How Pope Francis Planted a Time Bomb To Detonate Papal Supremacy

The pontiff of surprises has performed a Samson-like feat in crashing Vatican 1

The church in Rome, for the first 140 years of its existence did not have a presiding bishop,¹ let alone a pope. This is the general consensus of Catholic, Protestant, and secular historians.

“All the indications are that there was no single bishop at Rome for almost a century after the deaths of the Apostles,” the eminent Catholic historian Eamon Duffy writes in his magisterial book Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes.

The followers of Jesus met in a “constellation of independent churches, meeting in the houses of the wealthy members of the community,” Duffy observes. Each house church was led by a plurality of elders or presbyters.

“Not until the second half of the second century, under Anicetus, do we find compelling evidence for a monarchical episcopacy,” agrees historian Peter Lampe, whose book From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries is considered the definitive study on the subject.

So how did we go from a plurality of presbyters to Pope Boniface VIII, who in his bull Unam Sanctam (1302), would declare, proclaim, and define that “it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.”

And how did the Jesus Movement evolve from “nothing directly approaching a papal theory in the pages of the New Testament,” as Duffy puts it, to Vatican 1 declaring “papal infallibility” as dogma that must be obeyed on the pain of anathema?

According to Catholic teaching, only one institution can tame the papal Leviathan — the papacy. And Pope Francis is doing it with all the delicacy of Emperor Titus’ armoured elephants doing the Pyrrhic dance around the Colosseum.

On June 13, the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity released a 151-page document inelegantly titled “The Bishop of Rome: Primacy and Synodality in Ecumenical Dialogues and Responses to the Encyclical Ut Unum Sint.”

The papal-approved dossier, which claims to have the status of a “study document,” is a time-bomb carefully calibrated to keep ticking until it detonates the theory and practice of papal supremacy in the Roman Church.

The document performs a Samson-like suicidal feat: it nobly announces that it is bringing the pontifical palace crashing down for the sake of ecumenical unity among the churches, as a response to Pope John Paul II encyclical on ecumenism. So if you are an evangelical or Orthodox Christian who is gung-ho about Christian unity, let the champagne corks begin popping!

Here are seven takeaways from The Bishop of Rome:

1. The document admits it is no longer helpful to interpret “Petrine texts” in the Gospels to support papal supremacy.

“Contemporary exegesis has opened new perspectives for an ecumenical reading of the ‘Petrine texts,’” the document states. “Catholics have also been challenged to recognize and avoid an anachronistic projection of all doctrinal and institutional developments concerning papal ministry into the ‘Petrine texts,’ and to rediscover a diversity of images, interpretations and models in the New Testament.”

As I wrote here, it vindicates Archbishop Peter Kenrick of St. Louis, Missouri, who demonstrated how most of the church fathers did not believe that the “rock” of Matthew 16:18 was Peter: 44 fathers understood the rock as Peter’s confession, 16 interpreted the rock as Jesus, 8 interpreted the rock as all the apostles, a few believed the rock to be the faithful. Only 17 fathers thought the rock was Peter.

“From this it follows, either that no argument at all, or one of the slenderest probability, is to be derived from the words, ‘On this rock will I build my church,’ in support of the primacy,” Kenrick concluded in a landmark response at Vatican 1.

“From the moment they appear in patristic literature at the beginning of the third century, the interpretations of Matthew 16:17–19 are multiple,” the Vatican document concedes, virtually repeating Kenrick’s findings. “But it is never forgotten that the first stone on which the Church is built is Christ himself.”

2. The document calls for reinterpreting the papal supremacist claims of Vatican I, including papal infallibility.

“Vatican I should be understood within the framework of its historical context,” the document insists, lamenting that the council’s “dogmatic definitions have proved to be a significant obstacle for other Christians with regard to the papacy.”

The document acknowledges that Vatican I was a product of its times and it hence historically contingent. “That Council had no intention of either denying or rejecting the tradition of the first millennium, to wit: the church as network of mutually communicating churches,” it recognizes.

Vatican I can only be correctly received in light of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council. Vatican II treated questions which had remained open at Vatican I,” it explains. On the question of papal infallibility it cites a Lutheran statement that “infallibility language is not intended to add anything to the authority of the Gospel, but rather to let that authority be recognized without ambiguity.”

