"Whose Church Is It Anyway?" w/ Msgr. Rob Kinnally | Matthew 16:13-20 | Episode 273

Who is St. Peter: faithful disciple, flawed human being, first pope, symbol of the Church, or somehow all of the above? Fr. Peter Walsh welcomes Msgr. Rob Kinnally of St. Aloysius Catholic Church for an ecumenical conversation about one of the New Testament’s most famous and contested passages. Together they explore Peter’s confession, the meaning of “the rock,” how faith grows and changes, and what Catholics and Anglicans might learn from one another about authority, tradition, and the Church. And beneath it all is the question Jesus still asks: “Who do you say that I am?”

Questions for Reflection

Themes & Application

1. Msgr. Rob describes Peter as the “quintessential knucklehead,” someone capable of profound faith and profound failure. What might Peter teach us about being a disciple without having everything figured out? 
2. What does Jesus mean when he gives Peter the authority to “bind and loose”? Who should have the authority to interpret Scripture for the Church today?
3. Roman Catholic and Anglican traditions understand Peter and church authority differently. What can Christians learn from one another without pretending those differences don’t matter?

Personal Reflection Questions

1. If Jesus asked you today, “Who do you say that I am?”, what would your answer be?
2. Where do you recognize yourself in Peter: conviction, doubt, impulsiveness, courage, fear, growth, or something else?
3. Have disagreements within Christianity ever made faith more difficult for you? Have relationships with Christians from other traditions ever strengthened it?

Broader Spiritual Considerations

1. If Peter can proclaim Jesus as Messiah and later deny knowing him, what does that suggest about the relationship between belief and discipleship?
2. Is “the rock” Peter himself, Peter’s confession, Christ, or some combination of these? What changes depending on how we answer?
3. Peter suggests that Christian division itself has become a barrier to belief. What responsibility do churches have to make Christian unity visible to the wider world? 

References & Resources

Vocabulary

• Christology: The study of who Jesus Christ is, particularly questions about his identity, humanity, divinity, and saving significance. 
• Ecclesiology: The theological study of the Church: what the Church is, where its authority comes from, and how it should be structured and governed.
• Petros / Petra (Πέτρος / πέτρα): Greek words behind Matthew’s wordplay, “You are Peter (Petros), and on this rock (petra) I will build my church.”
• Cephas / Kepha (כיפא / Kēphas): The Aramaic name meaning “rock” associated with Peter. Msgr. Rob raises the Aramaic background as important because the distinction between Petros and petra found in Greek does not work in quite the same way in Aramaic. 
• Magisterium: From Latin magister, “teacher.” In Roman Catholic theology, the Church’s teaching authority, exercised particularly through the pope and bishops. Msgr. Rob connects it with Scripture, tradition, and the continuing guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Books & Theologians

• Avery Dulles, Models of the Church
• Avery Dulles, Models of Revelation
• Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness
• Kathryn Tanner, Christ the Key

Memorable Moments

• “Pope Francis adds feast of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus to Church calendar” (Read more)
• “Common Declaration by Pope Francis and Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby” (Read more)

