If we believe with the Popes, this text proves that St. Peter and the bishops of Rome, his successors, have been established by Jesus Christ as the corner-stone of the Church, and that Error, figured by the gates of hell, shall never prevail against this stone or rock. Hence, they draw this result, that they are the sovereign heads of the Church.
If this reasoning be true, it follows that St. Peter, to the exclusion of the other apostles, was established as corner-stone of the Church, and that it was not merely a personal privilege to him, but that it has passed to the bishops of Rome.
It is not thus.
First of all, Peter was not called the rock of the Church to the exclusion of the other apostles. He was not made the head of it. We see a proof of this in the text of St. Paul, already cited, in which that apostle distinctly affirms that the foundation-stones of the Church are the prophets and apostles, joined together by the corner-stone, which is Jesus Christ.
The title of "rock of the Church" can not be given to St. Peter without forcing the sense of Holy Scripture, without destroying the economy of the Church, nor without abandoning Catholic tradition. Jesus Christ has declared that he was himself that stone designated by the prophets, (Matt. 21:42; Luke 20:17, 18.) St. Paul says that Christ was that Rock, (1 Corinth. 10:4.) St. Peter teaches the same truth, (1 Pet. 2:7, 8.)
The greater number of the Fathers of the Church have not admitted the play upon words that our Ultramontanes attribute to Jesus Christ in applying to St. Peter these words, "And upon this rock I will build my Church."[1] In order to be convinced that their interpre-
- ↑ Launoy, Doctor of the Sorbonne, known for a great number of works on theology and whose vast erudition no one will dispute, has shown the Catholic tradition upon that question. He has demonstrated by clear and authentic texts, that
