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Fr. Olek Stirrat: The Peculiarity of Papal Primacy – Brown Pelican Society of Lousiana

Fr. Olek Stirrat: The Peculiarity of Papal Primacy

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Saint Peter statue outside the Basilica, Vatican, Rome. (Image: Fr. Barry Braum/Unsplash.com)

By Fr. Olek Stirrat, Catholic World Report, January 29, 2025

Fr. Olek Stirrat, born in Poland, is a priest of the Archdiocese of Adelaide. He was ordained in 2022 and is currently ministering in South Australia.

What we need now is to remove our postmodern lenses, so as to see the whole episcopacy, along with the primacy of the papacy, as oriented toward holiness—our holiness.

I am often amused by my Protestant friends when they, with great excitement and intrigue, say, “Have you heard what the Pope said?” to which, after hearing them out, respond, “I think you care more about the papacy than I do.” Upon hearing this, their faces betray a kind of perplexed, vacant, slack-jawed bewilderment, as though they had been struck by a sudden and incomprehensible revelation, to which they were struggling valiantly to make sense of without much success. For a Catholic papal primacy is vital, but not absolute.

Biblical Basis

The biblical basis for papal primacy is grounded in the Davidic kingdom. King David and his successors ruled with the assistance of twelve other ministers (cf. 1 Kings 4:1ff). One of the twelve was a prime minister who would rule in the absence of the king (cf. Isaiah 22:19–23) and held the king’s authority, symbolized by the keys of the kingdom of David. He was to be called the father of the people of Judah and would become like a peg driven into a firm place; a throne upon which the honor of the house would rest (cf. Is 22:23). …