Clarifying Catholicism

This series, which draws on Klaus Schatz’s phenomenal Papal Primacy, will attempt to paint an accurate picture of the development of papal authority. I will do so by trying my best to present an honest history of the pope’s role. Because to understand the pope’s authority, one has to understand the reasons why this office accumulated so much power, which requires a good historical perspective.

"Jesus was seen and heard by multiple people at different times, as well as at the same time. Jesus was the victim of violence. His presence instilled fear and doubt in some participants. He spoke fairly briefly and offered comfort before disappearing. He gave guidance, made requests, and issued commands. He seemed quite real and solid. He appeared and disappeared in unusual ways, such as walking through doors. His presence was not perceived as unusual at the beginning of His apparition, such as during the Emmaus walk. His appearance was so convincing that it resulted in the percipient’s change of conviction. And He was seen less as time passed. These are all things that have been reported by people in the aforementioned studies. There is nothing unusual about them when compared to other appearances of deceased ones."

"Allison argues, as do most historical Jesus scholars, that even Jesus misunderstood His Father’s plan for Him. This would make sense given His statement in Mark that not even the Son will know when the resurrection will happen."

"Pope Gregory the Great, a highly intelligent man, once heard a story that a dead Roman craftsman, who was buried in a church, began shouting “I burn! I burn!” The next day his clothes were found but no body was there. Pope Gregory believed that this man had gone to Hell. This shows that mystical missing bodies are not just a phenomenon confined to ancient myths and legends; rather, there are examples of communities reporting missing bodies soon after their deaths without any logical explanation. This proves that it may be possible for a community to invent a dramatic legend without anything actually having happened."

"Most scholars agree that Jesus was tortured and killed in perhaps the most humiliating fashion of the age. If Christians didn’t bother covering that up, why would they obsess over how He was buried? It would make no sense to let the embarrassment of the crucifixion stand but take issue with how He was buried. I’ve mentioned in previous episodes how many of the stories the Gospel writers use to fill in narrative gaps are repackaged Old Testament stories. Had Jesus’s burial been a sheer invention, Dr. Allison believes that they would have drawn parallel after parallel with other Old Testament burial stories, such as Jacob’s, especially considering how the men who buried both Jesus and Jacob were named Joseph."

"The evidence is abundant. The fish-catching story in Luke 5 actually belongs after Mary Magdalene sees the empty tomb, and this is significant. As I’m about to explain, it means that I lied in last episode. We actually DO know when the first appearance to Peter was that Paul mentions. It was during this story! And there’s a very simple explanation for why."

"As we covered in our segment on memory research, this does NOT imply Mary didn’t see an empty tomb. On the contrary, given how little the two accounts share, it is more plausible that Mary saw an empty tomb, told this experience to several people, and we ended up with two very separate accounts about the same event."

"If I said, “In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. He wanted to find India but instead arrived in North America,” you could probably tell that the first half of the sentence came from a different source. And you’d be right. “In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue” is a pre-existing nursery rhyme that helped schoolkids memorize this fact. Likewise, there are certain phrases in the New Testament that were meant to help Christians memorize beliefs about Jesus. These statements are called “creeds,” and there are a few of them that are easy to identify. And just as I didn’t invent the Columbus nursery rhyme, it can be said with very high confidence that St. Paul and the other New Testament writers did not invent these creeds."

"Every memory a person forms undergoes distortions, and the more time that passes, the more distortions occur. And remember, Jesus died roughly around 33 AD. St. Paul’s letters, the earliest written accounts of Jesus, did not appear until around 51 AD. That’s 18 years of distortion, and though the Catholic Church teaches that God inspires scripture, we also teach that He works within the laws of nature. And the laws of nature dictate that memory distorts over time. So God, working through the laws of nature, allows for distortion to occur. And the Church believes that these distortions are deliberate; the Holy Spirit guides the Gospel writers not as strict historians but as theologians who want to inform us about God’s nature and laws."

"Popes discouraged Catholics from getting involved with historical Jesus studies. In fact, there were dozens of decrees throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries forbidding Catholics from studying the Bible outside of Church-sanctioned activities. As harsh as this sounds, I don’t blame the popes. By this point, from a Catholic perspective, scholars had shred Jesus apart. They severed His teachings from His Church’s. They divided Him and His teachings into historical and mythical categories. They severed Jesus from His Jewish roots, though one could argue that Catholics did that too. Point being, the mission to either disprove or vindicate Christianity through scientific and historical tools only seemed to threaten the Church’s intimate relationship with the Word of God."