If you're no longer Catholic why would you care one way or the other?
Another former Catholic here. We should all care because a controversy such as this:
- diverts attention from Jesus' "Prime Directive" — which was straight from the Hebrew Bible, of course (Leviticus 19:18) — that we seek the best for others, even our enemies, as we do for ourselves; and
- falsely implies that not following pharisaic rules makes one less worthy and thus excluded from the Prime Directive.
This harms civil society in general, not just Catholics.
From the first century A.D. to the present, the Church has cared about holding true to the Apostolic tradition, which includes teachings re: how to treat others as well how to worship God.
Oh. So then I guess either Matthew or Acts got it wrong about whose name should be invoked in baptizing: If Jesus really said to baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then the apostles apparently ignored his instructions — compare Matt. 28.19 with Acts 2.38, 8.16, 10.48, 19.5. [0]
On a tangentially-related subject: Peter, preaching at Pentecost, seems to have flagrantly misrepresented his scriptural source. [1]
While we're at it: The Apostles all indisputably thought that Jesus would be returning Real Soon Now — and that just didn't happen. [2]
[0] https://www.questioningchristian.org/2004/10/troubling_incon...
[1] https://www.questioningchristian.org/2004/10/troubling_incon...
[2] https://www.questioningchristian.org/2005/10/is_jesus_coming...
This still very much allows for disagreement on matters not formally settled, and is no barrier to a person untrained in ecclesiastical history and dogmatic theology from being edified by reading and/or hearing the Bible.
You may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth.The church is the pillar and bulwark, and we are on the surest footing when interpreting Sacred Scripture standing atop the pillar; everything else is a complete non-starter, though can be fodder for debates and whatnot.
On that much, we agree.
> the context for understanding Matthew, Acts, et al. is the teachings of the Councils, Fathers, and Doctors of the Church ....
You might consider another possibility: That the apostolic succession belongs to all the baptized, not just to what I once referred to as "the Twelve's decisions to anoint themselves as a self-perpetuating elite" in the early church. [0]
[0] https://www.questioningchristian.org/2007/02/the_apostolic_s...
1. Unfalsifiable, ipse dixit proclamations by church "overseers," i.e., bishops (Greek: ἐπίσκοπος, episkopos, whence English's episcopal) aren't persuasive.
Long ago I read translations of the surviving writings of some of the earliest church fathers — such as in the page you linked. I was struck by the distinct impression that the first bishops essentially bootstrapped themselves into authority — they peremptorily announced:
- that they were successors of the Apostles; and
- that their apostolic succession entitled them to be in charge.
(EDIT: This foreshadowed, by some 1,700 years, the U.S. Supreme Court's bootstrapped declaration that judges have the power to decide the constitutionality of congressional legislation, in Marbury vs. Madison, where Chief Justice John Marshall famously said that in case of conflicting statutory- and constitutional provisions, "It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. ...")
And these first bishops persuaded their (self-selected?) flocks to acknowledge their authority; eventually, what started out as an arguable heresy on the part of these "overseers" became carved in stone as a core principle of church governance. [0]
2. The church fathers relied extensively on the letters of Paul, né Saul, of Tarsus. Recall that Saul/Paul started out as a fiery persecutor of Christians — then suddenly "flipped" and became equally zealous preaching his version of Christianity.
And remember that Paul preached what he claimed to be his own gospel, not received from any man, but directly from Jesus himself, whom he had never met in life — if Paul had known Jesus before the latter's execution, he surely would have trumpeted the fact, in his Epistle to the Galatians and elsewhere.
[0] https://www.questioningchristian.org/2006/04/what_is_the_pro...