On the necessity of Apostolic Succession

Those who reject the Papacy have lost an entire category of knowledge

Ulysses and the Sirens - John William Waterhouse

In Acts 28, St. Luke describes the ship that takes St. Paul to Rome, writing, “After three months we put out to sea in a ship that had wintered in the island—it was an Alexandrian ship with the figurehead of the twin gods Castor and Pollux.” I’ve learned over the years that no detail in the Scriptures is accidental. St. Luke notes the figurehead of the ship for a reason. Castor and Pollux were twin brothers revered as gods and associated with the constellation Gemini. St. Luke isn’t superstitious or an idolater. He’s interested in this figurehead because of its symbolic revelation of the superiority of the Church to the old gods. St. Paul is getting on that ship for Rome because God wants him in Rome and God wants him in Rome because St. Peter is in Rome. These are the two apostles, the twins (if you will), and these twins are something greater than mythological gods; they are human persons made fully alive in Christ and apostles of the Church.

Liturgically, the Church has the tradition of remembering these two together. If one is mentioned, so is the other. The poet Prudentius, writing in the early fifth century, calls today a bifestum, a double feast, and he attests that on this day the Pope would offer Holy Mass at the Basilica of St. Peter and then hasten to say another at St. Paul’s.

So, St. Paul arrives to Rome on a ship which symbolizes his connection to St. Peter. We don’t know exactly how St. Peter first got to Rome, but we do know how he returned to Rome.

Perhaps you’ve heard this story. During the great persecution that broke out in Rome in 66AD, St. Peter leaves the city along the Appian Way. On his way, he meets the risen Christ walking in the opposite direction and he asks, "Quo vadis?" meaning “Where are you going?” Christ replies, "Romam eo iterum crucifigi / I am going to Rome to be crucified again.” St. Peter turns and follows, back into the city where he is crucified upside-down.

In the same year, St. Paul is also martyred. The two are together even in death.

Ss. Peter and Paul is the first feast of any Apostles to occur after Pentecost. The musical similarity between the two antiphons of the two liturgies signifies that St. Peter and his successors lead the Church during the period from the descent of the Holy Ghost until the end of the world, a period symbolized by the liturgical season between Pentecost and Advent.

Ss. Peter and Paul guard the unity of the Church and work to expand the Church. This is the work given to those two apostles and their successors. Their vocation is never for themselves, but for Christ, to be sure the world knows him.

A quick tangent to talk about knowledge. There are two categories of knowledge. The first is acquired through an examination of difference, which makes possible the advance of science, abstract definitions, and so on. It asks question like What makes me different than that? What category of thing is that? What physical element makes up this object? These questions of difference are good; they’re how we gain objective knowledge. But notice that this type of knowledge has us stand apart from a thing and consider it as an object.

It’s equally true that a thing is a subject. Dionysius explains that we all share in the same Being, which is to say we’re human persons made in the image of Christ. So we have access to a second kind of knowledge, a knowledge not of difference but of unity. The medieval philosophers developed this idea, often referred to as connaturality, and describe not only a unity of persons but of the whole cosmos because every created thing participates, by grace, in the life of God himself. Further, it seems clear to me that because the Church, our Mother whose very nature is receptive to familial unity, shares her wisdom with Catholics in a particular way, and within the Church there is special access to this participatory form of knowledge.

It is this Catholicity, this universality, that is guarded and protected by the Apostolic ministry. Looking more closely at the distinct ministries of Ss. Peter and Paul, we see that unity is two-fold.

Through St. Paul, the dimensions of the Church are energetically expanded. He travels the world planting parishes, appointing bishops, and teaching. The Apostolicity of the Catholic Church covers the entire geographic expanse of mankind, including all peoples. St. Peter’s authority, as the head of the Church, expands with the efforts of St. Paul, but (at least in building our narrative construction) his personal efforts are directed towards expanding the unity of the Church through the generations. He is the Rock upon which the Church is founded. His confession that Christ is the Son of God and Savior is an eternal bond. To be Catholic is to be in communion with our ancestors.

It’s fascinating, isn’t it, that the Christian groups who reject the authority of St. Peter have come to be defined only by their differences? By their doctrinal arguments and discrepancies in Scriptural interpretation? If you lose the source of unity, you lose a vital source of knowledge. Arguments begin and disagreements run rampant. Poetic knowledge, aesthetic knowledge, sacramental knowledge, symbolic knowledge - however we want to describe it - it’s completely lost.

In the end, it’s really very simple. Ss. Peter and Paul provide for the unity of the Church through Apostolic ministry and, when we submit ourselves to the teaching of the Church, we don’t become less knowledgeable. We don’t lose our independence of thought. We gain deep and lasting insight through unity.

Back to the boat.

St. Luke isn’t the only writer to indulge in poetic symbolism about ships. When Odysseus passes the island of the sirens, whose song was so maddeningly seductive it caused sailors to dash their boats against the rocks, he lashes himself to the mast so he won’t throw himself overboard. When Gerard Manley Hopkins writes his poem about the wreck of the Deutschland, a ship that was destroyed in the English channel by a storm and took five nuns with it, he writes about how one of the nuns clings to the wood of the ship and cries out for Christ.

The early Church theologian, Tertullian, is one of the first to connect the Church as a ship with the waters of baptism as the storm. He writes "the apostles then served the turn of baptism when in their little ship, were sprinkled and covered with the waves.” If the Church is a ship with Ss. Peter and Paul on the figurehead, it will carry us safely through the flood, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t going to get wet. The reason St. Paul was getting on that boat in Cyprus is because their previous boat had sunk. St. Peter, too, turns around to re-enter the storm in Rome.

This, ultimately, is the unity to which we are called, unity with the death of Christ. We know him, we love him, and so are willing to die with him. We are called to the spiritual death of baptism and the ongoing martyrdom of daily love and sacrifice. We are going to be in storms. Lash yourself to the mass. Lash yourself to the Cross. This is what Ss. Peter and Paul did and this is why they’re saints. They knew Christ. They lead us to unity with Christ. We die with him and we live with him.