The Roman Catholic Church claims authority over you and every other Christian and church on the face of the earth. I find that claim "audacious".
Rome's audacious claim is know to theologians as "Papal Primacy".
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... the Catholic Church claims that the pope ("The Pontiff of Rome") is the head of your church and your faith and is your teacher.
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All councils that the Roman Catholic Church defines as "ecumenical" are infallible. Vatican Councils I and II are both ecumenical, and they contradict each other on this matter. Are those who reject Rome's Audacious Claim anathema, or are they brothers?
Eusebius
in his Church History says there was a controversy over when to celebrate
Easter. The eastern churches celebrated it on Nisan 14, following the Jewish
calendar, while most of the western churches celebrated the Passover on the
Sunday following Nisan 14.
Pope
Victor I (AD 189-199) wanted the eastern churches to conform in celebrating
Pascha on the Sunday after Nisan 14.
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The churches of Asia rejected his instructions. Worse, once those letters of excommunication went out from Rome, "This did not please all the bishops.... words of theirs are extant, sharply rebuking Victor."
This
proves that the bishop of Rome was not considered the supreme authority
throughout the churches in the 2nd century AD.
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The United
States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) gives a time frame for the first
time Rome issued its Audacious Claim, saying, “With Leo I the correlation
between the bishop of the Roman church and the image of Peter, which had
already been suggested by some of his predecessors, became fully explicit.” (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1973, "Differing Attitudes Toward Papal Primacy," par. 18) Pope Leo the Great began his episcopate in 440.
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Location 397]
J.
Michael Miller’s “The Shepherd and the Rock concedes that there was no
monarchical (single) bishop of Rome until the second century. (Miller, 1995,
The Shepherd and the Rock, p. 62)