Learn more about St. Mark's at https://www.stmarksnewcanaan.org

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Everybody, welcome to Rev It Up for Sunday. We are one of the clergy of St. Mark's Episcopal Church in New Canaan, Connecticut. I am Peter Walsh, and today we have a superstar guest star, the man.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Um Father Rob Canally from St. Aloysius uh Catholic Church in uh here in New Canaan.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Okay, so uh already we are less than 30 seconds into the podcast, folks, and I am correcting the man who I've invited. You are Monsignor Rob Canale, a title that is super important to me given uh that I grew up in the Roman Catholic Church and uh my first pastor was a Monsignor, which my mother described to me in fifth grade. So here you are. I am so excited that you're here. Uh I really am. As you know, I have the greatest affection and respect for you, as does everybody in our community. Uh and uh when uh I first brought it up to the man behind the camera, who is our own father Rob, that is Rob Schwartz, uh, who is sometimes known colloquially in our parish, even though he's a congregationalist as Father Rob, he said, Oh, that's a great idea. So we'll have an Episcopal priest and a Catholic priest walk into a pod. Today uh we have uh Matthew 16, verses 13 to 20. This is Peter's confession at Caesarea Philippi. When Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, Who do people say that the Son of Man is? And they said, Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. He said to them, But who do you say that I am? Simon Peter answered, You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered him, Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. Okay, so uh let me just set the scene here, set the conversation a little bit so that we don't uh wander in the trees and then forget the forest here, which is uh any any person talking about the Bible and the pod knows that that can happen. So as I looked at the passage over the last uh few days and then last night, came to understand that the the passage really has three elements. One is the confession, which is Peter's uh you know, response to who do you say that I am? And then it also has the whole issue of Peter, which is uh who do you say he is? And then we have the church, and what do you say the rock is? And so we have we really have confession, Peter, and the rock. And uh and this is a the type of passage which is sort of interesting, and it's particularly interesting in the Methian context here. We have it's as you know, I mean, you know everything as far as I can tell. We have one of the most important passages, pricopes in the New Testament. Uh, and then we have one of the most contested uh in the New Testament, right? And that's true. Yeah, it's super true. And and that's you know, you are Peter, and on this rock I'll build my church.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

Rock, church, church, rock, who's church? Who's Peter? Exactly. Peter today. Amen, brother.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

Yeah, and anybody who who is not in touch with that just has to go to the Vatican and Rome and look up in the cupola where you get that Trues Petras.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

There you go. Right there. Can't miss it. It's amazing. You don't have to even scroll in on your phone. It's yeah, yeah, it is, it is big.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

I I remember when I took my first tour of St. Peter's, uh, the tour guide said to us that in the walkway behind, I mean, at the base of the cupola, you could drive a uh a big bus just to give you some sense of the scale of this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's phenomenal, yeah. It is and it's this isn't an unbelievable building and complex. It really is. And the the you know, the outside, the Rococo areas outside. I just I was I tried to write a book about that at one point, but of course, like all my books are half done and sitting on my computer. So, um, you know, that whole question of as you say, Peter in the church, and we get um you know, polemics new and old around what as you pointed out, just like what's that mean? But we also have this this this passage where we get the super high Christology, right? You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. And then we get a really high Christ uh high ecclesiology, ecclesiology, the study of the church, and we get um we get you get the keys to the kingdom, which is an incredible thing, and then the binding and losing, which is you know, interpretation. Uh and then finally as we get going, what I just don't want to lose is we get maybe the most important faith question what do you say that I say that I agree.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

I think that the really powerful part of this is is the confession. Because I've always called Peter the quintessential knucklehead of of a group of apostles, right? With all due respect to him, but he's in, he's out. I I love you, I don't love you, I deny you, I love you. And he's he's he's all of us, I think, in the moments of faith that we have, in the moments of lack of faith that we have. And so for him to kind of stand there and get it and proclaim, right, this this Christological statement that's strong and has powerful meaning, I think across denominations is is really important. And I think that's where we can meet right now and say, This is amazing. And where am I? Um who do I say this Jesus is? This this um person of history and this person who we say is God. Uh for me today, uh, who is this Jesus? And what does uh what do I say about Jesus? What do I proclaim about Jesus? And I think it depends on our day and our mood and our whatever. But I think um Peter is a cool example for all of us in that struggle and surrender.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

Yeah. Uh thank you for all that. And and I'm I'm in agreement with you here. I I think the more I have studied the scriptures through the years, uh, the more Peter has become enfleshed to me. Nice. And the more I feel his humanity, uh, not as someone to be judged, but as someone uh to identify with, just as you're describing. And as I've said on some of these other pods, you know, outside of Jesus in the New Testament, the person we know most about is Peter.

