#12185 Was There a Pope in the First Century? And More on the Papacy - Erick Ybarra

Catholic Answers Live

Catholic Answers

Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.8 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 7 May 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Many Christians find it hard to see the papacy in the first-century Church. In this episode, Erick Ybarra addresses the historical and biblical foundations for the papal office. Was Peter truly the first pope? How did early Christians view his authority? And what evidence do we have from Scripture and tradition that connects the leadership of Peter to the role of today’s pope?

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Questions Covered:

12:33 – I struggle with not seeing the papacy in the first century. Can you help clarify where we see it?
18:30 – How close have we ever gotten to the pope who was the minimal requirement, a male baptized Catholic?
22:32 – Regarding his debate with Ubi Petrus. Do you have clarification from one of your questions from the debate?
35:29 – How is it ok that we added the filioque to the Nicene creed? Didn’t the Nicene Creed have a clause that not one word could be changed?
42:09 – How do you think the Church balances separating itself from being too political and how it’s done that historically?
48:24 – How closely do we tie our belief in Christ to our belief in the Church? If the pope were to dogmatically declare heresy, would it invalidate the magisterium?
52:06 – What do you think about the passages in First Clement where he says the Holy Spirit is writing/speaking through him? Is this evidence of papal infallibility?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Buying or selling your home, real estate for life can connect you with a pro-life real estate agent.
0:05.8	When Real Estate for Life receives a referral fee, they donate 65% to Catholic Answers.
0:11.5	Learn more at realestateforlife.org. Hello and welcome to Catholic Answers live. I am Cy Kellett, your host. Delighted to be here with you. And we've got a great show for it.
0:39.0	A very, very good show. Two extraordinary guests. As a matter of fact, I think Darren has outdone himself
0:46.2	today. I mean, everybody knows the great Dr. David Anders, called the communion with Dr Dr. Anders is just one of the most popular.
0:56.5	And frankly, one of the best programs in American media is just a wonderful program.
1:02.7	So we'll get him the second hour, and you can ask him anything you want.
1:06.5	We're not going to – we'll just let you ask him whatever you want.
1:08.7	We thought we'd take a break the first hour from all this coverage of popes and conclaves and smoke and all that, and just do an hour on
1:18.8	the papacy. So that's what we're going to do this hour. We're going to do an hour on the papacy.
1:23.3	If you got questions about the papacy, we got the guy for you to answer your questions about
1:28.4	the papacy, whether you're Catholic or not. Maybe you've been watching some of the coverage,
1:32.6	and you've got a question like, well, I don't know, whatever. You want to know about the papacy
1:38.4	in the Bible? You want to know about the papacy in the early church. But certainly if you want to
1:42.1	know about Orthodoxy and the papacy, you're welcome to call 8883187-884. Our guest is Eric Ibarra, the author of the papacy,
1:51.7	revisiting the debate between Catholics and Orthodox. You might know him from his online debates
1:56.8	and from his podcast. Classical Christian thought. Eric Ybarra, thank you very much for being here with us.
2:02.6	Oh, you're welcome. I'm blessed to be here. Thank you for having me.
2:07.6	Well, I'll tell you what, we're going to do a little test with you and see if you're really a papal expert.
2:12.6	I want you to tell me the name of the guy who's going to be the next pope, and then in a few days, if you get it right, you are the world's greatest expert on the papacy.
2:23.2	Your reputation will be forever.
2:27.1	You'll be like the guy that called the toughest papal election in a century.
	...

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