Hi, I'm Edward Sree, and welcome to all things Catholic Catholic where real faith meets real life.

Why do you Catholics have a Pope? I mean doesn't that just seem so hierarchical political he's like the

CEO of your church and he's just barking out orders telling you what to do

telling you what to believe I mean shouldn't human beings just be free free to decide for themselves their own

religious values their own spiritual values their own moral standards why do we need

a Pope telling us what to do?

Can't we just be spiritual on our own

and just let God guide us through our own prayer

and maybe even our own reading of our own sacred texts?

Why do I need a Pope? Well my friends, how confident would you be

answering those kinds of questions? Because that's the mindset of our modern age that

we want to be free and independent and decide things for ourselves, why do we need a papacy

guiding us and giving us teaching to follow?

Well, this is a great week to be thinking about these questions because in the Catholic Church on February

22nd we celebrate the feast of the chair of St. Peter. This is a great feast

day that celebrates the great teaching authority that Jesus gave to Peter and his successors,

the Pope's.

So I want to help us answer these questions.

I'm going to give you a number of keys from scripture where you can explain the papacy from the Bible

with great clarity and with great confidence and guess what? All of the keys I'm going to give you are found in

one biblical passage packed in here. Jesus says many things that tell us something

very important about the papacy. Let's unpack that passage. It comes in Matthew chapter 16 and I want to I want to give you the background of this great scene so picture this you are one of the apostles and you are there with Jesus and you go to this place called Cesaria Philippi which is the farthest north we know Jesus

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