Canonical Catholic Discourses on Matthew 16:13-19:

Australian Women’s Recollections

Anne Teresa Musso

And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.

Matthew 16:18

But Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

Matthew 16:23¹

These two verses from consecutive stories in the sixteenth chapter of Matthew’s gospel feature words attributed to Jesus. In the first story, Jesus asks his disciples a significant question: “But who do you say that I am?” (v 15). Peter’s reply is that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (v 16). This answer meets with Jesus’ approval, and he praises Peter by giving him the title “son of Jonah” (v 17)² and by declaring Peter to be the rock upon which the church will be built (v 18). In the following story, Jesus attempts to make it clear to the disciples what being the Messiah means; namely that he is to face persecution and death (v 21). Peter takes Jesus aside, rebukes Jesus for saying such things, and tells Jesus that this “must never happen to you” (v 22). This time, Peter’s response does not meet with Jesus’ approval: Peter is called “Satan” by Jesus and is said to be “a stumbling block” (v 23). In the space of a few verses in the Matthean text, Peter has been both acclaimed as a solid rock and denounced as a stumbling block!³

It appears that while Peter recognised Jesus as the Messiah, his messianic understanding was very different from that held by Jesus: apparently, some of Peter’s specific understandings about the person and the message of Jesus were misguided. Peter’s faith may have been a solid foundation upon which a faith community could be established but paradoxically, the ideological and theological beliefs/values Peter upheld were also a stumbling block to Jesus.

Many centuries later, a small self-support group of Catholic women from a regional Australian diocese was discovering a similar paradox within a church built upon the foundational rock of Peter. During the middle 1990s, group members became increasingly aware that the institutional church’s use of scriptural texts (such as Mt 16:13-19) was both interested and monolithic. In particular, these women began to critique the Catholic Church’s theological and structural fixity/rigidity, recognising how easily an institution as solid rock could become a stumbling block.

In this paper I analyse these women’s recollections of the Catholic Church’s use of Matthew 16:13-19 in canonical discourses on church leadership. The purpose of this analysis is twofold. Firstly, my analysis demonstrates and problematises the Catholic Church’s use of its canonical readings of Mt 16:13-19 to validate the Church’s rigid, all-male, hierarchical structure of authority. Secondly, my analysis highlights resistance to this canonical construction of Mt 16:13-19 by a small group of Australian Catholic women; in so doing, I valorise Catholic women as readers/interpreters of texts intrinsic to Catholic teaching.

The paper begins by providing relevant background information on the participants and the production of the Focus Text underpinning my analysis. Participants’ recollections of Catholic canonical teachings on Mt 16-13-19, as they appear in the Focus Text, are then presented and analysed, firstly with attention being given to specific pre- and post-Vatican Council II Catholic teachings, and secondly with participants’ resistance to these teachings being highlighted and explored. The paper concludes with a brief summary and reflection on the analysis and its implications for the Australian Catholic Church.

Background to Focus Text

The Focus Text which is analysed below (see p. 6) features the recollections of six Catholic women (including myself) on canonical Catholic teachings linked to Matthew 16:13-19. The six women, all members of a group called Sophia, participated with two other group members in a research project that underpinned my doctoral dissertation.⁴ Except for myself, participants have been given pseudonyms in this paper.

Sophian members share much in common: all of us are white middle-class women from the same regional Australian diocese, each of us was baptised into the Catholic Church in infancy and educated in Catholic schools prior to Vatican Council II, and we had all become deeply committed adult members of the Catholic Church. Additionally, participants had experienced difficulties as women in the church and were disappointed because we perceived that the open progressive thinking and vision of the Second Vatican Council, which had inspired many Catholics in the 1970s and 1980s, was becoming increasingly blurred during the 1990s.