SPEAKER_01 7:19

Exactly. And you think about this moment where he makes this confession and then fast forward to that moment in the courtyard or whatever it actually is. And you know, he's like us, I think. He's careful. Okay, um how much am I gonna commit? Am I gonna say I I know this guy? Uh do I have all the facts? We're fact gatherers these days. And yeah, it's like the confession says, and you know, Jesus says, like God reveals this to you, Peter, right? So it's that moment of faith. Faith a gift. We don't open it up all the time, but there it is. And so again, I think his I agree with you that humanity is so important when we embrace um Peter and then we uh try to figure out our own confession.

SPEAKER_00 8:13

Yeah, oh man, that I really, really love about our own about embracing Peter and our own confession. Because I do think that um, you know, when Peter gets beaten up, I think people haven't spent enough time with Peter is my first sock.

SPEAKER_01 8:29

It's like Martha, she gets a bum rap. We'll talk about that another time. We'll talk about it another time. There was there was no door dash in Palestine at the time. She had to do her job.

SPEAKER_00 8:36

Well, but look at Martha. Martha, if you take a look at the whole Martha uh portions, I mean Martha is way more thoughtful than she gets pinned on. No question about it.

SPEAKER_01 8:46

Anyway, back to Peter.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

No, no, I agree with you. I you know, this would be super Oh, you're right on the you're right, you're getting into a deep vein here, which is like all of the New Testament people that get dumped on, and why do we not have churches named after them? We got a lot of St. Peter's, right, for for these reasons, but we don't have enough St. Martha's, we don't have enough churches named after the Canaanite woman, we don't have enough church, the Syrophoenice woman, and are they the same person, the Samaritan woman?

SPEAKER_01 9:09

You know, I mean Martha became a saint um under uh Pope Francis. I didn't know that. Yeah, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, they're all together now.

SPEAKER_00 9:18

Wait, what they I didn't know she wasn't sanctified before then. Oh, yeah, no. Uh Francis was the man, just as I want to say that Pope Leo is too. We're gonna this pod's gonna go on for twelve hours. Um uh I I many of you, uh I mean some of the staff know that I tried to get you to become Pope and and to advocate with my friends in Rome, and and then on the day that Pope uh Leo was called, I called you up and you said to me, This better be good, because I'm in the middle of staff meeting, and I said, Well, it I said, congratulations on your new Pope. I we were close, we got an American name Robert. But anyway, uh moving on to your insights here, which I'm so excited about here. So we have an in we have an enfleshed Peter who is, you know, some sense the lead disciple, every person, you know, he's to be known as every man, he's all of us. Um and then we what you brought up is this question of revelation. So Jesus is very clear that this does not grow out of his humanity. This is given to him as a gift of God. And then, drumroll, please, you've already pointed it out. Uh also big reveal here, folks, for those of you who don't know, I used to be Roman Catholic, and when I told my dad I wanted to go to do this, at first he thought I was absolutely out of my brains. And then he started to buy me books, and he bought me this Avery Dulles book, Models of the Church, followed by Avery Dulles Book, Models of Revelation. And so, in honor of my dad, in honor of you coming here, and honor of Avery Dulles, a great Roman Catholic uh theologian, uh systematic theologian of days gone by, I yanked this book out an hour ago before you you drove in their driveway, and it says, Models of Revelation. These are chapters in a row. Ready? Christ is the summit of revelation. That's what's happening here. You are the Messiah, right? The Son of the Living God. There's the revelation. The Bible is the document of revelation. Where are we getting this news? Through the Bible, and then the church is the bearer of revelation. And so it is through this the you know, the ecclesiology of the church is this is this high Christology leads to a high eschatology here. This is you know, but it's a revelatory moment.

SPEAKER_01 11:19

Yeah, agree, agree. Not just because it's Avery Dulles, but but uh excellent point. Uh this is again to put simply an important moment in uh revelation that's in scripture uh for all of us. Who is Jesus for the world? Who is Jesus in the history of salvation? Ah, okay, yeah. Uh prime, prime, the the the the major pivotal guy, no question about it. Um yes, savior, redeemer, um everything.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

