What Is A Pope?
I continue today my largely ecumenical look at ancient Christianity.
We turn now to the subject of what a “Pope” is. Believe it or not, this is almost a mere addendum to my earlier article, “What Is A Bishop?”; once you understand what a Bishop is, understanding a Pope is not very hard at all.
There are today three men within Christendom who go by the title of “Pope.” The best known in the Western world is the chief Bishop of Rome, Benedict XVI, who traces his line of succession through the laying of hands and the Holy Spirit to the original apostle St. Peter. Another Pope is Theodore II, and a third is Shanouda III. The latter two are, interestingly enough, both claimants to the episcopy of the apostle Mark, who founded the Church in Egypt; one of them is a member of the Eastern Orthodox branch of the faith, and the other is a member of the Oriental Orthodox branch of the faith. You can see how they both trace their lines of apostolic succession right here.
Probably the most important thing to understand about the title “pope” is that it began in all cases as a title of love and affection: literally, it means “papa” or “daddy,” and it started gaining use in the 2nd century. It’s really just shorthand for “ultimate head bishop.”
Why would you need a head bishop? Well, in the earliest days of the Christian Church, when there were 12 original apostles running around, and adherents of the faith were numbered in the hundreds or thousands, this wasn’t much of an issue. However, as the apostles and their successors consecrated more and more bishops, and adherents to the faith began to be numbered in the hundreds of thousand and millions, in multiple languages and all around the known world, the responsibilities of a bishop multiplied. Thus a hierarchy was developed, and titles began to be put into place: “archbishop,” “patriarch,” “metropolitan,” “pope,” etc. to denote a hierarchy that could settle any confusion or disputes that came up–which of course they would. See Acts chapter 15 or Galatians Chapter 2, for example, which illustrate that the need to settle disputes amongst the bishops began all the way back with the original 12 apostles.
So, a Pope is just a chief bishop, or super-chief bishop if you will. Unique among the various branches of the Christian faith, however, is the Papacy in Rome. The Roman Catholic Church asserts that the chief Bishop of Rome is the inheritor of the authority of St. Peter as the chief of the apostles (see Acts 15 for example), and thus has the highest authority amongst all the world’s bishops. On the other hand, the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and some Protestant denominations (mostly notably the Episcopalians) recognize that he is the legitimately consecrated chief Bishop of Rome, but assert that this gives him only a place of honor and no special authority beyond any other chief Bishop. The Roman Catholic Church, on the other hand, has no problem recognizing the other popes, patriarchs, and chief bishops amongst the Orthodox, but says these folks ought to recognize that the Pope in Rome is chief of all bishops worldwide and is first in authority.
Protestantism began specifically as a breakaway movement of the Church in the West that rejected the Roman papacy and its authority. That subject would require multiple articles in order to explore it, because Protestantism itself is splintered into so many competing sects, such as the Lutherans, the Methodists, the Baptists, the Presbyterians, and the “we have no creed but the Bible” Christians who are increasingly popular in North America. They all have different viewpoints. However, a look at this list of Christian adherents yields the following:
Roman Catholic: Approximately 1.2 billion adherents worldwide. Views the Papacy as the chief bishop of Rome and chief of all apostles/bishops in authority.
Eastern Orthodox: Approximately 260 million adherents worldwide. Includes Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, and quite a few other churches in full communion with each other. Views the Pope in Rome as a legitimate bishop, asserting that he has a special place of honor but no special authority.
Oriental Orthodox: Approximately 79 million adherents worldwide. Their position on the Bishop of Rome is basically the same as the Eastern Orthodox, although they’re a little further splintered because they reject all of the ecumenical councils after the third. (I’ll explain what the ecumenical councils were in a later article.)
Protestantism: Approximately 675 million adherents worldwide. Their views of the Popes are all over the map. The Anglican communion, for example (77 million adherents worldwide) views the Roman Pope pretty much the same as the Orthodox, as a legitimate episcopacy and place of honor but no special authority amongst the world’s bishops, whereas others like the Lutherans and Baptists have in the past gone so far as to declare the Pope in Rome “anti-christ” and not legitimate at all.
