16. THE QUESTION WAS:
Where did St. Peter and St.
Paul found and organize the Church, according to St. Irenaeus in 189 A.D.?
b. Geneva
c. London
THE ANSWER IS…..A….ROME.
St. Irenaeus, Bishop
of Lyons and Church Father, wrote:
"Matthew also issued among the Hebrews a written Gospel in their own
language, while Peter and Paul were evangelizing in Rome and laying the
foundation of the Church" (Against Heresies, 3, 1:1 [A.D. 189]).
"But since it would be too long to enumerate in such a volume as this the
succession of all the churches, we shall confound all those who, in whatever
manner, whether through self-satisfaction or vainglory, or through blindness
and wicked opinion, assemble other than where it is proper, by pointing out
here the succession of the bishops of the greatest and most ancient church
known to all, founded and
organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul,
that church which has the tradition and the faith which comes down to us after
having been announced to men by the apostles. With that church [of Rome],
because of its superior origin, all the churches must agree, that is, all the
faithful in the whole world, and it is in her that the faithful everywhere have
maintained the apostolic tradition" (ibid., 3, 3, 2).
"The blessed apostles [Peter and Paul], having founded and built up the
church [of Rome], they handed over the office of the episcopate to Linus. Paul
makes mention of this Linus in the letter to Timothy [2 Tim. 4:21]. To him
succeeded Anacletus, and after him, in the third place from the apostles,
Clement was chosen for the episcopate. He had seen the blessed apostles and was
acquainted with them. It might be said that he still heard the echoes of the
preaching of the apostles and had their traditions before his eyes. And not
only he, for there were many still remaining who had been instructed by the
apostles. In the time of Clement, no small dissension having arisen among the
brethren in Corinth, the church in Rome sent a very strong letter to the
Corinthians, exhorting them to peace and renewing their faith. ... To this
Clement, Evaristus succeeded . . . and now, in the twelfth place after the
apostles, the lot of the episcopate [of Rome] has fallen to Eleutherius. In
this order, and by the teaching of the apostles handed down in the Church, the
preaching of the truth has come down to us" (ibid., 3, 3, 3).
Note how St. Irenaeus then
goes on to mention some of Peter’s successors: Linus, Anacletus and Clement.
Today, that line of successors would end with Pope John Paul II.
Quick Links on the Early Church: Church Fathers, Life of St. Augustine, St. Irenaeus (Bishop of Lyons), Clement of Rome, Clement of Alexandria, St. Ignatius of Antioch, Pelagianism, The Confessions by St. Augustine, The City of God by St. Augustine, the Martyrdom of Polycarp, Epistle to St. Polycarp, St. Basil the Great, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Cyprian of Carthage, St. Jerome, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Barnabas, St. John Chrysostom, St. Ambrose, Eusebius, The Faith of the Early Church Fathers book, Did the Church Fathers Believe in Sola Scriptura? Foundations of Protestantism, Still Catholic