Yeah, I mean this is where we get uh you know, uh I think there was a theologian, I know there's a theologian from the Yale Divinity School, Yale University wrote Christ the Key. Um but I I want to go to this question here of uh who do you say that I am? So we're all blessed with the same humanity, made in the image of God and then fully clay-footed. And I so true. I I mean Jesus calls the whole thing, the image of God and the clay footedness to him. He brings the whole thing. And that um how we answer who do you say that I am? If you put that on a spectrum, you know how far in is a person with this, who do you say that I am? And and and and is the answer, you know, uh uh what you say with your lips, does it represent your heart sort of thing? And when does the being of God say, you know, who do you say that I am? And and so that's what I mean.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

Um Yeah, and I think maybe it begins with sort of like it is in the intellectual life, how much do you care about the question? Right? How much do you care about the question? Uh is your faith in such a place that that's an important question to answer. Never mind getting to the answer, right? So how does one get there? And I think it goes back to the re uh relatory uh reality of that passage where it's God moving us. So here's the gift of faith, here we are. Where what are those moments that become capstone moments where we say I believe that you are the one? And for folks in all kinds of uh predicaments in life, right, let's say even addiction, to come to that moment where I own this and then I can move there for to believe and live a certain way, that's it takes a lot of work. Yeah. Takes a lot of work. And so the idea here, I say you need God to help you get there. Care about the question, respond to the question, and live a certain way after it. The interesting thing about Peter, right, is he he says, This is who you are, this is who you are, this is who you are. And then he goes in the garden and is like, I don't know who he is.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

Okay, okay. So um, yeah, okay. So part of that is we're in the question of models of revelation, right here. Back to models of revelation. Uh, you know, is that old is that not getting it? No, now that, yeah, yeah, is it all read? No, no, no, no. I mean, everybody knows I have an office full of books, then most of which are not read. Uh the uh Mellen Underhill, to my mind, wrote the best book, uh, the second half of the her book on mysticism about this journey. And you know, one of them is you know, do you have is do you have a uh do you have a clear moment like a uh St. Paul knocked off the horse uh of Revelation, or is it like an ice cube melting? You just you know, over time you realize these things. But in Peter, what we get is both. We get good, we get somebody who has clear moments, but the making of a disciple, we had talked about this in the last podcast and an uh little article that Thomas Keating wrote, you know, you see the maturation of Peter through time. And we see that, I mean, it runs right into the Acts of the Apostles. Uh and and so that's why I always think that people should lean into Peter, not lean away from Peter, because he does change, and I mean, even to um, you know, right to the end of his life. He's still evolving.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

Yeah, so you get to uh the end of John's gospel, and then we hear Lord, you know that I love you. I know. Okay, so that's strong in the face of this confession, right? Because that's God, right? You you know because you're God that I love you, but now I'm gonna say it, I'm gonna state it. So it's that last part that I was talking about owning it, owning the confession and deciding you're gonna live a certain way. Yeah. It's really beautiful. I get weepy when I read that gospel in Easter time.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

Oh, I that that chapter 21 of John's Gospel is my favorite gospel.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

So I love it's 21, it's mature.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I always uh try to tell people, you know, like, okay, so if I pre-deceasue at my funeral, I want that passage read at my funeral. Uh you know, the basis of my life is that passage. And and so I I think that um you know, in the complexity of Peter, and now that let's talk about a little bit of the complexity of Peter in this passage here, because um we have different biblical takes on what happened here. So in Matthew's take, uh you are you are the Messiah, the Son of Living God. Uh Jesus praises Peter and and loads him up with the keys of the kingdom. And so clearly for Matthew, Peter is the uh he's the central figure uh in the formation of this new faith community, this new church. Peter is the central figure. Uh unarguably, whether or not you're Orthodox, Catholic, or Protestant, I it to my mind is unarguably that he is the central figure. And even in John, where it's all about John, and they have but they do have this petrine thing slipped in there, and he gets the last word, right? Exactly. We were just talking about that. Very true. But now Mark's gospel, where it has the same passage without the Son of Living God and some other little things, right after he says, You are the Messiah, uh, Jesus talks about his first passion prediction. Peter says, you know, not on my watch, kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

And I don't want to go there. Get behind me safe.