The doctoral research project I undertook as a participant-observer in Sophia included a study of five Matthean texts which Sophian participants identified as being associated with canonical Catholic teachings on church leadership. One of these scripture passages was Matthew 16:13-19, and the recollections which constitute this paper’s Focus Text were recorded in October 1995 (during meeting 24).⁵ I had prepared guide questions on this Matthean text (see Appendix), and before the meeting the Sophian women read the scriptural text in its literary context and reflected upon it in conversation with the study questions and life experience.⁶

The recorded session began with one Sophian woman proclaiming the Matthean text to be discussed:

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Mt 16:13-19).

Sophia’s recollections of canonical Catholic teachings on Mt 16:13-19

Focus Text

The Focus Text includes comments from each of the six Sophian members who were present at the group’s discussion on Mt 16:13-19. The text features participants’ responses to the study’s first question: “What traditional Catholic teachings do you associate with these verses?”

Focus Text (from Sophian meeting 24, transcript pp. 1-2)

In the Focus Text members responded to the question in turn. The first response, from Wendy, was quite thorough and Frances verbalised what most members were thinking: “Wendy’s said it all”. But I asked “to hear what others thought” and, possibly because of this request, an orderly (though unplanned) sequence of comments ensued as members added to what had already been said. All participants read or referred to previously prepared written notes.

Yet, there is a tenor of mutuality in the way participants relate their reflections to previous responses with flow-on comments such as “That’s what I think I took from it too” (Frances), “I too felt that” (Ruth), “I felt the same” (Dorothy), and “I had much the same too” (Anne). As well as linking the discussion, these words are signifiers of agreement among those present: apparently the women in Sophia had similar recollections of how the Catholic Church had traditionally interpreted and applied this scriptural text.

There is agreement that traditional Catholic teachings associated with Mt 16:13-19 include that “Peter was the first pope” (Kimberley, Ruth, Dorothy, Anne); that there was an “unbroken line” of authority from Peter down through all the popes (Kimberley, Frances); that “Peter was rewarded” for his faith (Frances, Anne); and that Peter and the church “can forgive sin” (Wendy, Dorothy, Anne). Moreover, there are no signifiers of discord which, of itself, signals a high level of consensus among those Sophian women who were present.⁷

Yet there are signs in the Focus Text that traditional Catholic teachings related to Matthew 16:13-19 are no longer accepted unproblematically by the participants. This is demonstrated in Kimberley’s “so you’ve got to believe everything the pope says”; in the way Frances contrasts Peter with Martha and later concludes with the comment that “no correspondence will be entered into”; in Ruth’s proviso “if we take this the way we have been led to believe”; and in Dorothy’s more confident assertion “we know that Confession hadn’t started then”. I will explore these resisting discourses more closely below. However before doing so, I test the reliability of Sophia’s recollections by identifying specific canonical Catholic teachings associated with Mt 16:13-19, and I offer a critique of the institutional Church’s use of Mt 16:13-19 to validate an all-male hierarchical structure of church leadership and authority.

Canonical Catholic discourses on Mt 16:13-19

The Focus Text shows that Wendy associated Matthew 16:13-19 with two Catholic canonical teachings, namely that “Jesus established the church” and that Jesus “appointed Peter as head of the church”. Kimberley, Ruth, Dorothy and myself spoke of Peter’s appointment as head and “first pope” of the church. Additionally, Frances included in her written submission that “Jesus made Peter the head (pope) of his church on earth”. By using “pope” to more precisely define the term “head” in her written answer, Frances implies that, according to Catholic canonical discourses, “his church” is actually the (Roman) Catholic Church. To account for these recollections and check their accuracy, I went firstly to the Catechism (1937). This book, which Wendy dubbed the “old catechism” a little later in meeting 24, played a major role in the Sophian women’s pre-Vatican II religious education.⁸ In this document I discovered the following extracts:

Q 66. Why do you say the Catholic Church is holy?

A. The Catholic Church is holy because it was founded by Jesus Christ; …

Q 73. Whom does the Pope succeed as visible head of the Church?

A. The Pope is the successor of St. Peter, who was chief of the Apostles, Christ’s vicar on earth, and first Pope and Bishop of Rome (emphasis added).

