Love for St. Peter and His Successor

How can we love Peter and his Successor when that Successor has gone rogue and seems to have totally lost the Faith? I pray for him every day.

From Crisis

By Darrick Taylor, PhD

My love for Peter endures because he is like me, fragile flesh and blood, but also unlike me, in that he became holy, despite his sin. I must love the successor of Peter, even when that successor causes me to suffer.

Everyone, at least every serious Christian, is intimately familiar with the story of Christ and the apostles while they were journeying through the region of Caesarea Philippi. It is there Christ asked His disciples if they knew who He really was, and it is there that Peter identified Him as the Messiah and the Son of God. That passage in the Gospel of Matthew has, for centuries, lain at the root of claims to papal authority and the Roman Church. 

I have been thinking recently about the late Stanley L. Jaki’s discussion of that story in his book And on This Rock: The Witness of One Land and Two Covenants. In it, Jaki noted the geography of where it took place. A pagan shrine to the god Pan stood near an ancient spring in the “neighborhood of Caesarea Philippi”—which Jesus must have known, and which Jaki imagined in the background as He spoke to His disciples. Jaki highlighted the contrast between the shrine and the god it served, and Christ: Pan, the lecherous man-goat with his sacred spring, whose voice causes “panic,” versus the God made Man, the Living Water of Salvation and Lamb of God, whose sheep know His voice.  

It would have made quite the scene. But one contrast that Jaki did not mention between the old Greco-Roman religion and the revelation of Christ occurs to me in relation to Peter. Ancient pagan religion prior to late antiquity often concerned vague customs, whereas Christ taught men faith revealed in truth “as one having authority.” With his confession, and Christ’s bestowal of the Keys upon Simon Bar-Jona, he became Peter, the living, visible mark of Christ’s authority on earth. That is Peter’s remit, as I understand it: to live, proclaim, and transmit this truth to future generations with the authority of his Master.

This is not often easy—obeying the voice of a human being, as if he spoke with the voice of God. For someone who values independence, as most moderns do (and we are all moderns, whether we like it or not), this will never be easy. It was not easy for our forefathers in the faith. Obeying Peter is hard like death sometimes. Denying Peter is easy, even if it is necessary on occasion; Christ Himself did so more than once. 

It is even harder in these times, when Peter is divided against himself, divided from the confession of faith he should make. Peter’s role is not to make doctrine, or even help us to understand it, but simply to safeguard it. We are reasonable creatures, and once we have come to knowledge of the truth, it is not more schooling that we need. No, what we need is correction, the correction of our wills, of our hearts, when we go astray. Peter acts through his successor to do this, even when he fails, for he is Christ’s visible ambassador on earth. Just because God aids Peter even when he falters—He promised to pray for him and His prayer cannot fail—so we can love Peter even if he fails.

This is our situation as Catholics today, which is the reason this story comes back to me. Like others, I have struggled with the current pontificate, whose occupant does not match in any way the picture of St. Peter and his successors I have sketched. We have all seen people lose hope and even abandon the Faith because of it. I wish I possessed ready answers for those in dire distress over Pope Francis and his wayward pontificate, but I am no spiritual guide. Nevertheless, I think the pope, as Peter’s successor, still means as much to me as he does to any faithful Catholic, even at this hour.

I suppose I am one of those who could be called a “moderate” when assessing how I view papal authority, and I have often written critically concerning Pope Francis, though I hope always respectfully of the office he holds. It is true I do not see the papacy as being always and everywhere at the center of the Faith.

I recall when I entered the Church many years ago, as an adult, that I would sometimes give different answers when people asked me why I became Catholic. For a time, I worried that perhaps my shifting answers meant my conversion might have been insincere. I know that the Church’s authority, and papal authority, mattered to me a great deal, but I never saw it as the sole reason to enter communion with her. To be sure, papal authority is a vital, fundamental reason I believe in the Catholic Church and the faith it proclaims. But experience has taught me I was on the right track in thinking papal authority was one important part of a whole that drew me to Catholicism and not its entirety.
Nonetheless, I feel no hesitation in saying that St. Peter and the authority he passed on to his successors is deeply important to me. The stories of Peter in the Gospel, his earnestness to serve Jesus, his betrayal of Him and later redemption, have always moved me deeply. Numerous popes throughout history have inspired me, such as St. Leo the Great, St. Gregory the Great, St. Martin, Innocent III, Benedict XIV, and Pius VII. All these men brought honor to God’s Holy Church, to name only a few. There have been times of darkness in its history, and most of the men who have occupied the chair of Peter have been rather ordinary (that is, sinful) characters. But all in all, virtually no other institution in human history can boast such saints, scholars, and statesmen of the caliber of the best successors of Peter.

But more than this, St. Peter is, in some ways, the embodiment of us all in his eagerness to follow Christ, his fall from grace, and his ultimate redemption through Christ. He is the living embodiment of God’s love—the promise that after we have fallen, He will still raise us up, as He did Peter. This is what it means for the pope to be the “Vicar of Peter”: the figure through whom the God made man mediates His authority to us, via the means of “a sinful man.”

My love for Peter endures because he is like me, fragile flesh and blood, but also unlike me, in that he became holy, despite his sin. Peter is all of us. I must love the successor of Peter, even when he denies Christ, even when that successor causes me to suffer. This is because Christ loved Peter—even when he denied Him—and suffered in the flesh for him and all his disciples. 

I would be dishonest if I said I possess feelings of love for the current successor of Peter.

Of course, love is more than feeling and need not be sentimental, but it must be embodied to be real. Fortunately, St. Peter is present in spirit not only in the person of his successor, but also in Scripture, in the liturgy, in the memory of the whole Catholic Church, as our ancestors handed down to us. 

And so, even if his successor “goes rogue,” we are not robbed of Peter’s spirit, just as profound suffering can never separate us from the love of Christ. It is upon these monuments of Peter that we should focus our minds, recall them to memory, and draw from them the strength we need to go on carrying our cross for the sake of Jesus Christ, who bids us to love St. Peter’s successor, no matter how far he may fall.

St. Augustine says in one of his sermons that “God does not love us as we are. He hates us as we are, and loves us as He wants us to be.” I doubt many of us today would want to describe God’s love for us in such stark terms. Nonetheless, the great saint’s words provide us with hope and, perhaps, a pattern to imitate. For in these times when Peter’s successor has gone astray, we must love St. Peter all the more and, in doing so, pray for the strength to love his successor as God loves us, as He wants us all to be.