Welcome back to Shemus Popery. I'm Joe Heschmire. And one of the things has happened with the death of Pope Francis in this move towards conclave, which begins May 7th, I'll talk about that more when we get there. As we await the election of a new Pope, people who may not normally ask questions about Catholicism are asking a lot of questions about the papacy. This includes both Catholics who want to know more about their faith, but also a lot of non-Catholics who are just

curious, like, why do Catholics have a Pope in the first place? And I think this is really good.

And it's really good amongst Christians that we ask this question. And I've actually talked about

this at much greater length in a book called

Pope Peter, in which I refer to the papacy as the church's most distinctive doctrine. And here's what I

mean by that, and here's why it matters. If you're someone who's exploring Catholicism for the

first time, if you're coming from, say, a Protestant background or really an Orthodox background,

but especially if you're coming from, say, evangelical Protestantism.

The number of questions you might have, the number of areas where Catholics believe one thing and you were taught something else,

or we do one thing and you do a different thing, that can be overwhelming. And I've talked to people who just feel

utterly overwhelmed by the sheer number

of questions that they have, where they're finding a draw. They feel compelled to look into this,

but they don't know how to sort through the sheer glut of information. And I think it can be very

important to highlight that this is the one issue we have to get right. Now, I want to make something very clear.

Saying that the papacy is the church's most distinctive doctrine does not mean that it's some church's most important doctrine.

It's more important that you get the Eucharist right. It's more important that you get the divinity of Christ right.

It's more important that you get the Trinity right. It's more important that you get the existenceinity of Christ right. It's more important that you get the Trinity right.

It's more important that you get the existence of God right.

Those kind of questions are obviously and uncontroversially more important than the question of the papacy.

But the papacy is distinctive.

Here's the difference.

If I want to know, should I buy a car or a truck?

...