Q 74. How do you know St. Peter was appointed by Christ as visible head of the Church?

A. We know St. Peter was made the visible head of the Church because Jesus Christ said to him: Thou art Peter (the rock), and on this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, and I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven. (Matt. xvi, 18, 19.)

These extracts confirm the accuracy of Sophia’s memories of what we had been taught in our youth. Yet this is not especially surprising because similar discourses – reinforcing these teachings – are still being circulated by the Church. For example, the 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church stipulates:

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. [Here a footnote has been inserted which cites Mt 16:18-19 and Jn 21:15-17 as references] … 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 (1994, n. 881).⁹

This text not only teaches that Jesus made Peter the head of the church but it also states that the leadership role given to Peter and the apostles “is continued by the bishops under the primacy of the Pope”. Two documents from the Second Vatican Council – Lumen Gentium and Dei Verbum – indicate that Peter and the apostles passed on their hierarchical authority to Catholic bishops. Lumen Gentium speaks of the bishops’ “unbroken succession going back to the beginning” (1964 n. 20, emphasis added) while Dei Verbum (1965) says that apostolic preaching is “preserved in a continuous line of succession until the end of time” (n. 8, emphasis added).¹⁰

In the Focus Text, Kimberley and Frances spoke of an unbroken line through which authority was passed down from Peter (and the apostles) to the subsequent popes (and bishops). Interestingly, the precise expression used by Kimberley and Frances – an unbroken line – appears in the “old catechism” which shaped Sophia’s youthful understanding of church leadership:

Q 68. Why do you say the Catholic Church is apostolic?

A. The Catholic Church is apostolic because the Bishops of the Catholic Church can trace back their authority in an unbroken line to Jesus Christ and the Apostles (1937, emphasis added).

The “old catechism” also validates my recollection of Matthew 16:13-19 being used by the church to support its teaching that “the Catholic Church will survive forever” (Focus Text). In the Catechism (1937 n. 60) the question of the church’s survival for all time is answered with these words: “Yes: Jesus Christ promised that His Church would last for all time, and He said: The gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (Matt. xvi, 18)”.¹¹

However, in the “old catechism” John 20:22-23 is cited in support of the Catholic teaching that Jesus gave Peter and the apostles authority to forgive sins:¹² an authority which in turn was handed on to Catholic bishops and priests (1937 n. 198).¹³ Although Mt 16:19 does not explicitly speak of sins being forgiven, the two texts—Jn 20:22-23 and Mt 16:19—are not dissimilar. Certainly, the more recent Catechism of the Catholic Church cites Mt 16:19 to validate the authority of the Catholic Church’s hierarchy to forgive sins. In one section, after quoting Mt 16:19 in full, the commentary offered is:

The power to “bind and loose” connotes the authority to absolve sins, to pronounce doctrinal judgments, and to make disciplinary decisions in the Church. Jesus entrusted this authority to the Church through the ministry of the apostles and in particular through the ministry of Peter, the only one to whom he specifically entrusted the keys of the kingdom (1994 n. 553).¹⁴

The Catholic Church’s use of biblical texts, like Mt 16:17-19, to legitimate its authoritarian hierarchical model of leadership is problematic whether one considers earlier or more recent explanations. While the Catholic Church teaches that the Bible and Tradition are sources of doctrinal truth,¹⁵ the pre-Vatican II explanation described “Tradition” as “those teachings of Christ which were not written in the books of the Bible but have come down to us through the Apostles and their successors” (Catechism 1937 n. 81, emphasis added). By this definition, the teachings of Christ contained in “Tradition” are not found in the bible, so using the bible to prove their validity is dubious.