SPEAKER_00 17:31

So in one version, Peter, this is the moment of Peter's and the other version is like, du-da-boom. You know, I mean, literally two biblical takes.

SPEAKER_01 17:42

Yeah, and I think uh when we could get very um scripture study here, but the the bottom line is uh it's audience, probably, right? A little bit of Matthew's writing to he is a big scholar of the law himself, right? And he's writing to a Jewish audience that's really paying attention to all the messianic understanding they have that they bring to the the face of Jesus, actually, right? And try to figure out, well, who is this guy? And it's not exactly what we thought. And so he gets a lot. I mean, for for for me, it's always been um okay, you the keys of the kingdom like okay, you confess who I am. I'm going to uh give you the gift. The greatest gift is going to be the gift of heaven. The greatest gift is gonna be the gift of me and you in heaven, right? So you know, a little bit of John 14. Don't let your hearts be troubled. I got a place for you. I got a place for you. And probably, you know, Peter was standing around going, wait, still checking in here. What what do you mean? And oh well, you are the way, the truth, and life. Okay, great. It's Thomas who takes the hit that time.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:52

But uh yeah, it's it's really uh it it is it's a wonder the difference. And and and we know Mark to be a source for the others in some ways.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

Um okay, so I've I've spent so much time on these podcasts and studied so much of this stuff. Um one of the things I've also come to really believe, now you may not be with me on this one, which is um uh that Mark's gospel has as its primary root the knowledge of Peter. And that uh, and you know, I I did a sermon on this years ago where I traced Mark's gospel through Peter's line and how this all worked and who Mark was, and and that interestingly enough, because I mean Peter is all over Mark's gospel. I mean he's nearly crowds out Jesus. That's a joke. Um but uh nobody crowd out Jesus. Right. But and and so in Mark's gospel, we get we get this super negative view of the disciples, and now in Matthew's gospel, Peter's looked at much more positively. But I agree that each of these gospels, Mark and Matthew and Jesus, so now we got all three of them, grow out of a time, the formation of a new community where um there's great negativity pushed on them, the negativity that comes toward Jesus, the negativity of the Mark's community, and then Matthew's community, just as you pointed out, is in the middle of a of a of a of a bitter polemic themselves. And the the whole fourth book of the Matthew Gospel, 14 to 18, is on the church and this formation of this new community. Right. And so one of the things that Matthew has to make sure is that these people can form the new community.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

Right.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

And it's I mean, and as you know, all that's all that stuff about Peter is not in any other gospel.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

I mean, it's only in Matthew.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

Yeah, I think it maybe comes back down to who is Peter uh for us, right? Who is Peter for the church, right? So he, like you say, I agree. Uh he represents this for the church, the believer who comes to faith, whether it's thro through, you know, drop, drop, drip or powerful transformative moment.

SPEAKER_02 21:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

Uh and uh that's the you know, again, that's the story of us, right? We we have all of the above, all of the above. So so maybe in some way Peter is just all of us, including the new forming church, right? Uh in those last chapters of Matthew, and then what we read about in in Acts as as the church really starts to bubble up.

SPEAKER_00 21:27

Yeah, yeah. Uh okay, so uh I wanna I love what you just said, and I want to stick to the question who is Peter for us. I I just think that's such a cool question because it gets into this question now of uh we I think we can all agree that the history of the the the church is a mess. Um it just, you know, it it's uh it started. I mean, clearly a dispersed community that got organized, you know, around four B C and then then just continued on being a mess, the Orthodox breaking away the Protestant Reformation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now the now the you know all the the drama and trauma. And I might add also that all religions are in major trauma and drama. Yeah, we see that.

SPEAKER_01 22:07

We see that, yeah. Evidence of it in different ways. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

I mean Judaism, uh just take I mean Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, these all these these same forces of extremism and breaking apart are are influencing all these things. But I want to come back to the question of who Peter is. That Peter is, you know, uh unarguably the central figure in the formation of this thing. But when you get into the disagreement, you get into the some of the disagreement over, okay, so that you are Petros, right? And on this Petra, I will build my church. And then they, you know, the disagreement over, is it on Peter or is it on Peter's confession?

