I don't think that's the case.
When St. Jerome opined that presbyters and bishops used to be the same thing and the distinction was introduced in post-Apostolic times, therefore not part of the Deposit of Faith, that was an opinion. It didn't mean he used the powers he supposed he inherently had to ordain, even though he was no bishop. It didn't mean he said "we don't have to obey the bishops, if a presbyter disagrees, his authority is enough for you" ... on the contrary, he personally also had an opinion against books he didn't find in Hebrew, like Maccabees. And yet he translated them in faithful obedience to "the bishops".
So, if it were the case, for the presbyters originally being everything a bishop was, including the power to ordain, I don't think this needs to be of practical importance even among Catholics. The late Father Pulvermacher who got himself elected as "Pope Pius XIII" had this opinion, so, when he and another priest had got the ballots saying he was elected, he authorised the other priest to use his supposedly inherent power to ordain, and even consecrate, to get supposedly consecrated bishop by this priest. He then, supposedly as bishop, consecrated this priest a bishop. Unfortunately for the whole procedure, there already was one pope elected who didn't share the Vatican II errors, namely Pope Michael I. When Pulvermacher died in 2009, Gordon Bateman didn't succeed him.
Whether they said "OK, there was a pope after 40 years' vacancy, now there is a vacancy again, and in 2049 we need a pope" or whether they are discerning to join Pope Michael II, I don't know. If Pius XIII or Lucian Pulvermacher OFM Cap. had a successor, the issue would be more important to Catholics.
But, is there any kind of importance in the Catholic / Protestant dialogue or debate or polemic?
If there had been a Church that actually did claim Continuity since the Apostles, which since the times of whenever howsofar you go back to since before Constantine had been allowing presbyters to ordain and left out a separate office of bishops, and which also claimed cities don't need and Rome didn't have a Monarchic Bishop, that would be a pretty impressive argument that one should maybe take a close look at how the very first Christians had it. But there isn't. Churches which not only claim that one needs no communion with a Monarchic Bishop of Rome (not necessarily always residing in Rome), but even that monarchic bishops and the distinction of bishop and priest were a kind of Novum ... novelty ... one should or is at least free to reject, typically go back no further than 1500 AD. The exceptions are Waldensians, Hussites, Tondrakians. Of these, only the Tondrakians go back to before 1000 AD. Wait, sorry, Tondrakians as now extant don't go back to 800 AD. They are a new version of I think Pentecostals who cosplay as a continuation of the historic Tondrakians. These were eliminated some time after a resurgence in 1045:
After suffering a number of defeats at the hands of Byzantium, most Tondrakians were deported to Thrace in the 10th century. Following the Byzantine conquest of the Bagratuni kingdom of Ani in 1045, the movement experienced a resurgence, this time within large cities like Ani, where they began appealing to the lower ranks of the nobility and the clergy. The Tondrakian movement broke into three different directions during its last years, the most radical of which began advocating atheism as well as doubt in the afterlife and the immortality of the human soul. By the middle of the 11th century, the Byzantine governor of Taron and Vaspurakan, Gregory Magistros, managed to eliminate all remnants of Tondrakians. Historian Aristakes Lastivertsi describes the elimination of Tondrakians in great detail.
So, unlike Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Copts and Armenians and then Assyrians, none of the communities that deny a monarchic episcopate or an episcopal monopoly or near monopoly on ordinations go back before 313 AD. Not even Tondrakians who don't exist any more (and hardly even "once again") and who didn't yet exist in 700 AD.
I think this is a perfect shortcut about the argument.
Even if the early Church had in fact coincided with Protestantism, as to Church polity, no such Protestantism ever continued to the post-Reformation Protestantism. It was "restored" in order to have a low grade entry for Protestantism in 16th C. local clergy, where many bishops were far stauncher Catholics than the priests were. And the Protestantism they had doctrinally, apart from Church polity, was one they could not trace in the previous centuries of the Catholic Church, so, it is not a doctrine that has the promise of Matthew 28:20.
That's my bottom line.
As to monarchic bishops of Rome, it's somewhat more important. The personal authority of Peter cannot have dissolved into a purely collective authority for decades before getting reassembled as a personal authority somewhat later. Fortunately, we do have St. Irenaeus testifying to the first 12 Popes. And fortunately, the arguments against a monarchic bishop of Rome are among the flimsier.
- 1) Pope St. Clement I doesn't claim to be Pope, and uses the phrase "we" meaning (we are supposed to assume) that he was just on occasion an ad hoc spokesman for a priest collective;
- 2) so and so (notably St. Ignatius of Antioch) doesn't mention a specific bishop of Rome;
- 3) archaeologically, early 2nd C. Rome doesn't have a single Cathedral, but rather small house churches.
Here are the answers:
- 1) A de facto ruler can consult and express himself as speaking for all those whom he consulted, nothing proves this was not the case with St. Clement;
- 2) St. Ignatius may not have wanted to betray the identity of the Pope if the letter were intercepted, he could also not be sure the Pope he'd known about hadn't been martyred ... he could theoretically even have arrived and written the letter during a papal interregnum, also known as a sede vacante;
- 3) canonically, the position of a monarchic bishop is not defined by how his Cathedral looks: if he had a house Church, if the man serving as his deacon at Mass had another one (and was not just a deacon), if another priest had a house Church, the archaeologist would not discover any difference of rank from the architecture. Pretty obviously, since the houses where Christians worshipped had to be "just normal private big fortune houses" to the Roman authorities and therefore to the street view. It would even make sense, for a Pope as being most searched after, to himself use one of the smaller houses as his own house church.
So, I tend to be pretty chill on these two matters. If you want someone who had the time and ressources to look into that second issue more in detail, I'm just starting a video with Joe Heschmeyer:
Was there a first century bishop of Rome? (with Joe Heschmeyer)
The Counsel of Trent | 16 Febr. 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAmrHtdezqA
Now, I'll resume the viewing.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Vincent of León
11.IX.2025
Legione, in Hispania, sancti Vincentii, Abbatis et Martyris.
PS, while the video is with Joe Heschmeyer, it is on the channel of Trent Horn, it's actually a dialogue./HGL
