April 13, 2011 – Catechism 811-816

I don’t know how many more of the sections of the Catechism are going to be talking about the one church, but here is another section that speaks to the reasons and points to the logic of the One Church idea.  It mentions that there is a unity through charity or love among Christians, but also says that there must be a visible communion and creed following that laid down by the Apostles and their successors in the apostolic tradition.  I just finished watching a movie, “Peter and Paul” from the early 80’s.  I have seen bits and pieces on the Protestant TV Channel.  You can watch the whole thing online through YouTube.  It was really slanted towards the idea of “Faith Alone” and focused on Paul being the leader of the Church and Peter not being a leader until after Paul died and being inspired by Paul.  I enjoyed parts of it and I think it is useful to get a sense of some of the persecution and the real struggle that occurred in trying to start a religious movement.  But there were a lot of things that were taken way out of context to push the “Faith Alone” theology and in my eyes put down the Catholic Church.  The movie takes away any authority Peter might have had in the early Church, even though when you look at Acts, Peter is the one who first preaches and leads people.  The movie portrays the early Church being very small in Jerusalem, but we read early on in Acts that 100’s were baptized right after Pentecost.  Paul is given all the credit for going to the Gentiles, and although he is a great proponent of this, Peter actually does in first with the Conversion of Cornelius and his home.  Although there are disagreements between Peter and Paul and Peter is persuaded by Paul on certain things, the movie portrays a fractured church from the very beginning, looking very much like Christians today, split between faith alone and Catholics, with Paul and faith alone winning out and eventually drawing Peter in, preaching that Paul was right, faith alone is correct and then being martyred by being crucified upside down.  (The movie has this being done way out in the country side when tradition holds it was done in an arena as a spectacle.)  The real issue with the movie is that Paul never preached faith alone and that is not biblical.  Paul preaches against a divided Church and preached for unity.  Throughout the movie Paul appears to regret going against Peter at certain times and questions whether his idea of Faith Alone is coming from his own arrogance or pride.  These seemed to me some of the most genuine moments in the movie, but then it would go right back to him preaching this.  All and all, it was heavily slanted to be propaganda for a theology that is not based on Scripture and could really influence people if they watched this and took it as accurate.  I love Anthony Hopkins (who plays Paul) but I cannot recommend this movie.  I am going to start watching one called St. Peter starring Omar Sarif, also wholly online.  I will let you know if it is any better.