Thomas Farrar is a former Christadelphian who, after a stint as a Baptist, would convert to Roman Catholicism. He is clearly a bright fellow, and one has enjoyed his papers responding to the Christadelphian understanding of Satan and Demons on his Website. However, there is absolutely no way that he can use the rather sound hermeneutic he employs with respect to the biblical and patristic literature to critique the Satanology of Christadelphianism to the unique dogmas and doctrines of Rome, including the Immaculate Conception and Bodily Assumption of Mary.
In a recent blog post, he wrote the following (emphasis added):
Some naive Catholics would insist that the above description is exactly what the Catholic Church has always looked like, from the time the apostles died out c. 100 A.D. down through history. However, when many contemporary historians, including Catholic historians, study early Christian texts they paint a very different picture. For instance, they find that monoepiscopacy (monarchical rule by a single bishop over a city or locale) was a gradual development, including in Rome, and not the established norm until the late second century or later. They find that terms like episkopos (bishop/overseer) and presbyteros (presbyter/elder) are used interchangeably in some texts, along with other terms like didaskalos (teacher) and hēgoumenos (leader), and not as the ecclesiastical technical terms they would later become. Most importantly for our purposes here, some historians assert that the doctrine of apostolic succession through bishops developed in the late second century and that the episcopal succession lists published at that time were fabrications.
Ultraconservative Catholic apologists vehemently contest all of the above findings, and sometimes resort to very contrived and far-fetched arguments in the process. Meanwhile, triumphalist Protestant apologists tout the historians' findings as though they have reduced the Catholic faith to an absurd fantasy. They take particular glee in citing Catholic historians as "hostile witnesses" against their own faith.
It turns out that both sets of apologists are misguided. Historical research has shown that the hierarchical structure of the Church underwent development over time. However, what many Protestant apologists have failed to recognise is that Catholic theology allows for such development (within certain parameters). For example, (although the papacy is not our main concern here), one Catholic scholar observes, "It is not prima facie obvious that a high doctrine of the papacy does require that a single bishop exercised magisterial authority in Rome in the immediate post-apostolic age.” (David Albert Jones, "Was there a Bishop of Rome in the First Century?", New Blackfriars 80 (1999): 128.)
Ultraconservative Catholic apologists vehemently contest all of the above findings, and sometimes resort to very contrived and far-fetched arguments in the process. Meanwhile, triumphalist Protestant apologists tout the historians' findings as though they have reduced the Catholic faith to an absurd fantasy. They take particular glee in citing Catholic historians as "hostile witnesses" against their own faith.
It turns out that both sets of apologists are misguided. Historical research has shown that the hierarchical structure of the Church underwent development over time. However, what many Protestant apologists have failed to recognise is that Catholic theology allows for such development (within certain parameters). For example, (although the papacy is not our main concern here), one Catholic scholar observes, "It is not prima facie obvious that a high doctrine of the papacy does require that a single bishop exercised magisterial authority in Rome in the immediate post-apostolic age.” (David Albert Jones, "Was there a Bishop of Rome in the First Century?", New Blackfriars 80 (1999): 128.)
Perhaps Thomas is unaware of the dogmatic teachings of Roman Catholicism on this issue. According to the Vatican I document, Pastor aeternus (1870), after stating that "upon Simon Peter alone Jesus after His resurrection conferred the jurisdiction of the highest pastor and rector over his entire fold, saying: “Feed my lambs,” “Feed my sheep” [John 21:15 ff.]" (DS 3053), we read the following
[DS 3054] To this teaching of Sacred Scriptures, so manifest as it has been always understood by the Catholic Church, are opposed openly the vicious opinions of those who perversely deny that the form of government in His Church was established by Christ the Lord; that to Peter alone, before the other apostles, whether individually or all together, was confided the true and proper primacy of jurisdiction by Christ; or, of those who affirm that the same primacy was not immediately and directly bestowed upon the blessed Peter himself, but upon the Church, and through this Church upon him as the minister of the Church herself.
Denzinger, H., & Rahner, K. (Eds.). (1954). The sources of Catholic dogma. (R. J. Deferrari, Trans.) (p. 452). St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co.
Note that, according to Pastor aeternus and the Vatican I council, those who reject the claim that the monoepiscopacy at Rome are wicked and impious men. Hardly allowance for the development as Newman argued for in his An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.
Boniface VIII in his bull Unam Sanctam (November 8, 1302) issued the following infallible ex cathedra pronouncement:
[W]e declare, say, define, and proclaim to every human creature that they by necessity for salvation are entirely subject to the Roman Pontiff. (Sources of Catholic Dogma, p. 187)
The Council of Constance (1414-1418), condemned and pronounced an anathema upon the following teaching of John Wycliffe during session VIII (May 4, 1415):
621 [DS 1191] 41. It is not necessary for salvation to believe that the Roman Church is supreme among other churches. (Sources of Catholic Dogma, p. 210)
Writing in 1896, Leo XIII in the encyclical Satis Cognitum reaffirmed the infallible, dogmatic teachings of Vatican I thusly:
Wherefore, in the decree of the Vatican Council as to the nature and authority of the primacy of the Roman Pontiff, no newly conceived opinion is set forth, but the venerable and constant belief of every age (Sess. iv., cap. 3).
Roman Catholic dogmatic teachings do not allow for the development hypothesis of Newman and others to be applied to the Papacy.
To read sound historical refutations of both the Papacy and the thesis of Newman vis-á-vis the Papacy and papal infallibility, see:
George Salmon, The infallibility of the church; a course of lectures delivered in the Divinity School of the University of Dublin (1888)
Edward Denny, Papalism : a treatise on the claims of the papacy as set forth in the encyclical Satis Cognitum (1912)