3. The document incorporates the interpretations of Protestant and Eastern churches in understanding the Petrine office.

“The Bishop of Rome” summarizes 30 responses to John Paul II’s Ut unum sint and 50 ecumenical dialogue documents on the subject. It is loaded with quotes from the House of Bishops of the Church of England, the Bishops’ Conference of the Church of Sweden, the Presbyterian Church in the USA, the World Council of Churches. It liberally cites documents and dialogues with Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, Old Catholics, Baptists, and Oriental and Eastern Orthodox churches.

For Pope Francis “today the Petrine ministry cannot be fully understood without this openness to dialogue with all believers in Christ,” it emphasis.

4. The document acknowledges universal papal jurisdiction did not exist in the first millennium.

Referring to the fact that the pope did not enjoy universal jurisdiction in the first thousand years of Christianity, the document quotes Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI): “As far as the doctrine of the primacy is concerned, Rome must not require more of the East than was formulated and lived during the first millennium.”

It also cites the Orthodox–Catholic international dialogue on Synodality and Primacy during the First Millennium, which notes “the right of appeal to major sees” but insists that “the bishop of Rome did not exercise canonical authority over the churches of the East.” Moreover, there is no evidence that the Oriental Orthodox Churches even accepted such a ministry.

5. The document acknowledges the response of historic Lutheran confessions to the problem of papal supremacy.

The two most important Lutheran doctrinal treatises on the Petrine office — Papacy: The Smalcald Articles (1537) and the Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope (1537) are mentioned favourably in the Vatican document.

The document even quotes the Lutheran reformer Philip Melanchthon who argued that, if the pope “would allow the gospel,” the papacy’s “superiority over the bishops” could be granted iure humano (by human law). The Lutheran–Catholic dialogue in the USA introduced a general concept of “Petrine function,” which is not necessarily tied to a particular see or person, it observes.

6. The document acknowledges that the current model of papacy is itself the biggest obstacle to Christian unity.

Convinced that “the Pope [...] is undoubtedly the gravest obstacle on the path of ecumenism,” Pope Paul VI, “by his gestures and statements, contributed in many ways to a new understanding of papal ministry,” the document records.

Pope John Paul II was equally “convinced that a mutually acceptable ministry of unity cannot be defined unilaterally.” Recognizing “we have made little progress in this regard,” Pope Francis has called for a “pastoral conversion” of the papacy, insisting that “today the Petrine ministry cannot be fully understood without this openness to dialogue with all believers in Christ.”

7. The document acknowledges that Pope Francis has been working intentionally towards downgrading papal supremacy.

I predicted that Francis was rewriting papal history and “taking the papacy down a peg or two” when he started shedding papal titles. “The Bishop of Rome” now admits this has been his strategy.

“In line with the pastoral practice of his recent predecessors, the emphasis of Pope Francis on his title of ‘Bishop of Rome’ from the beginning of his pontificate, the other pontifical titles now being listed as ‘historical’ (see Annuario Pontificio 2020), also contributes to a new image of the Petrine ministry,” it concedes.

While the document continues to maintain the historical, political, geographical, and ecclesial centrality of Rome and hence the claims of its bishop to “preside in love,” the ramifications of its conclusions and methodology are explosive.

Indeed, the headline of the news story on the document in the German bishops’ media says it all: “The Papacy should be Transformed from a Stumbling Block into the Cornerstone of Ecumenism.”

And Pope Francis’s own words reflect a total reversal of the supremacist claims of Pope Pius XI who at Vatican 1 declared that papal supremacy and universal jurisdiction was “supported by the clear witness of Holy Scripture” — a claim debunked by biblical exegesis.

While Pius XI claimed “the primacy of Peter over the whole Church,” Francis admits that “the Pope is not, by himself, above the Church; but within it as one of the baptized.”

Pius XI warned that his teaching of papal supremacy was “the teaching of the Catholic truth, and no one can depart from it without endangering his faith and salvation.”

One wonders how he would react if he knew that 150 years later his successor would call for a reinterpretation of Vatican 1, complaining that “the dogmatic definitions of the First Vatican Council are a significant obstacle for other Christians” — the very followers of Jesus he would have condemned as heretics and schismatics.

A revised version of this article was originally published in The Stream.

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Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.

1. The letters of Ignatius are often used to argue for the monarchical episcopate in the first century. However, Catholic patristic scholars highlight significant textual problems with the Ignatian manuscripts (including interpolations as well forgeries). Further, the term “bishop” (episcopos) in the New Testament is used interchangeably with the term “presbyteros” (elder) and cannot be used to prove an early monarchical episcopate. Here is a table demonstrating the problems with the Ignatian manuscripts.