21 A

21stA Sunday A cycle
Mt. 16:13-20
As Catholics hear this passage they immediately reflect the traditional Roman Catholic interpretation. This is the biblical foundation for the papal office. The Catechism of the Catholic church #881 cites this passage in precisely this vein.
It is important to take this passage in context with the following verses which we will hear next Sunday. Peter is rock but also stumbling block (obstacle). Moments after his great profession, “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God,” Jesus would say, “get behind me Satan You are an obstacle (stumbling block) to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” Peter’s original understanding of the title, Messiah, was clearly charged with Jewish political, temporal understandings, which Jesus will shortly correct.
This is only the beginning of Peter’s reign. Braggadocio, denials, betrayals, reconciliations, victories, later struggles with Paul and disappointments with his people will follow. I believe these adjectives also describe the history of the Catholic Church.
At the present moment of history for the Catholic Church the president of the Catholic Theological Society of America made these observations in her presidential address for 2008. (from the article of John Allen, NCR)
The papacy is a “gift” of the Catholic church to other Christians, a leading Catholic ecumenist said ..., but it needs “repair” before those other Christians are likely to accept it. Specifically, Margaret O’Gara of the University of St. Michael’s College in Toronto called for a papacy that’s “less centralized, less authoritarian, and more respectful of the diversity of local churches.”...
. O’Gara is a longtime veteran of ecumenical conversations with a variety of Christian denominations.

Pope John Paul II, O’Gara said, was an “engaging figure” for many Protestants, Orthodox and Anglicans, who admired his strong stands on issues such as abortion and war, his commitment to evangelization, and his capacity to project a Christian voice in global debates. At the same time, she said, John Paul’s pontificate left behind “a mixed heritage” ecumenically.
O’Gara cited eight motives for that ambivalence:
1. The Synod of Bishops remained merely advisory to the pope;
2. The authority of episcopal conferences was restricted;3. A Vatican document on “Some Aspects of the Church Understood as Communion” asserted that the Petrine ministry is “interior to every fully local church”;
4. The Vatican document Dominus Iesus said that some Protestant and Anglican bodies aren’t really “churches”;
5. Cardinals Joseph Ratzinger and Walter Kasper carried out a debate over whether the local or universal church has priority;6. The term from Vatican II that the church “subsists” in Catholicism was understood to mean that it exists fully only in Catholicism;
7. The ban on women’s ordination was declared definitive;8. The volume of papal teaching raised questions about its authority, and what role it would play in sister churches if present divisions could be overcome.
In light of all this, O’Gara argued, the papacy must be reformed “in a more pastoral way, in a less centralized way, in a way that defends the diversity of the local churches” before it can serve the cause of Christian unity.
Concretely, O’Gara made two suggestions.
First, she suggested remedying what she called a confusion between papal infallibility and papal primacy, with the latter referring to the pope’s regular business of governance. Quoting the theologian Klaus Schatz, she said that primacy is too often treated as a sort of “ersatz infallibility,” so that even routine administration seems like an exercise of infallibility.
Second, she proposed reconsidering what she called the “classicist” language used by the First Vatican Council in the 19th century to formulate the dogma of infallibility. Rephrasing the teaching in a more historically-minded fashion, she said, could make it less threatening to other Christians.

At times in our life we may ask or be asked, “Who am I to you?” Why does someone ask this? Perhaps the person has been mistreated, neglected, forgotten, ignored, etc. The person perhaps is thinking of a different and deeper type of commitment, such as marriage. The person may simply want loving reassurance. Why do you think Jesus asks this question? What is my answer to Jesus’ question?