Luke 10:16: Whoever rejects the pope rejects God.

dward Pentin tweets on March 16 that the threat­ened “cor­rec­tion” of Pope Fran­cis over Amor­is Laeti­tia is still a threat. “Informed sources” tell him this. Oh goody. Car­di­nal Burke was the first to threat­en this queer thing, and Lyser­gic Acid News could bare­ly wait. “How soon? How soon?” it asked with insuf­fer­able impa­tience. How very incon­ve­nient, then, when Car­di­nal Müller, the pre­fect of the CDF, reject­ed any such thought as Burke’s. It “harms the Church,” said Muller, to speak thus.

Well, yeah, and there’s no such thing in Catholic tra­di­tion as a “for­mal cor­rec­tion” of a pope. The pope is the Church’s supreme teacher and supreme leg­is­la­tor. As Vat­i­can I puts it, the pope has “supreme pow­er … in gov­ern­ing the whole Church.” He is “the supreme judge of the faith­ful.” He is “not sub­ject to revi­sion by any­one.” “They stray from the gen­uine path of truth,” says the Coun­cil, “who main­tain that it is law­ful to appeal from the judg­ments of the Roman pon­tif­fs.” The pope has “supreme pow­er of teach­ing.”

Who, then, can “cor­rect” the supreme judge and the supreme teacher? Accord­ing to Vat­i­can I, no one:

Both cler­gy and faith­ful, of what­ev­er rite and dig­ni­ty, both singly and col­lec­tive­ly, are bound to sub­mit to this pow­er by the duty of hier­ar­chi­cal sub­or­di­na­tion and true obe­di­ence, and this not only in mat­ters con­cern­ing faith and morals, but also in those which regard the dis­ci­pline and gov­ern­ment of the Church through­out the world. … This is the teach­ing of the Catholic truth, and no one can depart from it with­out endan­ger­ing his faith and sal­va­tion.

Strong words.

Then, in response to Mr. Pentin’s tweet, a canon lawyer, Fr. Manuel J. Rodriguez, got involved.

Nat­u­ral­ly, the ven­omous inter­lop­er 1 Luther 5 was not slow in inter­ject­ing its own false dichotomies that might have come from the wery mouth of Luther him­self at the Diet of Worms. Mr. Sko­jec’s con­science is cap­tive to the word of God, and all that yada yada.

But no. Alle­giance to the pope is alle­giance to Christ. To posit a con­flict between the two is to do what the Protes­tants did.

In Luke 10:16, Christ says to the apostles—but before I go there: You do real­ize, do you not, that Catholic bish­ops are the suc­ces­sors of the apos­tles? If you have any doubt about that at all, let us get that resolved before we go any fur­ther. Cat­e­chism 101, dear read­er:

In order that the full and liv­ing Gospel might always be pre­served in the Church the apos­tles left bish­ops as their suc­ces­sors. They gave them their own posi­tion of teach­ing author­i­ty.” Indeed, “the apos­tolic preach­ing, which is expressed in a spe­cial way in the inspired books, was to be pre­served in a con­tin­u­ous line of suc­ces­sion until the end of time. (77)

The Cat­e­chism there is quot­ing from Dei Ver­bum. So the teach­ing author­i­ty of the apos­tles is passed on to bish­ops for all time. Bish­ops teach with the same author­i­ty as the apos­tles. This we must know.

And we must know that the pope is the suc­ces­sor of Peter, and Peter has pri­ma­cy over the rest. Cat­e­chism 101 again:

881 The Lord made Simon alone, whom he named Peter, the “rock” of his Church. He gave him the keys of his Church and insti­tut­ed him shep­herd of the whole flock. “The office of bind­ing and loos­ing which was giv­en to Peter was also assigned to the col­lege of apos­tles unit­ed to its head.” This pas­toral office of Peter and the oth­er apos­tles belongs to the Church’s very foun­da­tion and is con­tin­ued by the bish­ops under the pri­ma­cy of the Pope.

