Cory

My statement was indeed an ipse dixit, not a proof or argument. That's all I intended it to be, because I was stating the facts. Sure, you can gratuitously deny it if you want, but it remains nonetheless 100% true. All jurisdiction comes through the Pope. Period. None of your distinctions have any basis. Christ didn't give "some" of the power of the Church to St. Peter. He gave "all" of it to him and his successors. Ordinary jurisdiction comes only through the Pope. Delegated jurisdiction comes only through the Pope. Supplied (which is delegated anyway) jurisdiction comes only through the Pope. Read Lainez' "Disputationes Tridentinae." It's all beautifully explained and proven with clear, detailed, and extensive proofs in a very large and complete tome on jurisdiction. He was way ahead of his time and writes like later great theologians who had the advantage of more magisterial teachings and more precise development of theological discussion on their side. If you want to claim jurisdiction comes from any other source but through the Pope, you are going backwards in theology and leaving safe ground. Christ could have remained on earth to continue His work and kept all jurisdiction for Himself to be exercised by Him alone. Instead He founded a Church and gave to it the very same mission He had as man while on earth of saving that which was lost. He chose to make this Church the means of our salvation and thus gave it all power to do so. He gave it two powers: Orders and jurisdiction. The former comes through a sacramental sign, but the latter, i.e. jurisdiction, Christ gave entirely to the Popes and no one can have it except through them. There are theological problems with saying that Christ supplies, because it seems contrary to the way He established His Church as mentioned above. It is better to say always that the Popes supply. You seem to have a difficulty with understanding how the Popes can supply when we have no living Pope. Let me ask you then: 1) If supplied jurisdiction dies when the Pope who granted it dies, how can any priest today hear even the confessions of the dying? This power is delegated by the Popes to every priest for that moment, but you do not believe it can continue to exist after these Popes who granted it have died. 2) If you say this is because it is "written" in the Canon Law, I ask you: How does a blot of ink on a piece of paper grant a spiritual power such as jurisdiction? Does ink have this power? Does paper have this power? Can you yourself write down a law giving jurisdiction and it becomes effective because paper and ink give jurisdiction? I think you can see. Paper and ink mean nothing. Canon Law books don't dispense jurisdiction. The will of the Pope does. Yet in spite of the fact that the Pope who gave authority to Canon Law by an act of his will is dead, the jurisdiction he granted in that law continues to be granted to priests who were never even alive when he enacted those laws and granted that jurisdiction for the moment of death. 3) And what about before the 1917 Code granted this jurisdiction in danger of death? You can say Trent granted it, but what does this mean? Does it mean that there is a physical piece of paper with ink on it that is "Trent" and this paper and ink are dispensing jurisdiction? Or is it the will of the Pope who approved that decree of Trent that is the source of this jurisdiction? After that Pope died, did all the priests who assisted the dying miss out on that power? Or did they receive it because jurisdiction is a moral thing, not a physical thing and doesn't need to be handed down in a physical way? 4) What about before Trent? Were all priests who assisted the dying deprived of jurisdiction? Were their absolutions invalid because there was not *written* law? No paper and ink to give jurisdiction? Or is the answer the same as the answer always is and always was, namely, that jurisdiction comes simply through the will of the one granting it, not through paper and ink, not through a mysterious physical link that requires this Pope to remain living or else all his jurisdiction granted is defunct. 5) Since theologians admit that the power to absolve the dying by the will of the Popes existed even before it was ever written into the law at Trent, do you believe this power died every time a Pope died, so that during a vacancy all poor souls that died had no access to confession even if they had a priest at their side simply because you believe supplied jurisdiction dies when the Pope dies? I hope you can see from this that what you are arguing against is not me but against the entire history of supplied jurisdiction and against the very existence of the jurisdiction written down in Canon Law which you must then assume has entirely ceased to exist today. There is nothing objectionable in believing that the Popes have always willed to supply when the salvation of souls depends on it, "ne pereant animae" as Lainez says. There is nothing objectionable in saying that this continues to be the case during the intervals between one Pope and the next, since the jurisdiction granted without limit by one Pope remains effective until revoked by a subsequent Pope. But what Pope, in your mind, decided to no longer supply jurisdiction for all cases where souls would be lost without it?