More recently, “Tradition” has been described as including both the Christian Scriptures and later beliefs/teachings. For instance, in the Vatican Council II document, Dei Verbum, “apostolic preaching” is said to be both “expressed in a special way in the inspired books” and “preserved in a continuous line of succession” (1965: n. 8), while the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that “the New Testament itself demonstrates the process of living Tradition” (1994: n. 83).¹⁶ Hence, with this more recent understanding, Catholic Tradition relies upon itself for authentication.¹⁷ Furthermore, it seems that, even though the Pontifical Biblical Commission has warned of the dangers “of attributing to biblical texts a meaning which they do not contain but which is the product of a later development within the tradition” ([1993] 1994: 513), the institutional church has not revoked or modified the officially endorsed readings of scriptural texts which were shaped by post-biblical beliefs/teachings.

Contrastingly, Catholic scripture scholars are more attentive to the original historical and socio-cultural contexts of a scripture passage and are cautious about ascribing meanings to biblical texts in light of later developments in christian beliefs, structures and traditions.¹⁸ For example, the Catholic priest and scripture scholar, Benedict Viviano, says of Mt 16:17-19 that it is “a foundation story about post-Easter authority in the church and a commission to leadership” (1990: 659). Viviano notes that James was probably the preferred leader for post-Easter Jewish Christians while Paul was the preferred leader for Gentile Christians, hence for Viviano: “Peter thus represents a compromise that can hold both tendencies in the early church in an uneasy synthesis. Matthew here shows his ecumenical good sense” (1990: 660). So apparently Viviano understands Mt 16:17-19 more as a response to debates over leadership in the early post-Easter church than as a statement about Catholic Church authority and authenticity.¹⁹

Viviano’s commentary on Matthew’s Gospel appears in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, a volume that is well regarded among highly ranked Catholic clergy. This volume has a Nihil obstat and Imprimatur which certify it is free of (Catholic) doctrinal or moral error.²⁰ Yet even with these certifications, the writings of individual Catholic scripture scholars are not given the status of canonical texts, though some scripture scholars whose work does not directly challenge traditional Catholic teachings may be invited to work with members of the church’s teaching office (magisterium) in drafting canonical texts.

Thus, generally speaking, the work of individual scripture scholars has not had the impact on Catholics that canonical discourses – as found in officially endorsed catechisms, in papal encyclicals/decrees, and in documentation from Church Councils and pontifical organisations – have had, especially prior to Vatican Council II. My disclosure of the close alignment between Sophia’s recollections and actual Catholic teachings demonstrates the success with which canonical discourses shaped the early theological and ideological beliefs of the Sophian women.

Nevertheless, it is possible to resist dominant institutional discourses, and in the Focus Text there are signifiers that point toward feminist resistance by some Sophian participants. I turn my attention to these now.

Sophia’s negotiated discourses

In the Focus Text, resistance to canonical teachings is discernible in comments from Kimberley, Frances, Ruth and Dorothy. The presence of such resistance here is significant, because the study question that participants were answering did not invite the disclosure of personal views: these should have been saved till later in the meeting! Yet it is apparent that some members of Sophia found it difficult to say anything at all about Catholic canonical discourses on Mt 16:13-19 without alluding to the possibility of different perspectives or readings being applied to this text.

In the context of the Focus Text (and even more so in the broader context of all the Sophian discourses analysed in my doctoral thesis), hints of resistance are heard in the tone of two comments: “so you’ve got to believe everything the pope says” (Kimberley) and “no correspondence will be entered into” (Frances). With these words, Kimberley and Frances signal they no longer unreservedly accept that Mt 16:13-19 establishes the authority of the pope and the church’s magisterium. However, feminist resistance to canonical discourses was more obvious in Frances’ reference to Martha who “doesn’t get any keys of heaven given to her”.

Frances recounts what Edwina Gateley has noted: though Martha’s faith proclamation is the same as Peter’s, Martha is not rewarded with the keys of heaven as Peter is.²¹ Martha’s proclamation of faith is included in the Gospel of John (11:27) and according to Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, it is as significant within the Johannine community as Peter’s confession is within the Matthean community:

[Martha’s] confession parallels that of Peter (Jn 6:66-71), but is a christological confession in the fuller Johannine messianic sense: Jesus is the revealer who has come down from heaven. As such it has the full sense of the Petrine confession at Caesarea Philippi in the synoptics,²² especially in Matthew 16:15-19. Thus Martha represents the full apostolic faith of the Johannine community, just as Peter did for the Matthean community (1983: 329).

