“Moreover, elementary rules of magisterial interpretation tell us that a teaching given with a greater level of authority, no matter how many decades or centuries old it may be, carries more weight than a recent teaching given with a lower level of authority. Level of authority is gauged by the type of document in which, or the occasion on which, it is issued, the verbal formula employed, and other such signs.”
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A desperate but futile attempt to rescue the RCC from Popes and Magisteriums that have been slowly (yet inexorably) cutting the doctrinal ties to Orthodoxy for decades. We were told that the RCC was built upon Petrine authority and the orthodoxy that would flow from it. We were told that “the gates of Hell would not prevail against it.” And yet...the gates of Hell have prevailed against it for decades. So, what are we to think? Do these lines in Mathew really mean that the Christian Community must place so much of their trust in the hierarchy (past and present) of the RCC?
Oh come on, you know the purposed conflation of the institution of Catholicism, and the body of believers, Ekklesia, is the ‘church / Church’ abuse common to such threads.