Confusion reigns with those that believe their religious indoctrination over the truth.
"The Church" the body of Christ was established by the apostle Paul and NOT the TWELVE apostles that will sit on TWELVE thrones judging the TWELVE tribes of ISREAL. That you constantly try to equivocate on the meaning of "the church" is sad.
No! I am not equivocating. I have one thing in mind when I say Church. It's you who tries to argue that when the New Testament mentions "Church" that it's something other than what I mean by it. "Church" is a
main character in the NT. Along with Christ and John the Baptist and the Apostles, the Church is also prominent on the NT pages. Especially when we know that things like elders /bishops /pastors /presbyters /overseers, are Church officeholders. So whenever we're talking about those guys, we're also talking about the Church. Not to mention Paul's favorite name for the Church: the
Body of Christ.
A complete lie.
Your RCC indoctrination makes you completely blind to the truth that God started something NEW with the ONE apostle Paul. Note that Peter spoke ONLY to the people of ISRAEL even after Christ's resurrection and ascension.
Yeah, it was something new, but it wasn't an institution. Peter is shown preaching the Gospel to Gentiles after receiving a vision from God. Peter was with Paul and Gentiles in Galatians 2, before some people of Israel arrived, touching off a verbal altercation between the two Apostles, one of them, the president of the Church.
"Ye men of ISRAEL" Act 2:22
You are NOT Peter's audience.
You are BLIND to the reason that Christ chose TWELVE apostles during His ministry to the CIRCUMCISION.
Trying to continue the ministry TO THE CIRCUMCISION is a gross error.
Since I'm not a Dispensationalist, I wonder sometimes about what it will be like when finally the nation of Israel as a body believes the Gospel, and converts to Christ. They're going to start going to church, you know. The question is open which church. The answer is not found in Dispenationalism, because Dispensationalism is apocalyptic, requiring a miraculous intervention for Israel to repent, but if that reading of the Bible is wrong, and incompatible with the Scripture, then all Dispenationalism is, is dumb. As in, mute; silent. There's a path for everyone except Israel, in Dispenationalism. Israel requires God Himself to reach down from heaven and set things right for us.
Us Catholics just think of them the same way we think of you Protestants, Christ taught us that we should treat those who don't listen to the Church, like publicans and prostitutes. That means, we all have human rights, given to us by God, and no matter how mad we are about you, we cannot morally deprive you of your authentic human rights.
In other words we're liberals, since liberalism is the philosophy that takes human rights as basically fundamental. Christ taught us to be liberals. Respect human rights.
The body of Christ has NO PRIESTS nor PRIESTHOOD. That is why those words are completely ABSENT from ALL of Paul's epistles.
It does not matter what you call the office. Priests, pastors, bishops, presidents for all I care. But the office was created by Christ when He created the office of Church president and appointed Peter to the office. Christ established that institution, and in so doing he established the institution of the office of a bishop (cf. 1st Timothy 3:1 for where Paul mentions this office by name), because the Church president is always going to also be a member of the category of bishops, he's just going to be the bishop who's presiding over the entire Church. It's a big job, but at the same time, it's still just another pastor job, the president has to do all the things that the other bishops have to do too; he is the bishop of Rome as well, for one thing. The bishop of a city, is that city's senior pastor.
It does not matter if Paul talks about them being priests, and about the order of Melchizedek. Paul talks about the Eucharist. That's more important than whether or not he ever says that Church pastors are priests. The Eucharist is an institution that has always been celebrated by priests. The bishops have always celebrated the Eucharist. The Eucharist is always celebrated because that's literally what Christ said to do. Melchizedek celebrated a shadow of the Eucharist when he and Abraham met. There are four separate accounts in the NT of Christ establishing the Eucharist and in each one He has bread and He has wine, and that's exactly what Melchizedek has when he and Abraham meet.