Did Christ found His Church on St. Peter? Was Peter prince of the Apostles and visible head of the Church? Was he infallible in his doctrinal teaching? Had he the power to make laws that bind all Christians? Was he the first bishop of Rome? Were his privileges communicated by divine law to succeeding Roman Pontiffs? Is there a consensus on the answer to these questions discernible in the New Testament and in the Early Fathers and Councils? No one could be better qualified than Cardinal Merry del Val (1865-1930) to answer these questions. Distinguished for his learning and holiness, he was selected by Pope St. Pius X as his right hand man and spent his adult life in the most senior Vatican posts. This book, written in reply to Protestant propaganda, effortlessly sweeps away errors and misunderstandings leaving the truth plain to any sincere reader. It quotes all the major sources of the early centuries. An ideal book to instruct Catholics or convert Protestants.
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
This is a reply to 'The Validity of Papal Claims, by F. Nutcombe Oxenham, DD, English Chaplain (Anglican) in Rome. IT is never a pleasing task to have to deal with an opponent who delights in sophistry, but when a writer forgets his good manners and finds it necessary to couch his specious reasoning in terms which are offensive and discourteous, the task becomes more displeasing still. Dr. Oxenham, in his little book entitled "The Validity of Papal Claims "-a book in which he endeavours to reply to the Pope's Encyclical on the Unity of the Church-appears to revel in abusive epithets, and he accuses Leo XIII. of "deliberate mistranslations and forgeries," of "most presumptuous" and "profane Impostures," just as on a previous occasion he did not hesitate to charge the venerable Pontiff with having uttered a "deliberate and audacious falsehood." But abuse is not argument, and I fancy that most people will be inclined to suspect that his position must be a weak one if it requires such weapons for its defence. The main point at issue, as Dr. Oxenham himself acknowledges in the opening chapters of his book, is no other than this: -Did S. Peter hold the privileges of supremacy and infallibility now claimed for him, and were those privileges recognised by all the venerable Fathers of antiquity, and by all the holy and orthodox Doctors of the Church, as the Vatican Council asserts, and the present Pontiff teaches in his Encyclical on the Unity of the Church, according to the divine promise of our Lord and Saviour given to the Prince of His Apostles? 1. Now, as regards Dr. Oxenham's manner of dealing with the subject, I must first point out that he seems to have experienced considerable difficulty when he came to translate the very simple text of the Vatican Council. No one in the least familiar with the terms of ecclesiastical language, or indeed with the etymology of words, would venture tv translate "discipulorum principi" by "the wisest of His Apostles." And yet, this is the version as it appears on page 8 of Dr. Oxenham's little book. However, after he had printed his book, Dr. Oxenham discovered his mistake, and in the copy which I possess,l there is inserted a strip of paper with some Errata, and we are asked to read Prince instead of wisest. It is not easy to pass over the mistranslation as a printer's error, and we are led to wonder how far we can trust Dr. Oxenham's manner of handling the texts which he quotes, and whether he is in any way competent to pronounce upon atranslation given by Leo XIII., whom he accuses of deliberately falsifying" the testimony of one of the Fathers. 2. Dr. Oxenham proceeds at once to abandon the main point at issue, mentioned above, and, after the manner of the hero of Cervantes, to combat an imaginary foe. He adds page to page in order to prove that the Vatican Council and the Pope were wrong in saying that which they never did say. For nowhere has the Councilor the Pope asserted that all the venerable Fathers and orthodox doctors of the Church, at all times and on every occasion, even when dealing with a subject other than the supremacy of S. Peter, have expressly described or expounded at length the position of S. Peter, or that each one of the Fathers has been at pains to mention that doctrine every time that he may have had occasion to refer to one or .other of the three famous texts quoted by Dr. Oxenham, viz.: -" Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, it shall be bound also in Heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in Heaven" (Matt. xvi. 18). "Simon, Simon, behold Satan has desired to have you that he may sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not: and thou being once converted, confirm thy brethren". "Feed my lambs . . Feed my sheep".
This 2000 book is a case study in the ongoing struggle of Christianity to define its relationship to modernity, examining representative Roman Catholic Modernists and anti-Modernists. It sketches the nineteenth-century background of the Modernist crisis, identifying the problems that the church was facing at the beginning of the twentieth century.
The series Religion and Society (RS) contributes to the exploration of religions as social systems – both in Western and non-Western societies; in particular, it examines religions in their differentiation from, and intersection with, other cultural systems, such as art, economy, law and politics. Due attention is given to paradigmatic case or comparative studies that exhibit a clear theoretical orientation with the empirical and historical data of religion and such aspects of religion as ritual, the religious imagination, constructions of tradition, iconography, or media. In addition, the formation of religious communities, their construction of identity, and their relation to society and the wider public are key issues of this series.
