Thursday, October 10, 2013

What exactly is the point of the ministry of Peter if it does not at some point demand submission to Peter in faith?

He's basically a breathing statue? something a little better than a mannequin to show the ermine and red shoes? a CEO?

We need to understand what faith is - and hence what "submission to Peter in faith" means. You cannot proceed without it. Faith and reason. You can't have reason without faith - and faith submits. Not just intellectually giving assent to the mysteries, the dogmas, the doctrines, but we have been given a visible, personified extension of that faith - by having a Pontiff to submit to - so it can flourish in the real world, in the unfolding of time. Or else reason will no longer resemble itself, and you will start going starkers. Hence, Peter: the Rock - not the quicksand.

To the degree that your faith does not include - and more and more begins to refuse to include "submission to Peter in faith" - is the degree to which your faith is all talk, all a mere recipe but no cooking, all sizzle but no steak.

Did you know that you can be all up to snuff in doctrinal orthodoxy but if you hold to it and yet will not submit to Peter, you are no better than anathema? That in fact your doctrinal orthodoxy will be turned against you and become that which it was never meant to be - your own little world?

Not one jot of doctrine or dogma is being jettisoned. It appears that we are simply being asked for more: the reason why all of it exists at all. If you choose to take the "reason why all of it exists at all" and pit it against doctrinal orthodoxy, realize that it is because you have refused the opportunity for faith.

What is more, the Peter we have right now has made the first move. Will you see it? Will you listen? And will you submit?

1 comment:

Belfry Bat said...

Yes, submission is part; but I like to think of "rise up, and walk" as something more.

On another note, whatever our use of the word, it must be protected from that of our cousins who call themselves Those Who Have Submit. We are to submit our will to Reason, and not the other way around.