SPEAKER_01 22:47

Yeah, the confession, right, exactly. Um or or Jesus, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:53

Who is the Petros here? Who is the rock?

SPEAKER_01 22:55

You know, so you know it's interesting the the um it's a fabulous question, right? Because here's here's where we may part company a little bit, right? Yeah. Um but that's why I'm glad we've talked about the first part so so long. So because we agree on that. But I would say that um you you know, the question uh some scholars would say, well, let's let's let's use the Aramaic word, right? In the Aramaic word, it's just there's just one word for rock, right? Kevos, right? One one word, one word. And that's Peter's name, right? And I'm my Aramaic is pretty bad. No, no, no, you're killing it.

SPEAKER_00 23:31

Because I wanted to get into Cephas too, but you're you're you're not gonna spend too much time with the case. No, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

Anyway, you're so much that our our that that folks are listening can bear. But but so for for the Roman church, right, it is you are uh the one who's going to take this and bring it to fruition, right? Not I'm gonna bring it to fruition, right? You're gonna be the vessel that's going to get this started as the church is formed. So you are the Pope, right? So Peter's the first Pope. And you know, uh out of great respect, back to your point about the importance of Peter, uh, you know, there's never been another Peter, right? Uh nobody ever chooses that name as a Pope, right? There's one rogue church, the Palmerian church, that they have a Peter, which is pretty um pretty bold. But anyway, uh so for Roman Catholics, it is uh it's the the word from Christ to say, you're the one, uh, and on this rock and build a church, and the gates of hell are not gonna destroy it. But the the bottom line, and it Jesus cry for unity, right? You know, Father, that they may be one. This is what we you and I want. I know that, right? We we want to be one. Uh the bottom line is it's it's it's Jesus Church, right? It's Jesus Church, right? It's it's uh and and and nothing as as you know, when I was in the seminary, right, guys would be freaking out about stuff, freaking about and the rector got up and said, Okay, if you don't see Jesus, it's not the end of the world. And by the way, he's still in charge, right? I'm not and you're not. So everybody relax, right?

SPEAKER_00 25:10

Okay, yeah, this is good. Um yes, yeah, I love the your your rector's comment. Um, I I I do think that it's very important that we read the text closely enough to say, I will build my church. Whose church is it? Uh and I think the the second thing is um uh this is not uh I mean we we have uh as you know somewhat different ecclesiologies. We represent uh we re uh communions with different but similar ecclesiologies. The question of binding and loosing, let's talk about that for a second. So that's a rabbinical term, which really means um your ability to interpret the scriptures and to teach, and that we the whole of the gospels and particularly the gospel of Matthew is Jesus binding and loosing. He's he's reinterpreting the Torah, and he is giving to uh Peter uh you know, and clearly inferred his disciples uh this ability to bind and loose, which is to say interpretation. We can also get dot dot dot, you know, sort of what gets translated later as doctrine and discipline, but this interpretation. And so I think that, you know, my having been a Roman Catholic as a kid, I used to say I knew more about the Pope than I did about Jesus. Um uh and and then my my going to a Protestant seminary, the Yellow Divinity School, the Berkeley Dominion School, the subset of that, my head nearly fell off because I I learned a lot of things I'd never heard before. And uh that I meant to say in every topic because I really didn't know diddly about nothing. Um, but that, you know, who has the authority for the binding and loosing? And so, you know, one of the things that I've come to understand as an Anglican, uh versus a Roman Catholic, is that in the Roman Catholic understanding, uh, the interpretive office is an office of a certain portion. And in the Anglican understanding, the interpretive, um, the binding and loosing is of the whole body. And uh Yeah, I understand that. And so there is this there's this openness uh that uh and it's messy. I mean, Archbishop Tutu used to say, if you don't like organized religion, you should become an Anglican or an Episcopalian. Oh no. Yeah, because it's much more hard it's more difficult to organize things when the whole body is discerning.