 

882 The Pope, Bish­op of Rome and Peter’s suc­ces­sor, “is the per­pet­u­al and vis­i­ble source and foun­da­tion of the uni­ty both of the bish­ops and of the whole com­pa­ny of the faith­ful.” “For the Roman Pon­tiff, by rea­son of his office as Vic­ar of Christ, and as pas­tor of the entire Church has full, supreme, and uni­ver­sal pow­er over the whole Church, a pow­er which he can always exer­cise unhin­dered.

Here the Cat­e­chism quotes from Lumen Gen­tium. The bib­li­cal basis for this teach­ing is Matt. 16:18 and John 21:17. So all bish­ops are suc­ces­sors to the apos­tles and teach with the same author­i­ty; and the pope is the suc­ces­sor to Peter and teach­es with supreme author­i­ty among bish­ops. This is stan­dard Catholic think­ing.

Now we can go to Luke 10:16. There, Christ says to the apos­tles: “He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me.”

Christ is send­ing them out to teach when he says this. And their teach­ing author­i­ty still exists today in the bish­ops of the Church. And the pope is the supreme teacher of them all.

When the bish­ops teach, when the pope teach­es, it is Christ who teach­es. Don’t say you are being obe­di­ent to Christ when you reject the pope; that option is not open to you. Reject­ing the pope is dis­obe­di­ence to Christ.

“But Alt! Car­di­nal Burke is a suc­ces­sor of the apos­tles too!”

Yes. He is. And his teach­ing is only author­i­ta­tive to the extent that he teach­es in union with the pope.

Lumen Gen­tium 25:

The infal­li­bil­i­ty promised to the Church resides also in the body of Bish­ops, when that body exer­cis­es the supreme mag­is­teri­um with the suc­ces­sor of Peter.

A bish­op can not stand apart from Peter and “cor­rect” him.

“But Alt! Paul cor­rect­ed Peter!”

No. Paul did not cor­rect any­thing that Peter taught. Peter knew that the Gospel need­ed to be preached to the Gen­tiles; Peter taught this. But Paul did not cor­rect this teach­ing. Instead, he rebuked Peter when Peter act­ed con­trary to his own teach­ing by refus­ing to eat with the Gen­tiles. He rebuked him for sin; he rebuked him for being a hyp­ocrite. This is very dif­fer­ent.

“But Alt! Do we know from the Church that Luke 10:16 has this mean­ing you assign it?”

Yes we do. I’m glad you asked.

Lumen Gen­tium 20:

[T]he Sacred Coun­cil teach­es that bish­ops by divine insti­tu­tion have suc­ceed­ed to the place of the apos­tles, as shep­herds of the Church, and he who hears them, hears Christ, and he who rejects them, rejects Christ and Him who sent Christ.

Let us have none of this facile non­sense from 1 Luther 5 about how alle­giance to the pope is some­thing dif­fer­ent from alle­giance to Christ. By no means. They are one and the same. When the pope teach­es, it is Christ who teach­es. Any oth­er claim is not Catholic.

Pope Pius XII, Humani Gener­is 20:

Nor must it be thought that what is expound­ed in Encycli­cal Let­ters does not of itself demand con­sent, since in writ­ing such Let­ters the Popes do not exer­cise the supreme pow­er of their Teach­ing Author­i­ty. For these mat­ters are taught with the ordi­nary teach­ing author­i­ty, of which it is true to say: “He who heareth you, heareth me”; and gen­er­al­ly what is expound­ed and incul­cat­ed in Encycli­cal Let­ters already for oth­er rea­sons apper­tains to Catholic doc­trine. But if the Supreme Pon­tif­fs in their offi­cial doc­u­ments pur­pose­ly pass judg­ment on a mat­ter up to that time under dis­pute, it is obvi­ous that that mat­ter, accord­ing to the mind and will of the Pon­tif­fs, can­not be any longer con­sid­ered a ques­tion open to dis­cus­sion among the­olo­gians.

The Fourth Coun­cil of Con­stan­tino­ple:

We believe that the say­ing of the Lord that Christ addressed to his holy apos­tles and dis­ci­ples, Who­ev­er receives you receives me, and who­ev­er despis­es you despis­es me, was also addressed to all who were like­wise made supreme pon­tif­fs and chief pas­tors in suc­ces­sion to them in the Catholic Church.

“He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me.”

Who rejects the pope rejects God. Christ’s words in Luke 10:16 are duly not­ed.