Sir, - Anti-Catholics have a big investment in showing that Peter is not the rock on which Jesus said he would build his Church (Ian Kennedy, June 25th). Although this is the plain meaning of Christ's words in Matthew 16:18, the early Reformers - and anti-Catholics ever since - have had to argue that Peter was not the rock in order to undermine the authority of the Pope and to justify having broken from the Church.
The passage they most often cite to argue against the Church being founded on Peter is Corinthians 3:10-11, although, interestingly, Mr Kennedy omits verse 10: "According to the Commission of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and another man is building upon it. Let each man take care how he builds upon it . . . For no other foundation can any one lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ."
In this passage Paul is not claiming to have laid the foundation of the universal Church (after all he wasn't even a Christian when that was done) but only the foundation of the local Church in Corinth. Thus he is speaking of Christ as the foundation of the local, not the universal, Church.
One can go beyond the literal meaning of the text and extend it to include the universal Church, but not without taking into account everything else the New Testament says about the Church's foundation. This is a problem for the anti-Catholics, since 1 Corinthians 3 is only one of the five places where the Church's foundation is discussed, and in them the same metophor is never used twice.
Mr. Kennedy also, though mentioning the divisions of the Church in Corinth, refuses to recognise the facts of history. In the First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians (C.A.D. 96), Clement, the third successor to Peter as bishop of Rome in the primitive Church, considered it his responsibility to step in to stop the stress in the Corinthian Church. Here we see the primacy and jurisdiction of the Roman Church within the universal Church, even over an apostolic Church in another part of the empire. Clement did not apologise for writing the letter; rather he apologised for not writing to correct their abuses sooner, as was his duty. - Is mise,
(Fr) Enda MacCormack, Clogher, Co. Tyrone.