Highlights from "Rome's Audacious Claim": Chapters 1 & 2

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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 2^nd 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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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)