However, the significance of Martha’s proclamation has never been highlighted in canonical Catholic discourses and Frances had come to realise this. Similarly, Dorothy came to another realisation, this time concerning Catholic discourses about the sacrament of penance.

Dorothy’s “we know now that Confession hadn’t started then” (Focus Text) overtly resists canonical teachings about the sacrament of penance or “confession” beginning in the time of Jesus: Dorothy clearly rejects canonical readings of Mt 16:19 that are dependent on later developments within the Catholic tradition.²³ Subsequently, in discussing another question later in the same meeting, Dorothy offered a very different understanding of Mt 16:19. Her feminist response was as a contemporary Catholic reader who recognised structural injustices with the current model of hierarchical church leadership. Dorothy asked:

Is there too much being bound and not enough being loosed? Was Jesus saying – Peter, you need to go with the times. There are times when you have to bind and there are times when you have to let go? And they [church’s hierarchical leadership] are not letting go. It’s time for the hierarchy to let go. They’ve got to read the times (Sophian meeting 24, transcript p. 4).

This extract signals Dorothy’s confidence in moving away from canonical readings of Mt 16:19 that support differential power relations between clergy and lay women and men. Ruth had already pointed out that “Jesus gave a lot of authority to Peter, if we take this [Mt 16:13-19] the way we have been led to believe” (Focus Text, emphasis added). Dorothy does not appear willing to do this and neither does Ruth who doubts the adequacy of what she has been taught about the authority Jesus gave to Peter. Insights from biblical scholars suggest that Ruth’s reservation is justified.

In his work on Matthew’s Gospel and Formative Judaism: The Social World of the Matthean Community (1990), J. Andrew Overman examines the socio-cultural context in which the Matthean community developed. Overman points out that Matthew’s account of the gospel gives more authority to the disciples than the other synoptic gospels do: “Matthew 6:15; 9:8; 16:19; and 18:18 all ascribe to the disciples, in one form or another, the authority to forgive sins. This is something reserved exclusively for Jesus in Mark and Luke” (p. 130). Overman believes the threat of formative Judaism accounts for this, and that the Matthean community modelled its structure on Jewish leadership:

The authority to bind and loose, we may infer from Josephus, is similar to the authority that was ascribed to the Pharisees. The Matthean community constructed norms and values and essentially ordered its life in response to and over and against their rivals (p. 141).²⁴

While this helps explain the Matthean community’s adoption of an authority structure that privileges both a specific group (disciples) and an individual (Peter), it is Australian biblical scholar, Elaine Wainwright, who draws attention to an important consequence of this. For Wainwright “the narrative movement of disciples speaking on behalf of the people and Simon Peter on behalf of the disciples” is “a dangerous development” (1998: 95). It is dangerous because voices, especially those of women, become silenced in the process:

It is the silencing of the voices of the many by the use of a representative voice. In this instance that representation is genderized so that male and female participants in the reign of God movement are represented by disciples, who are characterized as male, and then the disciples are represented by the lone male, Simon Peter. It also places the more elite scribal interpretation rather than the popular one on the lips of the representative voice. Such a development has the potential to shape reading and community consciousness toward a valuing of the representative voice, which is single and unitive (Wainwright 1998: 95).

