To the editors:
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Mr. Sheehan’s article regarding certain beliefs about Christ’s message, knowledge of the Trinity and plans for his church are very interesting [April 21]. It is a wonder indeed that such a veritable scholar such as Mr. Sheehan thinks himself to be that he completed (in his own words) ten years of Catholic seminary training without ever reading some of the very earliest writers of the Christian era. For example St. Ignatius of Antioch (the second successor of St. Peter as bishop A.D. 69) was the first to have used the expression “Catholic Church.” In his introduction to the Romans, he tells them that the Church of Rome “presides in the chief place of the Roman territory” that it is presiding in love. Or, how about Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons in Gaul (now southern France)? He wrote in the second century “all churches everywhere must agree with the Church of Rome because of its more effective leadership, since in it Christians everywhere have preserved intact the apostolic tradition.”
Elizabeth Larsen
