One day Jesus asked the apostles,

"... who do you say that I am?"...

Simon Peter said in reply, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God."
Jesus said to him in reply, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.
And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. ... " (Mt 16:15-18)

From the beginning the Church has always understood that Christ handed over the temporal power to rule his Church on earth to Peter and his successors. Obviously, since Scripture was written by Church leaders, this understanding pre-dates the scriptures. Eastern churches as well as Protestant Churches had to interpret this Scripture passage differently in order to justify their rejection of the Primacy of Peter.

"Since the Eastern schism began, [1054 AD] the Orthodox have generally claimed that the pope has only a primacy of honor among the bishops of the world, not a primacy of authority. But the concept of a primacy of honor without a corresponding authority cannot be derived from the Bible. At every juncture where Jesus speaks of Peter’s relation to the other apostles, he emphasizes Peter’s special mission to them and not simply his place of honor among them." This fatal error has caused disunity within the Orthodox and political powers have taken advantage of this. Since 1054, the Moslem rulers appointed and deposed patriarchs, the Czar sought control over the Orthodox in Russia and lately, the Communist influence and internal disagreements have conspired to fragment Orthodox Christianity. There are now eleven independent Orthodox Churches.

"Evangelicals [Protestant Denominations] teach that the foundation rock of the Church is the faith of Peter, as opposed to Peter himself. They observe that in the Greek version the Rock appears both in the masculine and feminine forms and that one refers to small rock and the other to large rock. Peter could not be both a man and a woman, small and large at the same time. So they concluded that it must refer to Peter's faith. But, are they right in basing their conclusion on the Greek version?

Jesus spoke Aramaic and presumably the original was written in Aramaic because Matthew was writing to convince the Jews the Jesus was the Messiah. In Aramaic there was only one word for rock (kepha). So in Aramaic it would have read: "Your are Kepha and upon this Kepha I will build my church". Here the Greek translator ran into a problem. The word for large rock in Greek was Petra (feminine), so the passage would have read: "Your are Petra and upon this Petra I will build my Church." This would not do because Peter was a man not a woman. So the translator used masculine Petros (small rock) in conjunction with Petra (large rock). So it would read "you are Petros and upon this Petra I will build my church." In English we translate, "You are Peter and upon this Rock I will build my Church". The Evangelicals have forgotten that only the original is inspired and that translations are open to misunderstanding. Since we no longer have the Matthew in Aramaic, it is the Catholic Church which has preserved the original understanding of this passage. See also (Jn 1:42,ICo1:12,3:22, 15:5; Gal 2:9-14) where the word Kepha transliterated Cephas is used to designate Peter.

Some say that Christ is the stone or the true foundation of the Church of which there are a few Scriptural passages such as "The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone". (1Pt 2:7) It is true that Christ is the founder and ultimate foundation of the Church. But He also realized the need for a visible representative on earth since with his return to the Father He would no longer be visibly in the world.

Keys to the Kingdom