It appears that this potential has been exploited within Catholic tradition, for community consciousness has continued to be shaped by a genderised valuing of the sole/unitive representative voice: multiple/diverse voices have been suppressed by the dominant male hierarchical voice. This has allowed a text such as Mt 16:13-19 to be used in a monolithic, interested and logically dubious way to validate specific androcentric and authoritarian Church structures and practices. Moreover, it has allowed the institutional church to largely ignore a text such as Mt 16:21-23, in which Jesus exposes Peter’s vulnerability, declaring Peter (the rock) to be a stumbling block. And I note that when the Sophian women looked at question three of the scripture study on Mt 16:13-19, a question which drew attention to Mt 16:23, several participants indicated they had not been aware of the existence of this Matthean verse beforehand, and none of the six women could recall any official Church teachings linked to the image of Peter as stumbling block. ²⁵

The suppression of multiple/diverse voices by canonical Catholic discourses has diminished the Church, making it more of a stumbling block than a rock for many Catholics. For example, in the report on the participation of women in the Australian Catholic Church which documents the results of research conducted on behalf of the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference (published as Woman and Man: One in Christ Jesus), Macdonald, Carpenter, Cornish et al (1999: 197) note that:

The majority of presenters [at the public hearings] cited aspects of Church teaching and practice as barriers to women’s participation in the Church. Many suggested that tradition is used in a rigid and static way, history is presented as men’s story and that Scripture is used in such a way that women’s stories are excluded, for example in the selection of readings in the lectionary for Sundays (emphasis added).

It seems then that the issues raised in this paper are of concern to a wide range of Australian Catholics; they affect far more than just the six Sophian women whose voices have been heard and analysed here.

Conclusion: rock and stumbling block

In sum, my analysis of the Focus Text has demonstrated the problematic way the Catholic Church’s canonical reading of Mt 16:13-19 has been used to legitimate its hierarchical and androcentric structure of church leadership. Furthermore, the paper’s analysis has signalled resistance to this canonical Catholic construction of Mt 16:13-19 by the women members of the Sophian group. It is evident from my analysis that the Sophian participants were developing awareness of and increasing respect for different/multiple perspectives, though this was more overt in later comments made by participants during the same meeting (when the guide questions invited personal reflections and comments).

Significantly, this paper’s analysis has also revealed the extent to which the male representative voice, as heard in canonical Catholic discourses, shaped and controlled the Sophian women’s formative (pre-Vatican II) understandings of Catholic Church leadership. Growing up in a pre-Vatican II Church, Dorothy, Frances, Kimberley, Ruth, Wendy and myself were exposed to Catholic homilies and teachings that highlighted Peter’s vision/insight in declaring Jesus to be the Messiah (Mt 16:13-19). The Church did not draw attention to Peter’s failure to understand what this really meant (Mt 16:21-23). Primarily, Peter was a rock and not a stumbling block in traditional Catholic interpretations, and in our youth the members of Sophia had unquestioningly accepted official Catholic readings of Mt 16:13-19 and other scriptural texts.

However, in a post-Vatican II environment, with the Sophian participants becoming more attentive to marginalised voices and less rigid/rock-like in our thinking/theologising, we accepted that it was possible to offer valid readings of scriptural texts that were different from the androcentric hierarchical interpretations used in official Catholic Church teachings. We came to appreciate both the rock-like and the stumbling block dimensions of a Catholic Church which continues to cling rigidly to unjust outmoded dogmas. Moreover, we recognised that there were sections of the Christian Scriptures that had been ignored in canonical Catholic discourses. These discoveries were made by the six Catholic women whose voices were heard in this paper, and this happened despite our rote memorisation of the “old catechism” (1937), our familiarity with official documents and teachings of the Second Vatican Council and the post-Vatican II Church, and our love for and commitment to Catholicism.

As Australian Catholic women and men continue to read and reflect critically on scriptural texts and their use (misuse and/or under-use) within canonical Catholic discourses, an important question emerges, namely: how can/should the Australian Catholic Church recognise, respect and valorise the fact that women and men do not read scriptural texts and Catholic Church teachings monolithically? Multiple voices have always been present within Catholic/Christian tradition and this continues to be true, perhaps even more so at this period of time – with change being enacted at a rapidly increasing pace – and in this place, Australia, with its richly diverse population. What is required is appropriate recognition of such difference/diversity by the Australian Catholic Church’s hierarchy.