So sad...

I'm reading the headlines this morning, after a late night and a (very) early morning (had a sleep-over for the teenagers that demanded doughnuts for breakfast), and I read something that really made me rather angry,

I won't link the article, but a rather prestigious professor at a very prestigious Catholic University wrote an article that was so filled with inaccurate and false statements that it really made me wonder what the state of Catholic education is in this country.

The article was about the important role that the Church can play in modern American life... secular as well as spiritual. However, I was so distracted by the mistakes in the details and facts that it became almost impossible for me to follow the thread of the idea.

So, as a member of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, I feel it my responsibility to give a lesson (although the author of the said article will never read this, I know) on the actual facts that were reported in the story.

#1 John Paul II was the longest reigning Pope in Church history.

Aside from the fact that Peter himself very probably reigned from 30 AD to at least 64/65 AD... maybe as late as 67 AD... which makes him the longest reigning Pope, we can look at the far (FAR) more recent Holy Father, Pope Pius IX, who reigned for 34 years and 8 months (1846-1878) as the longest papacy on record. In comparison, John Paul II sat on the See for only 26 and a half years (1978-2005).

#2 The "first" Church in Christendom is St Peter's in Rome.

Patently false!

The "first church" (chronologically speaking) would have to be the Cenacle, which is the "upper room" of the Gospel stories and is the place where Christ first established the Lord's Supper (Holy Eucharist) as a sacrament of the faith to be carried on forever. This portion of a larger building that was (at the time of Christ) a synagogue was incorporated into larger churches over the centuries, until in the 16th Century the Ottomans made it into a mosque and forbade Christian prayer within it, until the formation of the State of Israel in 1948... but it is not now, nor was it ever, a stand-alone church as we understand them today.

The oldest extant church is in Rome, but it is more than 120 years older than St Peter's... it is Santa Maria in Trastevere, which dates back to the reign of Pope St Callixtus I and the year 220 AD.

If the question is one of Catholic "primacy", the "first church" is the cathedral where the Pope sits as bishop... his primary "see" and the place where his "cathedra" (his official chair or throne) resides. This is NOT St Peter's... it is the Basilica of St John Lateran in the City of Rome, Italy. This is the "mother and head of all churches in the city and in the world" (Omnium urbis et orbis ecclesiarum mater et caput). This is the church (basilica, actually, one of four designated "major" by the Pope) where the Pope's cathedra is found, and were he sits as bishop of the City of Rome.

There were other errors... but the kids are getting restless, and I have to play camp director now to keep the peace.

More later...