Those who dispute the authority of the Pope are quite numerous, especially in the West and especially in North America. However, if we look at Christianity as the worldwide religion it is, the numbers are interesting: if you add up the Roman Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, the Oriental Orthodox, and the old-line Protestants like the Anglicans, it becomes obvious that the vast majority of the world’s Christians view the Pope in Rome as a legitimately consecrated Bishop in apostolic succession stemming all the way back to the Church of Acts, with the only argument being how much authority he’s really got.
You can view a list of Roman Popes going back to St. Peter right here. The Orthodox, as well as the Anglicans and some other Protestants, take no major issue with that lineage, but some Protestants roundly and quite loudly reject it.
Next up: what were the ecumenical councils, and where did the Christian Bible come from exactly?
*Update*: Here is a good look at the issue from the perspective of an Eastern Orthodox bishop. The Eastern Orthodox are the Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, the Ukranian Orthodox, and numerous others, who are all in communion with each other and broke away from the Bishop of Rome around the year 1054.
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17 comments
What about Eastern Rite Catholics? Isn’t it like they accept the authority and supremacy of the (Roman) Pope, but don’t worship the same way?
From what i learned discussing this with another friend, a member ofthe eastern orthodox church whose father is a minister, its not exactly accurate to say that the bishops are the apostolic equivalents. My understanding is that all clergy, not just bishops, trace their authority to the apostles via apostolic succession. Bishops are just a level in the hierarchy, but are not more or less equivalent to the apostles as any other level. Of course i could be mistaken in all of this but this is how it was explained to me.
The spelling is adherents, isn’t it?
Don’t Orthodoxs have a Patriarch rather than a Pope?
If there are 1.2 billion Roman Catholics worldwide, how come only 2-3 of them show up for morning mass, and usually just old women at that?
We used to go to Sunday brunches at one of the two big croatin catholic churches around Milwaukee, usually the one in suburban Wauwatosa. Believe me, it was all about the croatian downhome cooking, not about cathechisms, apostles, bishops and eternity.
Especially when they were serving sarma (stuffed spiced cabbage rolls).
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Arnold,
Look at it this way,
If 3-6 people show up for Mass every morning there would be 2.4 billion Roman Catholics world-wide to deal with.
McK,
I understand there aren’t enough RC priests to deal even with the 1.2 billion they have now.
Or are you looking forward to a unisex priesthood and probably even “Father and Mrs” priests?
But who am I to give advice to the immortal Church of Rome?
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Kunal: Eastern Rite Catholics have all the same beliefs that Latin or Western Rite Catholics do. They merely alter some of the practices, mostly the liturgy. Liturgy–which is just how religious services are conducted–is less important than core doctrines or beliefs. Eastern Rite Catholics are basically using Orthodox liturgies but still fully in communion with the Roman Pope.
Catholics consider all of this completely valid by the way; as long as the sacraments are the same (and they are) and so long as apostolic succession is maintained, everything the Orthodox do is completely valid.
Aziz: It’s easy to get confused by this. The bishops are the ones that have the authority of the apostles. They have teaching authority as well as the other authority of apostles. They can ordain others into lesser offices such as priest or deacon. So a priest or a deacon or whatever is also part of the apostolic succession, but they have to be ordained by a bishop. This is all based on what’s found in the book of Acts in the New Testament, where the apostles did the same things.
(Well actually it was all happening before there was a book of Acts, but it’s all described just fine there.)
Soda: Spelling fixed. Thanks!
Arnold: There is a shortage of priests in the United States, mostly because the church here is continuing to grow but the culture tends to be highly sexual and to mock celibacy. The solution has, so far, been to import priests from other nations, and to ordain more deacons and lay ministers to help make sure the sacraments are properly administered.
Oh, forgot to answer this:
A patriarch is an office created by the church, much like Pope or Metropolitan or Abbot. They’re just natural creations of the church to deal with administrative problems. This goes back to the old Pentarchy, where the heads of the five main churches of Christianity were all dubbed “patriarch” to distinguish them as head of all the bishops in their area. While technically any bishop can ordain any other bishop, administrative practice was that bishops should only be ordained at the behest of the patriarch.
The chief bishop of Rome was one of those five original patriarchs, by the way, and until very recently used “Patriarch of the West” as one of his titles. The other two men styled Popes are also patriarchs.
From both canon law, and tradition, ordination of a bishop in the Orthodox Church requires the involvement of more than one current bishop. It’s not a minor event in any jurisdiction to be sure.
