Karlo Broussard explains how we know that the Catholic Church has the whole truth in virtue of its establishment by Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew and its unbroken apostolic succession to the present day.
Transcript:
Host: So “S.C. Haugen” asks the following on Periscope: “How do you discuss with Protestants who think no single type of Christianity has all the truth?”
Karlo: Yeah, well, that question would be unanswerable if there were no particular Church that Jesus Christ established. So if Jesus didn’t establish one Church to exist for all generations, well then there would be no way that we could answer that. We could only say, “Well Cy, you might have some truth, and I might have some, but no one really knows if anybody has the fullness of God’s revelation.” So this question presupposes the question of “Did Jesus Christ establish one Christian community and constitute that community with certain constituted officials to govern, to lead that community, to guide that community, to teach that community?”
And the answer to that question is: yes, Jesus Christ DID establish one Church. So, classically, we would turn to Matthew 16:18-19, where Jesus tells Simon “You are Peter,” changes his name to Peter, which in Greek means “rock,” and says “Upon this rock (so Peter’s the metaphorical rock) I will build my Church.” So Jesus is building his Church upon Peter, making Peter the VISIBLE foundation; that doesn’t take away from Jesus as the one true foundation, but establishes that foundation element visibly on Earth, to where we can know: wherever the foundation is—namely, Peter—there’s the true Christian Church.
And then Jesus tells Peter, “The gates of the netherworld shall not prevail” against the Church that he’s building upon Peter, and gives Peter the keys of the kingdom, which, according to Old Testament biblical theology, signifies a very unique type of authority; namely, to be the prime minister, or the royal steward, of the new and transfigured and restored Davidic kingdom. So that whatever he’s gonna open, none shall shut; whatever he shuts, none shall open. And in fact, Jesus uses that very similar terminology in saying “Whatever you bind and loose on Earth is bound and loosed in Heaven.”
So we see in Matthew 16:18-19, Jesus gives Peter a unique and central authority to be this visible source of unity for his Christian Church on Earth. And in light of the fact that he has the keys indicates it’s a permanent institutional office that’s gonna be succeeded by other men, so much so that, to this present day, that institutional office remains in the papacy, the Bishop of Rome. So that Pope Francis IS the successor to Peter as the keeper of the keys, so that Pope Francis is that visible source of unity of Jesus’ Church here on Earth.