Aieno Wrote:
Lets start with this to show that the Papacy is a fraud. We can also show where Pope Gregory I stated than any one claiming to be "universal bishop" was from the spirit of the antiChrist, although Gregory I was one of the first "Popes" to grab power and authority from other bishops. Although Gregory made this statement in condemnation of the Bishop of Constantinople, it does show at least one of your Popes denied a "supreme bishop".
Your comments about Pope Gregory the Great (or Pope Gregory I, who reigned from 590-604) in letters to John the Faster (Bishop or Patriarch of Constantinople at the time) that are seized upon often by Evangelical Protestant apologists in an attempt to argue against the Papacy of the Catholic Church. The objection or charge made is that Pope Gregory was denying his own papal authority as visible head of the Church in rejecting the term "universal bishop."
The main question that should be asked in considering what I'll call the "universal bishop" controversy is: What did Gregory the Great precisely mean by the terms "universal" and "universal bishop" in his letters to the Patriarch of Constantinople?
Evangelical Protestant apologists do not stop to ask that question, nor have they done much research into Pope Gregory's actual writings which are full of his claims to papal authority and universal jurisdiction. If he really was denying his own papal authority (as asserted above by you)
why would such an
eminent Protestant (Anglican) scholar as J.N.D. Kelly write that Gregory I
"
was indefatigable...in upholding the Roman primacy, and successfully maintained Rome's appellate jurisdiction in the east....Gregory argued that St. Peter's commission [e.g. in Matthew 16:18f] made all churches, Constantinople included, subject to Rome" (The Oxford Dictionary of Popes, page 67).
Was Gregory then directly contradicting himself in rejecting the title "universal bishop" ? A careful examination of his writings and his use of the term "universal bishop" answers the question: No, Pope Gregory knew that he was Pope and said so explicitly and constantly in his writings.
To understand the sense in which Pope Gregory condemned the expression "universal Bishop," you must understand the sense in which John the Faster intended it. It has always been Catholic teaching that the bishops are not mere agents of the Pope, but true successors of the Apostles. The supreme authority of Peter is perpetuated in the Popes; but the power and authority of the other Apostles is perpetuated in the other bishops in the true sense of the word.
The Pope is not the "only" Bishop; and, although his power is supreme, his is not the "only" power. But John the Faster, Patriarch of Constantinople, wanted to be bishop even of the dioceses of subordinate bishops, reducing them to mere agents, and making himself the universal or only real bishop. Pope Gregory condemned this intention, and wrote to John the Faster telling him that he had no right to claim to be universal bishop or "sole" bishop in his Patriarchate.
Gregory was Pope, and knew that he was Pope. Far from refusing the title, he showed that he was universal Bishop by excommunicating John the Faster, over whom he could not have had such jurisdiction had he not the privilege of being universal Bishop. In his 21st Epistle Gregory writes, "As to what they say of the Church of Christ, who doubts that it is subject to the Apostolic See [i.e. Rome] ?"
Peace