SPEAKER_01 27:32

I think um I think we can't forget the spirit in the midst of this, too, that Holy Spirit, right? Which uh orchestrates so much of what all of us do, no matter what our tradition. And uh for Catholics, it is you you remember, right, magisterium, right? So when you said I didn't think you were coming, you know? So so uh in that in that moment when Christ does what he says to Peter, he says, okay, this is going to be a magisterium. So that's scripture and tradition, right? So S plus T equals M, right? Scripture, tradition, magisterium, magisterium, you know, from the Latin to teach, the teaching of the church, right? So it comes, it's um all of it is infused by the Spirit. It's it's inspired, it's inspired, just as we believe the selection of the Pope is inspired. All the movies aside, right? Uh but uh so therefore we think that that moment, we believe that that moment of uh Christ saying what he says to Peter in the confession and what he hands over, you know, Jesus does a lot of handing over of things, right? Uh trottering, and uh that's uh he hands uh the Eucharist to us, right? You know, in that in that moment. And so he says, Here I'm I'm going here, right? And John's exquisite on this, right? It's the advocate, the whole idea of what the spirit is. And it's the genius of God, right? God who creates, then God who wants to redeem, so sends himself as a human being. How humble is that? And then it doesn't end there. You've got the spirit, but with the spirit, I need a guy. And Peter's the guy, right? And then the church forms women and men. We probably don't do as great a job, you know, with having women at the forefront, but they're part of the story too. And yeah, our organization is clear. The Pope's the boss, right? The Pope's the boss. And he works with the College of Cardinals to make that magisterium uh a reality that's in keeping with the Christology that Christ Himself sets forth.

SPEAKER_00 29:47

Yeah. Um that was you great to be laid out, particularly for um some of our listeners who might not be as in touch with that. Uh you know, the the you know, the Anglican response to that is that right where you started, that that certainly scripture and tradition are very important. I mean, our own 1979 Book of Common Prayer uh uh chose its inspiration. This is the Episcopal book, uh, not the Reformation liturgies, but the early liturgies of the church. Yeah, and that that was the that was the reformation uh that the uh evolution that took place in the thinking. Uh so yes to scripture and yes to reason. I think and so it's not solo scriptura of that one portion of the Protestant Reformation. But uh but the the Anglicans lean in on more on where you started, which is the evolution of the Spirit. That the Spirit continues to change us, uh just as human beings we're never the same person at birth than we are at death, hopefully not at least. Uh that that Peter Peter wasn't. Right, right. And so that the body of Christ, the living body of Christ, is evolved by the Spirit. And there was a period where, you know, we you know, you're where the Roman Catholic scripture plus reason equals magisterium. Uh, there was a movement to scripture plus reason plus uh you know, uh tradition and script. You know, we get it, we get it. And then and when I was in seminary, they started to talk about from moving from a stool to a chair and the role of experience uh in that, the role of religious experience in the world today, the rise of the Pentecostal movement, for instance, and that um uh right now um I'm busy ignoring Father Rob on the other end of the camera because I just want to keep talking. Uh uh, but that the the the evolution of these bodies, and uh there is no doubt uh for um you know the question of the Anglican perspective, where we have women as clergy, where we are as a community, um openly uh openly gay bishops and and and uh openly and embracing, not just open, but embracing, and that these questions um um are you know uh you know more more in play than um in your tradition. But one of the things I will I I hasten to add, I I um went to see in 2016 and I got to see the Pope. It was the coolest thing. Oh my gosh, it was so cool. He was signing a document with the then Archbishop of Canterbury, and we were in this uh um church, which is where Augustine of Canterbury uh was sent from. Uh and uh this is I believe the um sisters of charity have their home base there. And I remember I was in the bathroom before the service, and one of the Pope's Secret Service guys said, You're you know, like you're the last guy in because the Pope is arriving in three minutes. And as it got closer, the silence set over, and as he walked up the aisle, as his uh as he walked along with his staff. I mean it was an awesome moment, and then black shoes, which I super loved. Uh and and and what he said was in what the the document that was signed basically said the Anglicans and the Roman Catholics have a great and deep and historic communion with one another, but we do have differences that at this point we're not able to overcome. Uh, you know, particularly in this case, the ordination of women would be the perhaps the number one example of that.

