Rethinking a Key Biblical Text and Catholic Church Governance

Abstract

For years Matthew 16:17—19 has been used in the Roman Church to legitimize a certain approach to its institutional form of governance that virtually excludes all the baptized but the hierarchy. Using the historical-critical method accepted by the Pontifical Biblical Commission (PBC), this article shows that this “Petrine” text is absent in its parallels in Mark and Luke. Furthermore, in official church teaching, which stresses Peter's “binding and loosing” as a key justifier for this form of governance, no discussion is made of the parallel text of “binding and loosing” in Matthew 18: 17—20, which articulates how this power is to be used in and by the community. Using the PBC's document on the appropriate Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, this article argues that such a selective approach to Matthew 16:17—19 reveals an example of the PBC's warning against texts being used in fundamentalistic ways which support ideological positions.