Deacons and priests in the Orthodox Church may be married. Bishops may not, and are generally monks.
Nate: That’s correct. The sacrament of Holy Orders doesn’t require it, but the church does. And that’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with those in charge of the church creating new rules. But those can change, whereas the sacraments themselves, along with scripture, cannot. In the Roman Catholic tradition, you also require papal assent generally speaking to consecrate a Bishop, although there are exceptions I’m pretty sure.
Also, it may interest you to hear that many Anglican clergy are now receiving ordinations from Orthodox bishops, to fully establish the legitimacy of their Apostolic Succession. Different Orthodox churches have different views and practices on that.
By the way, some Roman Catholic orders allow priests to marry. Priestly celibacy is a matter of church policy, not doctrine.
Also, so far as I know, the Orthodox only allow a priest to marry once, and he must be married before he is ordained, and if he’s widowed he can’t remarry. Also, technically an Orthodox bishop may be married, but it’s not practice to do that by tradition and canon law. The reasoning is precisely the same as the Roman church’s reasoning: a priest or bishop must give most of his effort to his office, and that’s often incompatible with family life.
It is my understanding that the reason for the Roman church demanding celebate Preists was to prevent church property and positions from becoming heriditary and thus consolidating the temporal power of the Church institution itself.
This sort of thing is the real problem one has when looking at Catholicism in particular. It is quite often that secular and venal purposes were gained through religious innovations and dogma, going back to the council of Nicea and Contantine’s purposes and interference with it.
I suppose a faithful person would simply decide that God used those very often quite evil men for his own purposes and that none of that history matters, but from the outside it is a lot to accept that all of that dirty and very earthly history was simply part of the glory of God.
Also, you don’t explain the silly hat. No information on the Pope that doesn’t explain the silly hat can be considered complete.
There’s nothing in scripture that prevents apostles or priests from making a living outside the church, or accumulating wealth (although it’s grounds for suspicion). But yes, it’s true that one of the reasons for demanding celibacy was to cut down on the growing tendency of priests and bishops to establish dynasties, which also happened (and still happens) in other branches of the faith.
From our perspective, Dave, the fact that the church instituted such policies should serve as an answer to your complaint: a problem was identified and acknowledged, and a solution was formulated. The Church does not simply say, “well we had a problem so let’s tear everything up and start over with a brand new Church.” Instead they (eventually) own up to the problem and institute reforms, without splitting the church.
The Roman Catholic solution was to simply, as a matter of policy (not doctrine) stop ordaining married priests. The Orthodox went down a very similar line: for most Orthodox, the policy is that priests are not allowed to marry after they’re ordained. So if you’re married before ordination, that’s fine, but you will be scrutinized carefully and your wife must agree to your ordination with the full understanding that she will come second to your mission as priest. Many such priests’ wives become nuns and live celibate. And by policy, a married man is rarely or never ordained as bishop (although widowers are a bit more common). This is also still the policy amongst Eastern Catholics. Indeed, Eastern Rite Catholic bishops in the West generally refuse to ordain married priests, even though by canon law they’re allowed to.
This is all a matter of Church policy, not doctrine, but it’s a policy that’s worked well for quite a few centuries now.
I note, by the way, that amongst Bible-only “protestants,” there is a huge tendency for this problem to crop up again, with the leaders of many evangelical churches having children who carry on their ministry and ownership of their franchises. Which leads to something rather ironic: these folks spend a lot of time criticizing the Catholics, then make the same mistakes that led to the very policies they objected to in the first place.
The Church, by the way, has no problem acknowledging that evil or questionable people have wound up in leadership positions, including the papacy. It happens, because the people in charge of the church are human and not divine. But we see no justification for simply splitting the church up and establishing a brand new church every time there’s a problem.
Take for example the recent sex scandals in the Catholic church. There are sex scandals all the time in other branches of the faith, but no one seems to want to use that as a stick to beat the evangelicals with. Instead the evangelicals just run off and start a new “Church,” and it’s like the problem never happened.
Oh, by the way, the funny hat is called a mitre, and is borrowed from the priestly tradition of the Jews. It’s worn by many bishops, not just in the Roman Catholic but also many Orthodox, Lutheran, Anglican, etc. branches of the faith. It came into widespread use some time around the 10th Century, which by coincidence(?) is also around the time that Jews began wearing the yarmulka. More here.
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