Quahal

Fr dear Fr: Who really did establish the Church, was it Jesus or Judas or Peter or Paul and Apollo, who precisely?

Some Christians feel that it was Peter that established the Church in its very human and humane and historical dimensions, especially ultra-montane super orthodox Christians, and well yes, the mass media loves to toy with the idea that it was Paul who converted many synagogues and turned the Church into a living international force inside the empire, no doubt about that, but Apollo too is credited with founding some aspect of the ecclesial community of early believers, with Mt 28 in mind. The female mystic Maria explains in her 5 volume masterpiece, still in need of approval from Rome, that originally it was intended as lying within the gift of Jesus to found the Church with the apostles, the principate he intended giving to Judas as his favourite and youngest and most attractive well-dressed apostle, but that the Father who sees into the hearts of men changed everything at Caesarea Philippi.

Well, as Fr Lonergan says in his marvellous introductions to the christological psychology of Jesus, it was definitely Jesus, with some help to establish the psychological force of the Church as an uncreated energy source in the world by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, but not neglecting the will of the Father whom Jesus reminded the apostles was the Person in charge of the whole covert operation in the first place, assembling the concept from the disparate prophets of the Old Testament Hebrew Bible beforehand and this he reminds us all of in the scene at Caesarea where Peter recognizes the divinity of Jesus and Jesus responds - “It was not flesh and blood that revealed this to you Simon Peter but my Father in heaven…” Lovely stuff.