communion with Your Holiness, that is to say, in communion with the
Chair of Peter. I know that it is upon that rock that the Church has been
built. Whoever eats the Lamb outside this house is profane.”
St. Augustine of Hippo, Hymn Against the Donatists 18 (393 AD)
“Run through the list of those priests who have occupied the See of Peter
Himself; and in that list of Fathers, see who succeeded to whom. This is the
Rock which the proud Gates of Hell do not overcome.”
Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566)
Pt. I, Ch. X: The Church has but one ruler and one governor, the
invisible one, Christ, whom the eternal Father hath made head over all the
Church, which is his body; the visible one, the Pope, who, as legitimate
successor of Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, fills the Apostolic chair.
Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992)
No. 880:
When Christ instituted the Twelve, “he constituted [them]
in the form of a college or permanent assembly, at the head of which he
placed Peter, chosen from among them.” Just as “by the Lord’s institution,
St. Peter and the rest of the apostles constitute a single apostolic college, so
in like fashion the Roman Pontiff, Peter’s successor, and the bishops, the
successors of the apostles, are related with and united to one another.”
No. 881:
The Lord made Simon alone, whom he named Peter, the
“rock” of his Church. He gave him the keys of his Church and instituted
him shepherd of the whole flock. The office of binding and loosing which
was given to Peter was also assigned to the college of apostles united to its
head. This pastoral office of Peter and the other apostles belongs to the
Church’s very foundation and is continued by the bishops under the
primacy of the Pope.
No. 882:
The Pope, Bishop of Rome and Peter’s successor, “is the
perpetual and visible source and foundation of the unity both of the bishops
and of the whole company of the faithful.” “For the Roman Pontiff, by
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