SPEAKER_01 33:22

Yeah, and there's some doctrinal differences that you know keep us a little separate. Yeah, yeah. A lot separate, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

You know, and interesting uh because we do remain a very uh you know, Anglicanism is between Protestantism proper, uh Roman Catholicism uh hovers us in the you know, Orthodoxy is a whole other question if they're doing another podcast on that. But uh one of the other things I'd like uh is you know I think it was Archbishop Tutu, uh um uh Pope John Paul, St. John Paul now, was with Archbishop Tutu and he was he was kind of um I don't know, he was ex describing some displeasure he had or something in Archbishop Tutu, who was indomitable in his joy, said something like, you know, that he understood, and he said something to him like, Well, you know, the Anglican Church, you you guys are you guys are like an ocean liner. I I mean the Roman Catholic Church is 50% of all Christians in the world. That's 2.4 two two point nearly 2.4 billion people. And he said, Oh, the Anglicans, we're just like a little tugboat in front of you, pulling you one way or the other. Eventually you'll come our way. It was a very funny comment. I don't I'm not gonna And John Paul too let him get away with that. Oh, that's been a good thing. Uh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, Rob, uh having you with us have uh have with us here is such an honor and delight for me. Uh and you know, I I say that um for me, the polemics over the of what I sometimes refer to as churchiosity, um, I I think it's a mistake for people to pour all of their energy here because, you know, I'll just say I don't necessarily I mean I don't follow Peter, I follow Jesus, just what you were saying earlier. And that I I you know every every all things can go back to Rumi as far as I can tell. And his quotation, out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there's a field. I'll meet you there. And that's what I believe. I believe in the deep communion of Jesus followers, uh, even in the mess, because the church, the the church universal um represents the messiness of the clay-footedness of of Peter's life, but it still holds the mystical presence of Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 35:37

Yeah, and I think if we if we pray that, right, we're not just um think about it, but if we uh pray that we're one the way that God wants us to be one, uh we will get we'll we'll get there. And I'm excited to see what that looks like wherever I am.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

Yeah, yeah. I mean, the whole, as you know, the question of the unity of the church is one of the major reasons people don't follow it now because they say you're you know, you all Christians do is fight with one another.

SPEAKER_01 36:05

And um I think we get along great in New Canaan.

SPEAKER_00 36:08

Yeah, we do, yeah, yeah, we do.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

So at least in one place it works. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:12

And incredibly grateful to all of our colleagues in New Canaan.

SPEAKER_01 36:17

They're amazing sisters and brothers. Yeah, really are. Yeah. Yeah. Well, no, thanks for the invitation to be continued, perhaps.

SPEAKER_00 36:24

I hope so. I hope so.

SPEAKER_01 36:25

I have to get myself a podcast, huh? These are cool.

SPEAKER_00 36:27

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:29

These are cool. You gotta get a rob.

SPEAKER_00 36:31

I I I mean, Rob was in church and John's last Sunday, and I said to the the the gathered body, no Rob, no pod. Uh uh, he is he is the man. Uh and um and you know, Rob, we should have had you on this podcast because as a congregationalist, Rob uh represents So yeah, there's a there's a an a nice other strain to a whole other ecclesiology, which is a very dispersed ecclesiology, which says the revelation comes to the parish. It's not, you know, it's primarily to the parish, I mean to the local congregation. Uh and so I, you know, I really, you know, as an Anglican, I would just say one of my favorite statements about that is um it's hard to be uh too full of hubris when your church was started by uh a movement from Henry VIII. Uh so uh we'd like to say that there's spirit underneath all that, but uh uh so in great humility, uh man's Peter is another man's Henry. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. In great humility, we we welcome you, and we welcome Rob, the both the Robbs, Father Rob and Monsignor, Rob. So uh God bless everybody. Thank you for being with us. Thank you for being with us. Thank you. Uh and uh peace for another day. God bless you. Take care.

SPEAKER_01 37:43

Amen.