Saint Peter and The Origin of The Office
See also: Primacy of Simon PeterThe Catholic Church teaches that, within the Christian community, the bishops as a body have succeeded to the body of the apostles and the Bishop of Rome has succeeded to Saint Peter.
Scriptural texts proposed in support of Peter's special position in relation to the church include the words of Jesus to him:
I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers. Feed my sheep.The symbolic keys in the papal coat of arms are a reference to the phrase "the keys of the kingdom of heaven" in the first of these texts. Some Protestant writers have maintained that the "rock" that Jesus speaks of in this text is Jesus himself or the faith expressed by Peter. The Encyclopaedia Britannica comments that "the consensus of the great majority of scholars today is that the most obvious and traditional understanding should be construed, namely, that rock refers to the person of Peter".
Read more about this topic: Pope
Famous quotes containing the words saint peter, saint, peter, origin and/or office:
“You, mistress,
That have the office opposite to Saint Peter,
And keeps the gate of hell!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Upon Saint Crispin’s day
Fought was this noble fray,
Which fame did not delay
To England to carry.
On when shall Englishmen
With such acts fill a pen,
Or England breed again
Such a King Harry?”
—Michael Drayton (1563–1631)
“Most vegetarians I ever see looked enough like their food to be classed as cannibals.”
—Finley Peter Dunne (1867–1936)
“High treason, when it is resistance to tyranny here below, has its origin in, and is first committed by, the power that makes and forever re-creates man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He can’t even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and twenty or thirty billion dollars and, vroom! there he is, up on a rock a quarter of a million miles up in the sky.”
—Russell Baker (b. 1925)