPAs – personal prayer assistants, or physical objects that assist in prayer. They use two primary objects:

 

Rosary: Certainly the most well-known is the Catholic rosary, which is a string of beads a person uses to help himself recite a series of prayers while meditating on a specific Mystery (which refers to a specific aspect or event in the life of Jesus or Mary). The standard rosary consists of five decades (groups of ten) of small beads on which to pray the Hail Mary, separated from each other by a small chain and a large bead on which to Pray the Our Father (or the Lord’s Prayer). One begins the rosary by praying the Apostle’s Creed on the cross at the end of the Rosary, followed by an Our Father, Glory Be (a specific prayer beginning with “Glory be to the Father”), and three Hail Marys (a specific prayer starting with “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you”). Pope John Paul II added a new set of Mysteries to the Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious Mysteries currently used with the Rosary. This addition is known as the Luminous Mysteries, and the set focuses on the public ministries of Jesus. This is the first change to the Rosary since the medieval times.

 

Prayer rope: Orthodox Christians use a prayer rope to help them concentrate in saying the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” An Orthodox prayer rope has 33, 50, or 100 knots, with beads between every 10 or 25 knots. The person praying then uses the knots as a way to measure the number of times they’ve repeated the prayer in a sitting.

 

Succeeding the apostles with bishops

All Christians believe that the apostles founded the Church. However, they disagree considerably over how that apostleship carried on after the original apostles left the scene. Catholics believe in apostolic succession, the idea that bishops are the anointed (authorized) successors of the original apostles and are set apart to lead the Church. This belief helps justify the Catholic claim that Sacred Tradition carries equal weight to the words written by the original apostles in the New Testament because successive bishops maintain that direct connection to the original apostles.